The Ambivalently Gay Viewer: "Saturday Night Live"’s Mixed Record on Gay Humor

“Comedy is best when it has an incredibly strong point of view,” says Seth Meyers. “We find that obviously with all kinds of identity comedy that we do. The stronger point of view you have, the more laser-focused it is, the more people that are going to be outside that point of view and think that it’s off base, but that’s sort of how it works."

The opposite of “gay panic” humor might be called “gay chicken,” after the frat game where straight guys see how close they come to kissing without actually touching lips (because, after all, kissing another guy is as bad as driving into another car). Sometimes SNL has seemed determined to communicate the idea that there is nothing more hilarious than the sight of two men kissing or otherwise showing physical affection.

In one attention-getting ad parody in 1976, Garrett Morris as a Marine approaches various men on the street. Finally, one seems receptive, and he and Morris walk off arm-in-arm. The announcer intones, “The Marines. We’re looking for a few good men.”

In an unfunny April 5 sketch in the current season, a creepy Christopher Walken sexually harasses a male co-worker, eventually sticking a tongue in his ear (and later leaving to choke him in the parking lot).

“It’s laziness on the part of the writers,” Serrato says, referring to the tendency to get laughs from same-sex affection. “It’s three o’clock in the morning, and the writer doesn’t know how to close the sketch. ‘Let’s have them kiss!’ But on national TV, it’s got to be more than just, ‘We couldn’t think of anything else.’”

But while some in the SNL audience have always surely been laughing at the “gay chicken” element of physical affection between two men, you could also argue that by presenting homoeroticism in any context, the show has also somehow served to legitimize it. After all, two men kissing can only be “shocking” for so long, then desensitization inevitably occurs.

In 2006, Will Forte and guest star Steve Martin appeared in an oddly touching skit called “Close Talkers,” about two men who stand just on the verge of kissing when they talk to each other, yet never quite kiss. Although the skit got laughs from the homoeroticism, there was also a suggestion of a repressed, Brokeback Mountain-style love which, along with the piano music playing intermittently in the background, somehow gave the skit a genuinely romantic as well as a comedic aspect.

Pell calls comedy of this sort “writing from the inside out. You can really go quite far if it seems inclusive, as long as it has an accurate point-of-view,” she says. She grants that comedians in the past have used gay humor that was “lazy and lame, but now we try hard to write from the inside out.”

Laughing At Homophobes

As The Daily Show With Jon Stewart and Real Time With Bill Maher have shown, there is plenty of humor to be found in the idiocy of the homophobic right. While SNL hasn’t done this as consistently as those other two shows, they’ve had their moments. In a 1991 Weekend Update segment, the show took on Norman Schwarzkopf, who had recently referred to Pentagon insiders who criticized the Army as “military fairies. ”

Chris Farley [as Schwarzkopf]: Let me say right off that, when I used the term "fairy," I was speaking colloquially. Where I grew up in New Jersey, the word "fairy" was often substituted for other terms. For instance, on my block, the Staten Island Ferry is called the Staten Island Gay Boy. And, of course, we all believed in the Tooth Faggot!

In 2001, Will Ferrell was the star of the ad parody, “Homocil.” He appeared as one of several parents suffering anxiety and discomfort because of their effeminate (and presumably gay) male children. As the sons are shown enthusiastically baton-twirling, gushing over “fabulous” tops, and offering the family some crème brûlée that they have just made, the parents look close to suicide. The voiceover runs:

"If you obsess about things you can't change . . . If you're unable to cope with unforeseen developments . . . If you avoid prolonged contact with your children due to these anxieties . . . when taken regularly, Homocil reduces parental anxiety. Homocil, until you come around. Because it's your problem, not theirs."

Although the parody is really just another form of “gay panic” humor, and it also gets laughs from its stereotypically effeminate boys, it is notable for two things: one, for being absolutely adamant that the sons cannot be changed, and that it is the parents who have a “problem” and need to be helped; and two, the fact that the boys in the skit are all under twelve. Prior to Ugly Betty’s Justin, this may have been one of the very few mainstream shows to acknowledge that stereotypically gay traits aren’t things that sometimes just suddenly magically develop when you are a gay adult.

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