Reductio ad Absurdum — The Comedy of Dave Chappelle
The underlying logical structure to some of Chappelle’s most controversial jokes
Dave Chappelle might have a new, unlikely fan base. 2017, Netflix released four Dave Chappelle stand-up specials: Deep in the Heart of Texas, The Age of Spin, Equanimity, and The Bird Revelation, marking the comeback of one of stand-up comedy’s modern greats after a 13-year absence from the mainstream public eye. In August of 2019, his latest and most controversial show Stick and Stones was released.
Depending on which column you read, you may think that Dave Chappelle’s career is over or at an all-time high. He’s been called “unfunny”, “outdated”, and “insensitive”. The New York Times wrote a piece titled Dave Chappelle on Broadway: The Joke is Getting Old, while Vice said: “You can definitely skip Dave Chappelle’s new Netflix special Sticks and Stones”.
Chappelle has also been nominated and won several awards, including a 2018 Emmy for best variety special, and he’s set to receive the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor later this month in New York.
In addition to the usual fans and critics, perhaps what’s most surprising is the recent attention — one might even say cautious praise — that Chappelle has received from an unexpected group: pro-life advocates. Life Site News wrote a piece titled Dave Chappelle’s point on abortion and child support is driving the Left crazy, and the Texas Right to Life website ran a piece titled Dave Chapelle stuns audience with joke about abortion. The Washington Examiner, as a conservative publication, ran a piece titled Dave Chappelle accidentally explains the absurdity of ‘my body, my choice.
So why all the positive attention from these unlikely groups? Was his explanation of the absurdity of ‘my body, my choice’ accidental?
By looking at the abortion joke, and a few of Chappelle’s other controversial jokes, it’s possible to see a common, underlying structure that is hardly accidental.
“Perhaps we’re wrong”
In Sticks and Stones, Chappelle delivers the abortion joke in question. The joke opens on the back of his piece on #metoo, where he implies that feminism went too far, leading to a backlash of increased sexism, characterized by anti-abortion laws:
“What the f — — is your agenda, ladies? Is sexism dead? No, in fact, the opposite happened. I said it was going to get worse, and they said I was tone-deaf. But eight states, including your state [Georgia], have passed the most stringent anti-abortion laws this nation has seen since Roe v. Wade.”
From there, Chappelle issues a few lines of standard, almost caricatured rhetoric on abortion common in pro-choice and left-leaning mainstream media circles. As we’ll see shortly, there’s a specific reason why Chappelle issues this apparently unabashed “support” of the pro-choice stance:
“I don’t care what your religious beliefs are or anything. If you have a dick, you need to shut the f — — up on this one, seriously. This is theirs, the right to choose is their unequivocal right. Not only do I believe they have the right to choose, I believe that they shouldn’t have to consult anybody, except for a physician, about how they exercise that right. Gentlemen, that is fair. “
What appears as support is actually something Chappelle is setting up as a “premise” — a statement or proposition from which another is inferred or follows as a conclusion. And here’s the unlikely conclusion that Chappelle draws from that premise:
“And ladies, to be fair to us, I also believe that if you decide to have the baby, a man should not have to pay. That’s fair. If you can kill this motherf — -er, I can at least abandon them. It’s my money, my choice.”
Chappelle has used the premise to infer a particular conclusion, and in doing so, he has set up a scenario where the audience has two options: accept the conclusion or change the premise.
The conclusion is deliberately designed to be absurd. Who believes a father should have the “right” to abandon their kids? In fact, the United States has a federal Office of Child Support Enforcement, which has tools such as wage withholding, bank account seizures, and driver's license and passport suspensions as a means to ensure that the father (or non-custodial parent) does pay.
If the conclusion is wrong, then the premise must be wrong, too. Chapelle ends the joke with a line implying exactly that:
“And if I’m wrong, then perhaps we’re wrong. Think that shit out for yourselves.”
Reductio ad Absurdum
It’s hardly an accidental explanation. Chappelle’s joke follows a logical structure known as reductio ad absurdum, or reduction to absurdity. Like many elements of logic and philosophy, reductio ad absurdum has its roots in Greek philosophy, pre-dating Socrates.
It is “disproof of a proposition by showing that it leads to absurd or untenable conclusions”. Galileo used it to show that without air friction, objects of different weight fall at the same rate. In Mathematics, it takes a form called proof by contradiction. Euclid used it to prove the infinitude of the primes, and Fermat used a version called proof by infinite descent to validate several concepts in number theory.
While it can’t be called accidental, how deliberate is Chappelle in deploying this sophisticated tool of rational argument used by philosophers, scientists, and mathematicians? That’s hard to say. Philosopher Daniel Dennett refers to reductio ad absurdum as the “general purpose crowbar of rational argument”, noting that “we use it all the time without paying much attention to it.”
