In 1975, the year “Saturday Night Live” premiered, nearly 70% of Americans said they believed that homosexuality was always wrong.
That figure would only rise over the next decade, a National Opinion Research Center poll found, peaking in 1987 at 75%. So it’s likely unsurprising that most mainstream comedies presented queer people pretty one-dimensionally in the ‘70s and ‘80s, often as victims of brutal crimes — an implicit risk of their “gay lifestyle,” the subtext whispered — or, frequently, depicted as reductive versions of sex workers living on the fringes.
From the jump, “SNL” branded itself as something countercultural.
Seeing openly gay characters in movies was rare, too; until 1968, the Motion Picture Association of America abided by a moral censorship code, The Hays Code, that banned the depiction of LGBTQ+ characters in Hollywood films. Even in their most sensitively approached portrayals in mainstream film and television, gay characters were often used to teach straight characters lessons about tolerance (the subtext being that it’s humane to tolerate queerness, as opposed to genuinely accepting it as valid).
Comedies and teen movies were frequently vehicles for shock-value homophobia, bullying and gay-bashing — for example, in the form of the casual F-slurs dropped in ‘80s blockbusters like “Teen Wolf,” “The Breakfast Club” and “Sixteen Candles,” to name a few high-grossing examples from the ‘80s.
You’d be forgiven for thinking that “SNL,” like most other American media, existed in a familiar bigotry pipeline: that it was once homophobic, but isn’t as much anymore. And that’s kind of true, especially in the ‘70s and ‘80s, when the show’s cast and writers’ room were perhaps their most hegemonically heterosexual.
But that’s also an oversimplification of “SNL”‘s relationship to queerness, which has always been distinct from other massively successful network comedies of its ilk, experts say, in that it reflected a more knowing relationship to queerness than many other comedies, even during periods of little queer representation among its ranks.
In particular, the show’s roots in New York City — which, during “SNL”’s earliest years, was a political breeding ground for queer activism — played a significant role in the show’s comfort with queerness. In this way, its relationship to queerness has always been different from perhaps any other mainstream comedy that isn’t explicitly aiming to appeal to queer audiences, or wasn’t itself created by somebody from the LGBTQ+ community.
From the jump, “SNL” branded itself as something countercultural — “a whole new dimension for TV,” it declared in a promotional ad — airing live from a packed New York City soundstage at an hour most of the country experiences as the middle of the night. “SNL” leaned into the NYC of it, emphasizing New York City, specifically the city’s downtown, as a core part of its identity. Just watch its first season’s opening credits, which open first on a shot of the Statue of Liberty, then downtown Manhattan, then a blurry taxi cab, whisking its passengers off to some fantastical cosmopolitan romp.
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“From its founding, it often positioned itself within the television landscape as a kind of edgy alternative to mainstream mass television,” Ronald Becker, a gender and media studies professor at Miami University, told Salon. Becker also co-edited “Saturday Night Live and American TV,” a collection of critical essays on “SNL” and social issues like race, gender and sexuality.
“SNL” did so “very clearly,” Becker said, “by emphasizing how downtown New York it was.”
That wasn’t apolitical. In the mid-’70s, downtown New York was home to perhaps the nation’s most politically active queer community at the time, and a highly visible LGBTQ+ population compared to nearly all other American cities. “Within my memory, there was a constant crowd of gay men strolling (or cruising) up and down Christopher St. 24 (or seemingly 24) hours a day,” the queer historian Andrew Lear wrote of Greenwich Village, one of New York’s oldest queer neighborhoods, in the ‘70s.
Living or working in New York, and especially Manhattan, has for decades meant being exposed to queerness on a daily basis: walking by a queer bookstore, theater or sex shop on your way to work, where there’s a higher-than-average chance at least one of your coworkers is gay, or going out to a bar or restaurant, where — if you’re literally living in the gayest city in America — the chances are solid that you’ll be rubbing elbows with at least a few queer people.
In the ‘70s, ‘80s and ‘90s, Becker said, that proximity to queerness set up “SNL”’s largely hetero writer’s rooms to be at least more broadly comfortable with gay people, and more supportive of their rights, than the average American who hadn’t interacted with many (or any) gay people over the course of their day-to-day lives.
In the latter portion of its half-century run, “SNL” has seen queer perspectives and sensibilities emerge more into the fabric of its comedy.
That’s not to say that the show was exactly a bastion for queer comedy in the ‘70s and ‘80s — for the most part, from the ‘70s up to the early ‘90s, anything queer on “SNL” “was very much from a straight perspective, for a straight audience,” Becker said. “I don’t think anybody would really say that it had a strong queer vibe in the sense of LGBTQ queerness in the ‘70s and ‘80s, and maybe even much in the ‘90s.”
Just take “Jamitol,” the 1975 commercial parody which might technically count as “Saturday Night Live”’s first-ever depiction of a queer couple, depending on what you think about this next part. “Jamitol” aired in “SNL”’s first-ever episode, on Oct. 11, 1975, and opened on Chevy Chase and Michael O’Donoghue standing side-by-side in a soundstage, both wearing different versions of a sweater over a button-up, looking perfectly generic.
“This is my best friend, my business partner, my advisor, my companion, my wife,” Chase states plainly with O’Donoghue by his side. “And I love her.” He continues: “She takes care of the house, cooks great meals, makes studded leather vests at our own boutique, and still has enough energy to give me the attention and affection I need at the end of a long day.” Chase looks down at O’Donoghue. “I don’t know how you do it.”
