Netflix special stoush erupts
Dave Chappelle show and anti-trans comments spurs staff walkout
Netflix employees in Los Angeles yesterday walked out in protest of Dave Chappelle’s special and its anti-transgender comments and were joined by allies who chanted “Trans lives matter” but faced pushback from counterprotesters who also showed up.
A rally at a Netflix office-studio complex drew about 100 people, most on the side of an estimated 30 workers at the streaming giant that joined in afterward. Some were willing to identify themselves as Netflix employees, but all declined to provide their names.
Joey Soloway, creator of the groundbreaking Emmy-winning comedy Transparent, was among the speakers at the rally.
Chappelle’s decision to share “his outrage as comedic humiliation in front of thousands of people, and then broadcasting it to hundreds of millions of people is infinitely amplified gender violence”, Soloway said.
“I want trans representation on the
Netflix board, this ******* week,” the writer-director said.
Ashlee Marie Preston, an activist and the event’s organiser, addressed the rally and spoke to the Associated Press afterward. She said calling out Chappelle for his remarks wasn’t enough.
“It was important to shift the focus to the people that sign the checks, because Dave Chappelle doesn’t sign checks, Netflix does,” Preston said. “If we have companies like Netflix who aren’t listening to their employees, who are forcing their employees to participate in their own oppression, that’s unacceptable.”
There were a few moments of shoving and pushing among the competing demonstrators, but the conflict was mostly limited to a war of words.
Leia Figueroa, a student from Los Angeles, doesn’t work at Netflix but said she wanted to back the walkout. While the streaming service offers positive fare for the LGBTQ community, she said, it’s having it both ways by also offering a show like Chappelle’s that includes disparaging comments about trans women.
If Netflix wants to be “an apolitical platform then they should be that”,
Figueroa said. “But they’re saying things like ‘Black lives matter’ and ‘We don’t stand for transphobia’. If you say things like that, then you have to be vetting all of your content to reflect your values.”
As she spoke, a protestor shouted, “We like jokes.”
“I like funny jokes, and transphobia is not a joke,” Figueroa replied.
Elliot Page, who stars in Netflix’s The Umbrella Academy and is transgender, tweeted that he stands with the trans, nonbinary and people of colour working at Netflix who are “fighting for more and better trans stories and a more inclusive workplace”.
Netflix ran into a buzz-saw of criticism with the special and in how internal memos responded to employees’ concerns, including coCEO Ted Sarandos’ assertion that “content on screen doesn’t directly translate to real-world harm”. Sarandos also wrote that Netflix doesn’t allow titles that are “designed to incite hate or violence, and we don’t believe The Closer crosses that line.” On Wednesday, Sarandos said he failed to recognise that “a group of our employees was really hurting”.