Palin and Fey: Two Sides of the Same Joke
Sarah Palin has helped push Tina Fey a few more rungs up the celebrity ladder. The moment Palin was unveiled as McCain's sidekick, Fey's name was mentioned across the spectrum, for obvious, physical reasons. Always happy to give the audience what it wants, SNL predictably featured its former head writer and Update anchor in last Saturday's cold open, the video of which is everywhere online.
I've received a number of emails asking, "Wasn't Fey great as Palin? Didn't she nail her to the wall?"
Yeah, I suppose. Imitations are easy, perhaps the laziest form of comedy, much less what passes for parody. Fey was already nine-tenths there on looks alone. Affect a pinched, northern accent, and you've got it. What SNL did once Fey got it was the typical lighthearted, breezy bit the show is known for -- shape the caricature (Palin's a perky dope) and repeat it ad nauseum, which I expect will happen with Fey's Palin throughout the election season. Palin's camp naturally said that the candidate found Fey amusing, and I've no doubt that Palin herself will appear on SNL in the near future.
This is network "satire" 2008. A comedy celeb gently imitating an emerging political celeb, who could very well be the next vice-president. Nothing too sharp or penetrating. Nothing that exposes the criminality just beneath the false, bleached smiles. Whatever it might have been a thousand years ago, SNL is currently part of the propaganda process, not making public figures uncomfortable, but making its audience comfortable with public figures. The routines are repeated all over the news channels and online, which drives home the perception that it's all in good fun, that those who seek to rule us aren't all bad, especially if they laugh along with the comics portraying them.
Michael O'Donoghue used to tell me how socially acceptable comedy was killing real satire. Comics wanted money and fame, and pissing on powerful people was not the surest route to success. As much as I admired -- hell, worshiped him, there were times when I thought that Michael was stuck in his National Lampoon past. I wanted him to write for the present. But Michael was worn down, aghast at what was considered "satirical," fearing that his style of cut-throat humor was passe, or worse, being dumbed down for wider appeal. No wonder he kept going back to that room where the likes of Doug Kenney, Henry Beard, Anne Beatts, George Trow, Sean Kelly, and Brian McConnachie were throwing knives with frightening accuracy. How do you maintain that kind of satirical aggression in a thoroughly corrupt age, where the jesters eagerly kiss their masters' asses?
Michael, you're not missing anything.
Today's clowns toss Nerf balls in a cluster bomb age. Don't hold your breath for "The Afghan Baby Book."
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We thought it was funny and effective...for those who didn't like it one bit or say it was lame, why not put up your own show and direct it... SNL has run so long to know that it gets what average joe's talk about during lunch hour or in the barber shop...
Too harsh, Dennis. The Fey skit accurately portrayed Palin as an uninformed and uninterested show-candidate, and highlighted the stark contrast between Hilary's substance and Palin's lack thereof. You say Palin's camp found the sketch "amusing", yet I only heard her claim on camera that she watched it with the sound off (presumably to avoid any questions about the content). She was NOT comfortable with it.
And furthermore, I don't think it would've been wise to make the sketch any more aggressive. If they'd brought up Troopergate, the lies about the 'bridge to nowhere', her pregnant daughter and all the other stuff, they would've been seen as too obviously partisan, angering and alienating people that can still be persuaded to drop their support for McCain. Gentle(-ish) mockery is much more effective in cases like this, I believe.
And I know comedy isn't intended to influence people's political opinions -- but in this case I'll be glad if it does.
Very, very well stated. I agree.
Be thankful we still have Stephen Colbert! Satire is alive and well on basic cable . . .
SNL's satire has always been pretty tame, and so what. Even during the O'Donaghue years, Chevy Chase's Gerald Ford tripping over the furniture was not exactly scathing satire. It was maybe one degree edgier than what Bob Hope did, but a lot funnier. My favorite SNL political sketch had Phil Hartman as Ronald Reagan pretending to be an amiable dunce when visitors came around, but in private he was a brilliant and aggressive leader. Funny, scathing, but ultimately harmless, just right or SNL. Tina Fey's Palin was just right too.
Excellent post. Too often SNL just goes for the obvious laugh, and they did that here in the Palin sketch, and have done it in most, if not all, their recent political sketches. They never really go for the jugular like they should.
should i mention Meet the Spartans or disaster movie? What passes for comedy these days is just ridiculous.
You know, good political comedy is born out of anger, and I don't see much anger these days at SNL. The Daily Show and Colbert Report both are much more relevant and funny, with less concern about offending. Jon Stewart seems positively on fire this year, tired of the empty rhetoric and flabbergasted by the vapid person that McCain chose as his running mate.
The Palin sketch made me laugh (something the rest of the show did not), but it was nowhere near as biting as it could be. Lorne Michaels wants to make money and not offend too much. It's made the show a bit sad.
When SNL did satire of the unfair and unequal treatment by the media of Obama, there was an outcry, the (male) writers had to intervene, and they had to return to their typical misogyny. The routine was terrific because they mocked Palin without being sexist, something that SNL has trouble doing.
