Netflix nearly had one of the best present of the 12 months on its palms. Beef, a hypnotic portrait of strangers who take their self-hatred out on one another after a parking zone spat, has racked up the admiration of audiences and critics — together with myself — because it got here out on April 6. But lower than two weeks after its launch, the present’s legacy has already been tainted by an argument surrounding considered one of its major solid members: David Choe, a star artist who performs Isaac, a temperamental grifter on parole. He’s come below fireplace for his historical past of graphically bragging and joking about rape.
In 2014, on his podcast DVDASA, which stands for “Double Vag, Double Anal, Sensitive Artist,” Choe recounted a narrative about forcing his therapeutic massage therapist to look at him masturbate, then maintain his penis, then carry out oral intercourse on him. His buddy and cohost, the porn actor Asa Akira, interjected to say that he was “basically” admitting to rape, however he shrugged it off.
A month later, after journalist Melissa Stetten introduced public consideration to the incident in a publish on xoJane, Choe issued a proper apology during which he claimed that he made the story up, calling it his mission as “an artist and a storyteller” to problem his associates and listeners with “dark, tasteless” concepts. But his profession continued apace. Although considered one of his murals was vandalized in 2017, presumably in protest of the identical controversy, which prompted one other public apology, Choe didn’t appear to endure any main skilled penalties. Being provocative merely turned a part of his model. In a 2021 profile within the New York Times, Choe mentioned “it was strangely comforting to be so despised” in 2014 as a result of the exterior hate lastly matched his personal self-loathing. It didn’t appear to hassle him that Disney warned its subsidiary firm FX in opposition to buying his TV collection, The Choe Show, on account of his controversial historical past. He funded the present himself, and in any case, the corporate purchased it anyway. In a smug however prescient quote, he declared, “If you want to come and try to cancel me, that’s OK.”
Now that he’s hooked up to a mission as excessive profile as Beef, this 9-year-old controversy has grow to be inescapable. Writers Aura Bogado and Meecham Meriweather recirculated clips of the unique podcast episode on Twitter final week, inflicting followers to surprise why Choe had been solid and what steps Beef’s manufacturing crew would take to sentence his conduct. (Twitter deleted the tweets after Choe’s basis requested that Bogado’s and Meriweather’s tweets be removed on copyright grounds). This time, folks have drawn consideration to Choe’s description of his therapeutic massage therapist as “half Black, half white,” arguing that his story not solely normalizes rape however contributes to a protracted historical past of objectifying Black ladies, who expertise sexual violence at disproportionately excessive charges.
Thus far, no one from Beef has made any public feedback. Show creator Lee Sung Jin, in addition to costars and govt producers Ali Wong and Steven Yeun, have remained silent. (Wong set her Twitter account to personal seemingly in mild of the controversy). As far as injury management goes, it’s disappointingly evasive.
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