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Wheaton admits he was influenced by homophobic jokes in one of the most famous stand-up routines of all time: “Everything was cruel. Everything was bigoted. Everything was devastating. And I didn’t know any better.”
As the controversy surrounding Dave Chappelle’s transphobic jokes continues to swirl on the comedian and Netflix and the comedy community in general, an unusual voice with a strong message of personal experience waded into the vortex.
Wil Wheaton is best known for his work on Star Trek: The Next Generation and perhaps as a fictionalized version of himself on The Big Bang Theory. But he’s also a heartfelt person who has found a whole new life in the emerging internet.
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Part of that was because he was never afraid to be painfully blunt, vulnerable, and honest with his fans. And that’s exactly what he did when trying to explain why Chappelle’s jokes are so problematic and even dangerous.
He did this by telling his Facebook page a painful story from his own youth where he must possess the bigotry he displayed as a teenager, only the homophobia that was at least partially influenced by the greatest standup comedian of his day since Chappelle was the greatest of him.
In Wheaton’s case, comedian was Eddie Murphy and the standup routine was his infamous “Delirious” album, one of the most successful and influential comedy albums of all time, it turns out to be deeply homophobic too.
But, as Wheaton writes in a haunting essay, it was just utterly funny for a petite white man living in a bubble of privilege and ignorance. As a teenager, he didn’t see how dangerous it was to have Murphy floating around the F-word so freely, even though he now describes the jokes as “simply horrific and inexcusable”.
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“Everything was cruel. Everything was bigoted. Everything was devastating. And I didn’t know any better,” Wheaton wrote. “I accepted the framing, I developed a view of gay men as predatory, somehow less than straight men, absolutely worthy of ridicule and contempt. But always good for a joke.”
“Let me put it another way,” Wheaton continued. “A comedian who I thought was one of the funniest people on the planet went completely normal by mocking gays, and because I was a privileged white kid raised by privileged white parents, there was no one near me who challenged that perception I was embarrassingly homophobic for most of my teenage years and it all started with this comedy special. “
That manifested itself in a story Wheaton told about a time when he met a group of guys on the ice hockey rink and had a great time with them. After that, in the locker room, trying to be one of them, he dropped the F-word on her – only to find out that each of them was gay.
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In his embarrassment, he refused to apologize even though he said he wanted to then and still wished he could now. Instead, he lied and turned and ended in shame and embarrassment. He is embarrassed about his behavior back then.
He can’t help but see the possibility that others, and especially young people, might react to Chappelle’s transphobic jokes in a manner similar to how he responded to Murphy’s homophobic jokes. You could internalize them, normalize them, and be influenced in the direction of bigotry and transphobia.
“So the stuff that Chapelle did? wrote Wheaton. “I believe you when you say it’s no big deal.
“But for a transgender person, these ‘jokes’ normalize hateful, ignorant and bigoted behavior towards them,” he continued. “These ‘jokes’ contribute to a world where transgender people are constantly at risk of violence because transgender people have become safe, acceptable, and dehumanized.”
