Can a comedy set win a Pulitzer? Dave Chappelle’s surprise Netflix special is called 8:46, for the unthinkable amount of time George Floyd was pinned by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin. The show, which bypassed the streamer itself to go straight to YouTube, is atypical even for this unusual performer, and is more of an eloquent volcano of social criticism than a typical set. His storytelling and natural charisma make the monologue riveting, enraging, inspirational and, to those who still don’t understand what’s going on, informative.
8:46, is, in the comic’s own words, “weird” and was recorded in “less than ideal circumstances to do a show.” It was shot with an outdoor, socially distant audience in Ohio, with fans wearing masks featuring Chappelle’s logo. The comic, who hadn’t performed in 87 days according to on-screen text, claims this is the first concert in North America since the spread of the coronavirus, except for some drive-in shows where people “honked their horns” if they thought something was funny.
After ribbing a black and white pair of friends in the audience (“it’s gonna’ be quite a car ride home—enjoy your riots!—just kidding”) he spins the wayback machine to the early 1990s and talks about the Northridge earthquake. He explains how terrified he was, alone in a California apartment at 4 am, thinking he was going to die. The quake lasted 35 seconds. George Floyd suffered for eight minutes and forty-six seconds.
After trying to make sense of that horrible number (with happens to coincide with the time on Chappelle’s birth certificate) he says he waited a week to watch the video, much like he waited to say anything publicly. He is not all that fond of Don Lemon’s admonishment of celebrities who didn’t speak up, saying “the streets are talking for themselves.” He also laces into Candace Owens, Laura Ingraham, and the hypocrisy of the NRA, which has only ever protested the use of assault weapons when the Black Panther Party used them for protests.
Most striking, though, are the ways in which Chappelle gets personal with the current uprising. He describes how he (and also, he jokingly sighs, Kevin Hart) were cited as “geniuses” by the African American LAPD officer Chris Dorner, who “did everything right” when reporting on one of his bad apple colleagues. When he was fired, he snapped, killing ex-colleagues and their families. Dorner was finally hunted down by police and turned to “Swiss cheese.”
Chappelle brings the incident up not to cheer or condemn anyone (or to brag) but to elucidate how people can do unthinkable things when they see something happen to someone that looks like them.
He also touches upon on one of the most heartbreaking aspects of Floyd’s death, how he called out for his dead mother as the life was choked from him. It feels a ghoulish to put this in stand-up comedy terms, but Chappelle employs this for a surprising callback later in the set, to brilliant effect. This is theater at its most powerful.
The special received a tremendous response online.
Chappelle does still have his critics, particularly for jokes about trans people, considered by many to be over-the-line.
One thing everyone can likely agree on is wishing they could see Candace Owens react.
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