Regardless of how explicitly familiar he is with reductio, Chappelle clearly has an implicit understanding of the technique and consistently uses it to demonstrate the absurdity of controversial views and beliefs.
“The T’s”
Chappelle has joked about transgenderism in a number of his specials, consistently drawing sharp criticism. In Sticks and Stones, he does it again, using reductio as his mechanism. He opens the joke with an “explanation” for all his jokes about transgenders. In reality, he’s setting up his premise for another reductio argument.
“I feel bad for T’s. But they’re so confusing. And it’s not all my fault. I-I feel like they need to take some responsibility for my jokes. ’Cause I didn’t come up with this idea on my own, this idea that a person can be born in the wrong body.”
Here’s what Chappelle identifies as the premise of transgenderism: the idea that a person can be born in the “wrong” body. This is the statement from which Chappelle will infer a conclusion, just as he did with his abortion joke. And here’s Chappelle’s conclusion about the transgender premise:
“What if I was Chinese? But… But born in this n — — body. That’s not funny? And for the rest of my life, I had to go around making that face [makes “chinese” face]. ‘Hey, everybody, I’m Chinese!’ And everyone gets mad. ‘Stop making that face. That’s offensive.’ -’What? This is how I feel inside.’”
Chappelle’s conclusion is that if someone can be born in the “wrong” body, that wrongness must not be limited only to gender. It could just as easily apply to other physical traits, like race.
Here Chappelle’s deployment of reductio seems less poignant — some people do associate more closely with a race, culture, or language other than their native one. Many people are unsatisfied with the body they’re born in and seek to alter it through plastic surgery. Does that count as being born in the “wrong body?”
This is just one conclusion that Chappelle draws from the premise that someone could be born in the wrong body. He extends the idea to athletic competition as well.
…ad abusrdum
“Okay, say… say LeBron James, uh, changed his gender. You know what I mean? Okay. Can he stay in the NBA, or, because he’s a woman, does he have to go to the WNBA where he will score 840 points a game?”
Here Chappelle calls attention to the idea that an elite male athlete competing in a female division seems absurd, which calls to question the premise — that a person can be born in the “wrong” body, they can claim an identity separate from that body based on how they feel inside, and society- including athletic leagues — should honor that claim.
It turns out that this is an issue that society is still divided on, perhaps highlighted most visibly with the Fallon Fox controversy. MMA commentator Joe Rogan had this to say about the issue on his podcast:
“Fallon Fox has had the benefits of being a man for most of his life. [He has] bone density, muscle mass, and other physical benefits that one gets from being a man. You can’t have that, and then make a minor adjustment — basically, a cosmetic adjustment — and suddenly claim to be a woman… nothing can take away from the fact that you are physically a man. Mentally and emotionally, who knows — but physically, he’s a man.”
This is instructive in understanding the effective deployment of reductio, and why Chappelle’s abortion joke seemed more effective: the premise must be clear, the path to the conclusion must be logical, and the conclusion itself must be easily accepted as absurd.
What does it mean to be equal?
Chappelle may sense the uncertainty of how absurd his conclusion about LeBron playing in the WNBA was, so he attempts to demonstrate it with another question: does being male give an athlete competing against females an unfair advantage? To round out the “T” joke, Chappelle addresses the issue of gender differences and equality which sits at the center of the transgender athlete debate.
“What does it actually mean to be equal? You know what I mean? Like, if women are actually equal to men, then there would be no WNBA, would there? You would just be good enough to play in the NBA with us.”
While much shorter and compact than the previous examples, he uses the same reductio ad absurdum structure: if equality means there are no differences between men and women, then there would be no WNBA. But there is a WNBA, so equality can’t mean there are no differences. If we accept the existence of the NBA and WNBA, then we must accept that the premise of no differences is wrong.
Challenging Ideas
Chappelle deploys reductio to challenge several politically sensitive topics, which is partly to explain for why his shows have been so controversial: he’s not just questioning ideas, he’s attempting to highlight their absurdity. Reading through some of the jokes above, it’s easy to forget that these are actually jokes unless you hear Chappelle himself deliver them. Indeed, Chappelle’s stage presence and laid-back personality enable him to deliver lines on controversial topics in a way that makes you laugh and makes you think.
Reductio ad absurdum is a tool for challenging ideas, and Chappelle uses it to challenge some very controversial ones. Regardless of what you believe, when you watch Chappelle’s comedy, you might see a few of your own ideas reduced to absurd conclusions. At least now you’ll be able to see how he’s doing it.
