The controversy over Dave Chappelle’s new comedy particular is queued as much as attain an all-new excessive at the moment. A bunch of Netflix trans workers and their allies have planned a walkout this morning on the firm’s Los Angeles headquarters to protest Chappelle’s The Nearer. Described as an opportunity for Chappelle to “get a number of issues off his chest,” it options him complaining at great length about how he believes the LGBTQ neighborhood will get offended too simply. Critics responded by calling Chappelle’s jokes dangerous, and since then the present’s continued spiraling into a bigger headache for Netflix.
Netflix co-CEOs Reed Hastings and Ted Sarandos have spent most of this time defending their choice to air the Chappelle particular, notably in a companywide memo stating that “content material on display screen doesn’t instantly translate to real-world hurt.” However a transgender Netflix software program engineer who criticized Chappelle in a viral Twitter thread says she’s obtained “threats of violence” and “an infinite quantity of transphobic vitriol.” Netflix additionally fired a employee final week—who turned out to be a transgender program supervisor—for allegedly leaking confidential info that Netflix claims revealed inner metrics and monetary figures regarding The Nearer, which didn’t assist to relax the dispute.
Organizers say at the moment’s walkout is subsequently a method of demonstrating how a lot help Netflix’s trans neighborhood has within the office. A rally is scheduled to occur after the walkout, and organizer Ashlee Marie Preston says they’ve needed to relocate to a bigger web site due to “overwhelming demand.” They’re additionally planning to current a listing of calls for to Netflix executives.
They haven’t formally launched that checklist but, however the Verge got hold of the letter to executives that was reportedly drafted by the Trans* Worker Useful resource Group, the group answerable for at the moment’s protest.
Whereas the entire mess has grown right into a bona-fide culture-wars struggle over what constitutes hate speech versus what constitutes censorship, not one of the organizers’ calls for really contain canceling Chappelle’s particular. In response to the Verge, among the many ones on the checklist are: Netflix giving the Trans* Worker Useful resource Group a higher voice internally in terms of doubtlessly hurtful content material, hiring trans and nonbinary executives, and eliminating pictures and content material across the workplace that they are saying are transphobic.
In the meantime, Sarandos already appears to be in image-rehabilitation mode. In two separate interviews printed yesterday, he instructed the Wall Street Journal and Variety that he’d “screwed up” by penning that memo and in a number of the different methods he’s dealt with worker issues. “To be clear,” he stated, “storytelling has an influence in the actual world . . . generally fairly destructive.”
We’ve reached out to Netflix for remark and can replace this submit if we hear again.