Mr. Perrin - you hit, as they say, the ball out of the park, you hit the nail on the head, you christened the baby with sugar water... SNL, unlike what most are saying here in response to your piece, did once take a stand, did once make public figures uncomfortable (Chevy Chase as Gerald Ford, anyone.) Fey did a great miming job. I laughed. But it didn't move me like the old skits used to, like satire would have, like biting comedy should. You're right, Palin will show up on SNL soon, no matter her totalitarian views about women's bodies and her One Nation Under God and Jesus and the Republicans for
Ever and Ever Amen... The skit was like taking a drink of water when you're thirsty, you drink it, enjoy it, and you're not thirsty anymore.
Wow, you just sound grumpy and bitter. Not only did Tina Fey do a great, hilarious impression of Palin that left everyone talking about how pathetic a candidate she was (which was her task), but she completely erased the fake "line" that republican talking points have presented the democrats of crossing in terms of sexism. You can't know where the line is until someone actually crosses it, and I truly believe that the fact that SNL didn't seem out of bounds at all has done wonders for making it okay to criticize the REPUBLICAN vice-presidential nominee.
Thank you! So many people are complaining about this - I was sitting around with a bunch of fellow history majors while the episode aired and we applauded about 3 times throughout the entire episode (most people turned it off after the cold open...probably when they saw the monologue). The Alaskan man on Weekend Update "applauding" Palin, the joke Seth Myers made about an incompetent football player filling in for Tom Brady being nicknamed "Sarah Palin"...SNL got quite a few jabs in.
When the credits rolled, Tina Fey was seen waving to the audience wearing a "Vote for Princess Leia" shirt. What this really means, I don't know...one interpretation could infer that what Fey is saying is "If you support Sarah Palin through McCain, you may as well be voting for a fictionalized space monarch." I think SNL cast members find ways to convey what people are thinking in subtle ways, regardless of who Lorne Michaels decides to cast his vote for.
I thought the Fey/Palin skit DID bring up some very important points about sexism, how Hillary=old/ugly/bad and Palin=young/pretty/good in the public mind, and how that is how females, even politicians, are judged.
I also thought the "I can see Russia from my house" line and the "god huggin' us closer" line were both pointed criticisms of Palin's ignorance and lack of understand of large issues.
Beyond, that, as others have said, I don't think SNL has ever been much more critical towards politicians. And I say that having watched the show (on and off) since the John Belushi/Dan Akroyd days.
One positive change to the show these days: women have a much louder voice. Jane Curtain and Gilda Radner never got their fair share...
I made a comment similar to your post on an earlier blog about the Palin/Fey sketch - the ego-stroking by SNL is absurd, seriously, they are way too reticent with pissing people off. I think that is why we see so much snark and viciousness on the internet because all forms of cutting, passionate, well-intentioned or even ill-informed satire and criticism has been swept away for the current vogue of cutesy starf***ing. Hey we're coming up on sweeps people!
Well, the early SNL did more political comedy -- sketches about the CIA, Update jokes about CIA-funded wars in Africa, domestic spying and small terror groups like the SLA. It was a more political time in the culture. SNL was and always will be just a TV show, but there was a moment when humor about very serious things was understood and appreciated. Today, however . . .
O'Donoghue's main romance was with the National Lampoon. That's where he did his best and most lasting work, and the magazine ripped the throat out of every political target it could. Stewart and Colbert are timid in comparison. Some of the NatLamp vibe was felt on the early SNL (no surprise, given all the Lamp vets hired), but when the show became popular, that type of humor was pretty much phased out.
That success seemed to have an effect on The Second City as well, which I suppose would've compounded the problem, in that SC became little more than a place for wannabes to showcase their characters for Lorne. Del used to lament how lame the revues had become, and how they were devoid of local politics, which was what made it what it was, in Chicago anyway.
I've seen the first few seasons of SNL now that they're out on DVD (when O'Donoghue was writing), and I didn't notice much hard-hitting political satire. Chevy Chase's Gerald Ford simply bumbled objects and fell down a lot. That wasn't really cutting satire either. Hardly a whiff of political "statements" were made in the first 3 seasons. I'm not sure what show you're remembering.
Neverthless, there were people in Ford's campaign who said publicly after Ford lost the election to Carter that along with his pardon of Nixon, the bumbling image of him portrayed by Chase hurt his chances for reelection.
I gotta agree with DLSteinhardt, Dennis, SNL has never been particularly satirical in anything nearing a cut-throat sense. Some eras have definitely been lamer, but rising above mediocre parody has never been a strong suit.
I think some of us old-timers look back it's beginnings through rosier-colored glasses, or maybe what Michael O'Donoghue was alluding to was this very fact. I suppose you may have had insight to the show's original potential, but who's to say there aren't some frustrated Mr. Mikes on the always-bloated writing staff now?
More lampoon than satire.
i don't know, i think cocking a shotgun pose like G. Gordon Liddy's "Stacked and Packed Calendar" is pretty scary.
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