Dave Chappelle: A Comedic Genius Since High School - Essay Sample

Introduction

Dave Chappelle is a 46-year-old comedian who was born in Washington and began chasing his career in comedy at as early as high school level. Dave was inspired by the comedian Bill of the show Cosby Show towards choosing his career as a comedian. However, at that time, he was of underage that his mother had to accompany him to clubs during the performance. He picked a controversial brand of humor by as early as that age, which led to frequent instances of critics and even a situation where he got booed at the stage during amateur night at the Apollo Theatre in New York. This paper gives a profile of Dave Chappelle and his road towards the Mark Twain award.

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Dave Chappelle's name became accessible to the public in the year 2003, as that was the time he launched the Chappelle's. However, in 2005, after signing a $50 million deal for the show Chappelle season 3 and 4, he left the entertainment industry and left the country for South Africa together with his family. He was unpleased with the new dimension that the show had taken, and he was receiving a lot of pressure from the directors to modify the tone of the comedic series. Dave felt that he was intentionally being put through stress.

Importantly, Chappelle stood back in the industry and signed a multi-million dollar with Netflix, and in the year 2018, two of his Netflix comedy specials, namely; Equanimity and The Bird Revelation, earned a Grammy Award all together for best comedy. The special comedy Equanimity also attained an Emmy for outstanding category special. Chappelle has taken part in many films, and TV series such as; "A Star is Born," "Chi-Raq," "You've Got Mail," "The Nutty Professor," and "Robin Hood: Men in Tights." Dave Chappelle has recently received the Mark Twain award, which is considered the highest honor in comedy and identifies individuals with an influence on American society in the manner of 19th-century novelist Samuel Clemens.

Chappelle acknowledged the Mark Twain award by articulating appreciation for friends and family, protecting the right to speech by comedians, and by smoking on stage. "What are they going to do? Kick me out before I get the prize?" he said to the audience. His act of smoking on stage was aimed at defending the rights of comedians to expressing what is in their minds. Chappelle outstands in his career due to his excellent understanding of the rest of the comedy practitioners even though he agrees or disagrees with them. He respects the opinions of other comedy practitioners and believes that they all have a message they like to pass across through comedy. Chappelle believes that comedy saved his life hence his great passion for doing it.

Dave succeeds in this field; also, by doing extra, Chappelle channels knowledge and processes at extra steps with his high level of creativity. Chappelle seeks out people and experience altogether with expertise such that every pun he makes he lives in the moment. He feels and experiences the situations of other people to build and better his art. The biggest challenge that Dave has opposed to people is to open the eyes of people by allowing them to see things from his point of view.

For instance, Chappelle has made a recent comparison to the movements of women and compared the current women's movement to struggles that Americans of African origin long had for equity of rights. He even suggested the commission of Truth and Reconciliation in South Africa as a source of inspiration. However, most several of Chappelle's jokes have received a lot of criticism from the audience, especially on transgender.

Conclusion

Conclusively, Dave Chappelle is a 46-year-old comedian who has recently receives the Mark Twain Award, which honors people who have made an impact on American society in the 19th century. Dave Chappelle started his career at the age of 14 back in high school with his comedy picking its controversial tone.

Dave Chappelle has won several awards, including the Grammy and the Emmy in 2017. The factors leading to his success include his understanding of the audience and other comedy practitioners. Dave believes that each comedy practitioner has a message to pass across (Sullivan 2019). The news is as a result of their experiences or something within the context of the present lives. Therefore, he has served as a freedom fighter for the rights of comedians. Dave is conscious of his comedy. However, he has received a lot of criticism with the various sensitive topics he chooses, such as transgender issues and freedom.

In conclusion, Dave was inspired by the comedian Bill of the show Cosby Show towards choosing his career as a comedian. Chappelle outstands in his career due to his excellent understanding of the rest of the comedy practitioners even though he agrees or disagrees with them. Chappelle seeks out people and experience altogether with expertise such that every pun he makes he lives in the moment. Therefore, he has served as a freedom fighter for the rights of comedians.

References

Childs, G. W. (2019). Power Struggles and Grand Narratives. Toyon Literary Magazine, 65(1), 21.

Dave Chappelle, Subversive and Charming, Wins Mark Twain Prize for Comedy. (2019). Retrieved 12 December 2019, from https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/28/arts/television/dave-chappelle-twain-prize.html

Rossing, J. P. (2019). An Ethics of Complicit Criticism for Postmodern Satire. Studies in American Humor, 5(1), 13-30.

Sullivan, E. L. M. (2019). Comic license and extreme figurations in contemporary American storytelling.

Zhou, T., Li, Z., Cheng, G., Wang, J., & Wei, Y. A. (2019). GREASE: A Generative Model for Relevance Search over Knowledge Graphs. arXiv preprint arXiv:1910.04927.