Video of graffiti artist David Choe graphically describing raping a lady was lately eliminated on-line because of copyright claims after the footage of the 2014 podcast went viral on Twitter final week. Not lengthy after the 2014 episode aired, Choe mentioned the story was fictional.
The Los Angeles-based artist was lately featured as a solid member and title card artist on Beef, a high-profile Netflix present starring Steven Yeun and Ali Wong. Showrunner Lee Sung Jin told The Today Show that Choe was invited to audition for the function of Isaac after consulting Yeun and Wong, who’re additionally government producers and mates of the artist.
Choe grew to become well-known for painting murals for the headquarters of Meta (then-Facebook) in 2005 and selecting to obtain his compensation in inventory. When the corporate went public in 2012, Choe’s shares had been value an estimated $200 million.
Beef debuted on April 6 and immediately grew to become one among Netflix’s most popular titles. The streaming present can be produced by the leisure firm A24, which received 16 Oscars on the 2023 Academy Awards final month.
Sometime across the debut of Beef, Reveal reporter Aura Bogado posted a resurfaced video of Choe talking on the DVDASA podcast in April 2014 to Twitter. The tweet rapidly went viral and Choe’s controversial feedback recieved extra consideration in Hannah Bae’s April 5 review of the show for the San Francisco Chronicle.
In the video, Choe tells co-host and porn actress Asa Akira a few therapeutic massage with a masseuse he referred to as “Rose” the place he mentioned he compelled her to carry out oral intercourse. At one level, Akira mentioned, “You raped her.” Later within the episode, Choe appeared to jokingly name himself a “successful rapist.” A dialog in the course of the podcast about “rapey behavior” vs “rape” ended with Choe stating “I just want to make it clear that I admit that that’s rapey behavior, but I am not a rapist.”
On Sunday, Bogado tweeted a Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) takedown discover and a copyright possession declare to take away the video of the podcast from Twitter. The screenshot listed Choe and the artist’s non-profit basis because the copyright holder. Culture author Meecham Whitson Meriweather, who additionally posted the video, mentioned he had tweets removed for the same reason.
Media retailers resembling XOJane and BuzzFeed News reported on the feedback on the time. Several days after the podcast aired in 2014, Choe responded to allegations on the show’s website, stating that he was not a rapist, he hated them, calling himself an artist and a storyteller, and DVDASA as “a complete extension of my art.”
“If I’m responsible of something, it’s unhealthy storytelling within the model of douche. Just like lots of my work are sometimes misinterpreted, the identical goes with my present. The most important goal of all of my podcasts is to problem and provoke my mates and the co-stars on the present. We fuck with one another, entertain ourselves and snigger at one another, It’s a darkish, tasteless, fully irreverent present the place we fuck with everybody listening, however largely ourselves. We create tales and inform tales. It’s not a information present. It’s not a illustration of my actuality. It’s not the place to come back for dependable details about me or my life. It’s my model of actuality, it’s artwork that typically offends individuals. I’m sorry if anybody believed that the tales had been reality. They weren’t!
In a world stuffed with horrible individuals, thank god for us.”
Netflix representatives and Choe didn’t reply to requests for remark from ARTnews.
NBC Asian America reporter Kimmy Yam tweeted that she additionally reached out to Twitter, A24, Wong, and Yeun. Wong has additionally made her Twitter account non-public. “So far, no responses from any of those parties,” Yam mentioned.
Below is an prolonged description of Choe’s feedback on the podcast. (Warning: The description includes graphic descriptions of sexual violence.)
During the podcast, Choe described getting an erection in the course of the therapeutic massage, beginning to masturbate in entrance of “Rose” with out asking or telling her, and the way the state of affairs grew to become in his phrases, “dangerous” and “super self-destructive.”
“I’m at a place and there’s potential for a lawsuit… and she has given me no signs that she’s into me or that this is appropriate behavior. In my head I go, Do you care if I jerk off right now? and it sounds so creepy in my head that I go I can’t say that out loud … So I go back to the chill method of you never ask first, you just do it, get in trouble and then pay the price later….So I just start jerking off. So then her hands gets off my leg and she just stops … I go ‘Look I’m sorry I can’t help myself — can you just pretend like I’m not doing this and you continue with the massage?’ And she’s like ‘All right’ and she does … I’m like ‘Can I touch your butt?’ and I reach out and touch her butt and she pulls away. She doesn’t want me to touch her butt.”
During the podcast, Choe admits that he grabbed Rose’s hand, positioned it on his genitals, requested if she would spit on it and kiss it (he says she declined each requests).
“She’s definitely not into it, but she’s not stopping it either. I say, ‘Kiss it a little,’ she says, ‘No, all the massage oil is on it,’ and I take the back of her head and I push it down on my dick and she doesn’t do it. And I say, ‘Open your mouth, open your mouth,’ and she does it and I start facefucking her.”
Choe tells Akira that he continued the intercourse act till he ejaculated into Rose’s mouth. According to Choe, she refused to have intercourse with him, and requested him to lie again down so she might proceed the therapeutic massage.