A Pair of S.N.L. Sketches Perfectly Nail the Awkwardness of the #MeToo Movement
Saturday Night Live has been struggling, this season, to pivot from reliably and routinely lampoonin..
Saturday Night Live has been struggling, this season, to pivot from reliably and routinely lampooning the president of the United States to engaging in some of the thornier, more complicated discussions around sexual assault and misconduct dominating the cultural landscape in late 2017/early 2018. With some notable exceptions—like the clever feminist anthem “Welcome to Hell” starring Saoirse Ronan—S.N.L. has stumbled a bit especially as the #MeToo movement took down men with close relationships to the show like Al Franken and Louis C.K.. For the most part, the events of the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements have been relegated to brief mentions on “Weekend Update,” but in this week’s episode, with seasoned alum Will Ferrell in the hosting seat, S.N.L. finally found a way into tackle the subject everyone does (and doesn’t) want to talk about.
The first and lighter joke came via a classic fake S.N.L. commercial. The product? “Next”—an antiperspirant for all the men sweating the fact that accusations of sexual misconduct are liable to drop about them any day. The sketch starts with Ferrell as an office worker who completes a familiar deodorant commercial slogan—“I work hard, and I play hard”—with the confession: “and something’s coming out about me. . .real soon.” But the sketch swiftly turns a mirror on itself with Kyle Mooney playing a stand-up comedian also caught in the #MeToo movement. Every industry is under scrutiny in the post-Weinstein era, but the C.K. allegations have focused a particularly bright light on comedy so bravo to S.N.L. for opting to swing so close to home.
The commercial concludes with Alex Moffat as a famous actor asked for comment on the red carpet evoking either December 2017 S.N.L. host James Franco, January 2017 host Aziz Ansari, or December 2016 host Casey Affleck. Trying to skate the line between supporting the movement in general and undermining his own accusers (all the rage these days), Moffat’s character stutters: “Lots of women are brave but this one is, um, a liar.”
Towards the end of the night, the clumsy fence-sitting of that Moffat statement became the focus of one of the sharpest S.N.L. sketches in ages. Leaning into its own deficiencies in dealing with the movement, the show used a recent New York Times op-ed about former S.N.L. host Aziz Ansari (one of several hand-wringing articles wondering if the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements had gone too far) to spark the kind of discussion (or lack thereof) everyone seems to be having these days.
Afraid to say the wrong thing, a group of friends played by Ferrell, Kate McKinnon, Kenan Thompson, Beck Bennett, Aidy Bryant, and Heidi Gardner stammer and dance their way around the subject in the same way S.N.L. itself has for the past few months. The result is a brilliant satire of woke self-awareness run amok where, even as the characters avoid saying much at all, the sketch speaks volumes.
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