Saturday Night Live is a show that everyone can love and watch. It started in 1975, 15 years before I was born. It is one of my favorite shows on TV right now, and I will admit that I have skipped a few parties once in a while to stay in and watch it. Whether it’s Chris Farley’s infamous “I live in a van DOWN BY THE RIVER!” skit or Andy Samberg and Justin Timberlake singing about an inappropriate Christmas gift, SNL has always been a show that delivers and keeps people laughing.
Now, while I am far too young to understand the impact of Chevy Chase’s impersonation of Gerald Ford I do know that he did mark the series first “landmark” impression of a president. He portrays him as an airheaded (for lack of a better term) clumsy man. His impression was one of the first ones that really made an impact on people, since due mainly to his impersonations, the public viewed Ford generally as a klutz. Ironically, Ford was the first non-cast member and first commander-in-chief to deliver the famous “Live from New York- it’s Saturday night!” Chevy Chase was also the original anchor of Weekend Update, which is a show that many people from my generation do watch and I frequently hear my friends crack jokes that come straight from an Update segment.
Another famous impersonation was Dana Carvey as George H.W. Bush.
Dana Carvey As Bush George H.W. Bush appeared on the show in 1994, the year after he finished in office and Dana Carvey left on SNL. However, the episode he made a cameo in was an episode that Dana Carvey hosted, and even though he was no longer president, the “candidate appeal” can also come into play with that, as if to say even though he was no longer president, he could still laugh along with everyone else.
Last season, the best skits put on by the show were definitely the debates and the ones with the cast members playing the candidates, but it didn’t just start there. As I mentioned above, Dana Carvey was extremely popular as George H.W. Bush, and one of the earlier debates I found was with Carvey as Bush and Jon Lovitz as Michael Dukakis. Strangely enough, one of Jon’s lines is “I can’t believe I’m losing to this guy.” Well, it’s pretty obvious that he, in fact, did lose to Bush in 1988, another reflection to how SNL does a pretty damn good job at predicting and reflecting the public’s opinion of candidates. Another favorite of mine is Will Ferrell as George W. Bush and Darrell Hammond as Al Gore. The portrayals of the two are spot on, especially Ferrell. Unlike his father, the 2nd president Bush never personally appeared on the show, which doesn’t really surprise me. I don’t view him as someone that would be able to laugh off the fact that they portray him as just a straight up idiot. Al Gore did come on though, and did poke fun at himself as many others have before him. If you watch the video above you’ll notice how often Hammond refers to a “lockbox” and how it refers to just about everything. Since 2000, Al Gore has actually hosted the show and took a seat on the fake SNL oval office and talked as if he was the president in a “parallel universe”, and yes, the lockbox did come into play in his opening monologue.
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Moving onto the present time. The movement to get my demographic to register to vote and actually vote has been huge over the past 20 years, starting primarily with Bill Clinton. When the elections were going on there were constant PSA’s featuring celebrities, MTV’s Rock the Vote, and even a music video with various different artists supporting Barack Obama directed towards 18-25 year olds with their message being that our generation is important, get out there and vote, we can make a difference, etc. Obviously Saturday Night Live wasn’t going to be left behind in the movement, especially with the striking facial similarities with former SNL cast member Tina Fey and Republican Vice President nominee Sarah Palin. Tina Fey’s portrayal of Palin helped the series improve its ratings significantly from the season before and it also led to a media firestorm with people constantly talking about her performances and comparing them to Palin since they were eerily similar. As we watched in class, Sarah Palin came on SNL and threw a reference to Tina Fey with doing her signature sign-off after Weekend Update and there was another segment that we didn’t watch in class. In the segment where Palin is watching Fey portray Palin, Fey is obviously mocking her and poking fun, and when they show Palin, she appears laidback and like the jabs is just rolling off her shoulders. Also appearing is Mark Wahlberg who goes after Andy Samberg who made fun of him on a show, and then Alec Baldwin comes up and insults Sarah Palin to her face, thinking she is Tina Fey. Sarah however, just stands there smiling and then throws an insult back at Baldwin, stating that Stephen is her favorite Baldwin. In reality, she was showing us that she is tough and she can handle the criticism that she was receiving in the press and she can dish it just as much as she can take it.
In addition to Sarah Palin appearing on the show last season, Mike Huckabee appeared mocking himself (we watched that one in class), as well as John McCain. McCain actually did a skit with Tina Fey as Sarah Palin. The skit was a commercial for QVC home shopping network, and they were hawking items such as blank dinner plates (referring to the town hall debates Obama wouldn’t do), “Joe Action Figures” (Joe the plumber, Joe Biden) among others (Cindy McCain also shows up in the skit, where she is showing off items, referring to the whole “MILF” and trophy wife labels she got throughout the campaign). President Obama was also supposed to be a guest and he was in fact booked, but right before the show his grandmother died and was unable to attend.
All of these examples go along with the candidate appeal and homophily aspects we covered in class. Homophily, by the way, is how we like to vote for candidates who are similar to ourselves. Personally, I like to be around people who don’t take themselves too seriously and can laugh at themselves, and I am pretty sure about 90% of the population would agree with me. As we all know, politicians do tend to be pretty smart or their advisors are, and it’s obvious that appearing on SNL would be good for a candidates appeal since it would show viewers that they can laugh at themselves and not take everything so seriously. They can think outside of the debates and campaigning constantly (even though that is actually what they are doing) and relax. They can kick back and take criticism and even laugh along, because we all want a leader who is able to laugh once in a while. While it was extremely cool to see these public figures on SNL, it did seem a bit overplayed, like if you weren’t on the show then you just had a stick up your ass and couldn’t take the criticism.
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