On Quitting: Dave Chappelle’s The Closer and Hannah Gadsby’s Nanette

Abstract

Like Hannah Gadsby, Dave Chappelle understands the art of quitting. At the end of his 2021 Netflix special The Closer, a show full of jokes about LGBTQ people, Chappelle announces that he is “done” making such jokes “until we are both sure that we are laughing together.” Chappelle’s performance of quitting inverts the politics and structure of Gadsby’s Nanette (2017), in which she infamously quit comedy because it reinforced her marginalization as a gender-nonconforming lesbian.