Jamitol. Jam-it-all. Get it? Part of the joke – or perhaps the whole joke – was about anal sex. Or, was “SNL” presenting queerness with the same banality as we’ve come to see straightness, albeit with the use of a somewhat dehumanizing pun? Such is the subjectivity of comedy. One thing for certain, though — it didn’t exactly add up to groundbreaking queer representation. And during the show’s earlier years, that was largely a factor of “SNL”’s straightness, and those writers’ insulation from queer spaces.
“I haven’t studied this in-depth, but in the ’70s and ’80s, the comedy writers just probably didn’t know very many gay people,” Becker said. “They weren’t good friends with gay people, and there wasn’t a cultural context that pushed them to be a little bit more sensitive to how they should address queerness in their comedy.”
But in the latter portion of its half-century run, “SNL” has seen queer perspectives and sensibilities emerge more into the fabric of its comedy. By the late ‘90s and early 2000s, “even the straight writers operated in the social environment filled with LGBTQ people,” Becker said, “and there was a conversation around representation and sensitivity.”
You can see a shift in “Schmitt’s Gay,” for instance. Written by Robert Smigel, the commercial parody aired in 1991, during “SNL”’s 17th season, and sees Adam Sandler and Chris Farley as frat bros in a hypersexualized beer commercial, ogling the oiled-up hotties that emerge from the backyard pool like sirens. Only, these sirens are men — jacked body-builders, to be specific — and Sandler and Farley are into it. “You look like you need to get wet,” one bodybuilder says. The bros’ jaws drop. They clasp their hands in prayer. “Thank you,” they whisper, gazing toward the heavens.
“SNL”’s progressivism has at times been unique, in that it can’t help but reflect a pair of contrasting forces at-war in the show.
Things play out as if the two guys had stumbled upon a sorority’s pool party, albeit more stupidly: the bros ogle a trio of muscled men’s butts in banana hammocks from afar; Sandler sneakily uses his camcorder to zoom in and enhance his view of one of the men’s crotches. After some more escalating antics, a voiceover: “If you’ve got a big thirst, and you’re gay, reach for a cold, tall bottle of Schmitt’s Gay.”
Sandler and Farley play their parts precisely as you’d expect to see them in a beer commercial alongside a bunch of bikini-clad women. “It’s hard to say whether this sketch is laughing at the idea of men touching other men or whether it’s lampooning the sexism in beer commercials,” The Advocate wrote in 2018, “but either way it’s nice to see Chris Farley and Adam Sandler play these gay characters just like they would any other characters (as dumb, horny bros).”
They aren’t grossed out by the men, no sir, not at all! They’re enamored by them, and unironically so. And that’s where the cultural consensus on this sketch is split. On the one hand, Sandler and Farley are two straight dudes pretending to be over-the-top horny gay dudes – though it’s worth noting that their whole vibe is generally not even that sexual, more so just excited in a “woah, dude!” sort of way.
Still, some say that, ultimately, people are laughing at homosexuality, with others feeling that the sketch is more satirical, showcasing the utterly bats**t logic of hypersexualized beer commercials that make the link between one’s sexuality and the beer they drink.
Stephen Tropiano, a media professor at Ithaca College and the author of several books including “The Prime Time Closet: A History of Gays and Lesbians on TV,” “Saturday Night Live FAQ” and “The SNL Companion,” told Salon that he sees the sketch’s depiction of a “gay fantasy” as “reflective of the times, as things became a little bit more accepted.”
The mere depiction of men lusting after other men, let alone as something to be celebrated, wasn’t anything to sniff at. But that’s not the same thing as saying the joke was a queer joke, for queer audiences, or that it was even necessarily about queer people.
“It’s sort of a fratty bro play on, or translation into, gayness,” Becker told Salon. “But it’s all about straight sensibility, in a way.”
In this way, “SNL”’s progressivism has at times been unique, in that it can’t help but reflect a pair of contrasting forces at-war in the show: the cast’s more-progressive-than-average attitudes toward queerness throughout the decades, which you’ll tend to get when you round up a bunch of improvisers in New York, and the network comedy’s outsized share of straight cast members throughout virtually its entire run.
Americans have been a majority-homophobic people for much of the nation’s history, yet, “SNL”’s many straight cast members have, at times, demonstrated more comfort with queerness than many other Americans.
Bowen Yang and Colin Jost in “Saturday Night Live” (Will Heath/NBC)Take Bowen Yang’s “Iceberg That Sank the Titanic,” a now-iconic character that Yang debuted on Weekend Update in 2021. Yang, alongside co-writer Anna Drezen, imagined the iceberg as a pop diva whose sinking of the R.M.S. Titanic represents an early career scandal it’s desperate to keep in the past. “I’ve done a lot of reflecting to try and move past it,” Yang’s iceberg tells Colin Jost, adding its publicist was “very clear” that the iceberg is “not here to talk about the sinking.” Instead, the iceberg wanted to focus on its new album: “a hyperpop EDM nu-disco fantasia.”
Pay attention to Colin Jost the next time you watch the sketch, though, Becker said. Because, unlike straight male comics of the ‘80s, ‘90s and beyond, Jost demonstrates a straight guy who isn’t at all concerned with establishing his heterosexuality in Yang’s presence.
“It’s so elusive,” Becker added. “I think it’s hard to really nail down.”
That behavior – namely, hetero dudes needing to affirm that they’re straight, and nothing like the queer person in their midst — is often a core driver of homophobic humor and homophobia, Becker said.
In that way, Jost functions as something that might’ve been equally powerful for “SNL”’s mainstream American audiences to witness: namely, a straight man embracing queerness, enjoying its sensibilities, and approaching it without fear.
“He’s in on the joke,” Becker told Salon. “He has a different relationship to Bowen Yang, and that queer comedy sensibility, than they would have had in the ‘80s, right? That never would have happened. He’s enabling it. He’s supporting it.”
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