(This could fit into any one of a few other forums; I will not be surprised if it gets moved.)
This is a big topic on the Saturday Night Live subreddit. The show’s “cold open” (the first sketch of the night, before the opening credits) is very often politically oriented. Given the headlines these days, many viewers are frustrated that the ones involving Trump are (by their opinion) going too easy on him and effectively downplaying the evil of his actions.
I can see both sides of this. Yes, the show’s purpose isn’t specifically political. But the show does try to be topical, and there isn’t a lot that’s more on people’s minds. But I remember the kind of indirect way they handled sketches that touched on 9/11, and realize that it’s a very sensitive and tricky line to walk when actual human lives are involved. But humor can be a very effective weapon against fascism by reducing the “street cred” that gives them a significant amount of power. But this is a major network with a lot of employees with a lot to lose personally, given the administration’s actions. But as a major network, they have a lot of power, which comes with a lot of responsibility.
If they treat him like they’ve treated politicians in the past, it helps to normalize him. SNL poking relatively light-hearted fun at politicians is something we’ve come to expect over the last 50 years, and if they do that exact same sort of thing it makes it seem like everything is still operating within norms. And people burying their heads in the sand and pretending that everything is still within the realm of how we’ve always operated is a key factor in sleepwalking through this fascist nightmare.
I think they should either go hard and really emphasize just how different and how evil the current circumstances are, or just stop being political at all, (edit: though that would be really hard to pull off without seemingly cowardly.) Because treating him as if he were a normal president is enabling.
*I marked an edit I made so the post that responded to mine makes more sense.
You don’t think that “not being political” could be seen as shirking basic responsibility and trying to bury hard truths? But does that mean that the show has an obligation to say something?
(Oop, you edited while I was writing and I can’t delete this post…)
One thing they can do that they have done in the past is to try to annoy the shit out of Trump personally. He’s one of the weakest, most pathetic, more thin-skinned people on the planet. He gets supremely offended over anything. They could easily tailor their content in such a way that it’s designed specifically to piss him off. I would certainly enjoy that. It would be risky for them, though.
I just… don’t want the norm. I don’t want to normalize. I would like them to attack hard and aim to piss him off.
To be fair, I’ve thought they’ve done a reasonable job here and there of really digging into him and not trying to normalize him – I don’t think SNL is a particularly bad offender in this regard.
I think anyone expecting SNL to be the vanguard of the leftist revolution is absolutely putting their bets on the wrong horse. SNL is a known quantity at this point their politics are plain to see for everyone who bothers to pay attention. But I think the OP’s contention that they’re holding back out of some fear of Trump punishing them or whatever stems from the average person with only a passing familiarity with the politics of the show. This already is SNL trying their best, this is what trying their best looks like from the world view of SNL.
I think the effective criticism of SNL isn’t to make any meaningful changes to the show, it’s an attempt to reach fellow viewers of the program and prod them to explore sources more leftward who have a more radical theory of politics. For many viewers, SNL is the leftmost content they consume and they implicitly believe therefore it’s the leftmost opinion “reasonable” people should hold. Pointing out how SNL is not meeting the moment is a way to expand the Overton Window.
I think it’s very similar to people pointing out the hypocrisy and blatant double standards of the treatment of Zohran Mamdani by the NYT/Atlantic/Wapo/CNN etc. It’s not that they expected the criticism to change the coverage of any of those sources, but rather that the milquetoast centrism was finally forced to be cast into stark relief in ways that forced a reckoning. Hopefully, it caused some people to look for more reasonable coverage of Zohran Mamdani which then exposed them to a bunch of new ideas that are also poorly covered by the large establishment “liberal” media sources.
I don’t watch, but if SNL was doing what Brendan Carr says he wants – equal time – they would still blast Trump. And they would also blast Democratic Party leaders, as if being a cruel strongman is laughable, but so is leading a factually weak minority congressional party having no actual ability to change MAGA policies due to holding a minority of legislative seats.
SNL is and always has been a comedy / variety / entertainment show, not one of biting satire or political commentary.
Could they go after Trump more harshly, while still being funny and entertaining? And could they do it in a way that might actually change people’s perceptions, rather than just preaching to the choir?
I think you should look at the person who has run SNL for 46 of the 51 years it’s been on the air - Lorne Michaels. Read his Wikipedia entry if you don’t know much about him. He was born in Toronto. His birth name was Lorne David Lipowitz. His ancestry is Ashkenazi Jewish. He changed his name to Michaels in 1967, when he was 23. This is actually a rather old-fashioned thing for those of Jewish ancestry to do. Now (since about the 1970s) it’s considered that a person who does such thing is implicitly ashamed of their ancestry. He worked as a comedian, a comedy writer, and a comedy show actor in Canada and the U.S until 1975. Then NBC asked him to be the executive producer of SNL in 1975. He went away from that job in 1980 and then came back in 1985 because NBC thought the people who replaced him did a bad job. He has stayed there since then.
He has never been a hard-core liberal. He has always tried to hire a few moderate conservatives as the cast and crew of SNL. Sometimes they were too conservative and he had to let them go. He knows perfectly well that most of the young comedians he hires will be liberals. He tries to hold them back from being too liberal.
Playing up the ‘evil’ doesn’t make for good comedy, I suspect. Better to skewer the things that they can and that are funny; as best as I can tell, Trump’s not one to relish being the butt of a joke, and especially not a funny joke.
So they’re trying to be funny and point out some of the stuff that’s funny and egregious at the same time.
I don’t think the failure in general is with SNL, but rather the news media in general. This bizarre refusal to take any sort of stand or call out obvious bullshit is perplexing and a huge part of the problem. For example, in Alex Pretti’s murder, it’s obvious that some ICE agent took his gun, and another one shot him. At no point did Pretti do anything with it. But news media is carefully making sure to not actually accuse ICE, DHS or anyone of lying or murdering anyone, when it’s obvious that’s exactly what happened.
I’m not crazy about James Austin Johnson’s trump impersonation. Yes, his voice is spot-on, but IMO he portrays trump as too smart, likable and sympathetic of a character. His trump is a ‘wink wink, we’re all in on the same joke’ portrayal.
I think of Werner Klemperer’s portrayal of Colonel Klink on ‘Hogan’s Heroes’ as a counterpoint. Klemperer was a Jew who fled Nazi Germany with his family as a kid. He only agreed to play Klink if the character never did or said anything good or redemptive. His Klink was craven and stupid. Johnson could take a lesson from Klemperer.
I’m not sure I’ve seen anyone do an excellent impression of Trump. There are a few people who have the voice and mannerisms down pat, but the problem is… impressionists are too smart. They know what they want to say. They have a plan every time they go into a sentence. Trump doesn’t. Trump has no idea how a sentence is going end when he starts it. And so all the impressionists are far too coherent to really nail it.
It’s impossible to play Trump accurately without entirely going away from being funny. If any 79-year-old relative of yours acted like Trump does, you would never laugh. You would see to it that he’s quickly moved to somewhere that takes care of people who suffer from dementia. You would also see that he’s been slowly moving toward dementia for decades.
This. Certainly, it would be nice to see them give Trump the Parker/Stone treatment. But SNL hasn’t specialized in that “Take-no-prisoners”- style of comedy in a long time, if they ever really did. And Lorne Michael isn’t the type of the guy who likes to rock the boat these days. I’m sure he fears garnering the attention of the FCC, but even if Trump wasn’t such a vindictive asshole, I doubt Michaels would be roasting him too hard. Keep in mind also, that he had Trump host the show in 2015, when he was also already known for spewing racist, misogynist bullshit.