Outdated comedians

Shane Gillis' monologue on Saturday Night Live this Saturday was like a trip to the past. A slap of alleged humor smelling of mothballs. It is not that this historic NBC sketch show has always been characterized by high-brow comedy. SNL has had very crude periods. Surely, through its sketches, one can observe how television humor has evolved in line with social transformations. For this reason, the opening monologue by Gillis, the host this past weekend, belonged to another era. All the jokes had to do with people's physical appearance and, furthermore, the everyday conflicts he posed to get laughs targeted women. Gillis appeared on stage lamenting being too fat and called out other people in the audience who were “fat as a cow.” Mocking himself and his bad appearance in a beer commercial, he claimed he looked like a lesbian. When he explained his supposed attempt at hiking, he joked about the day he encountered a girl alone on the mountain, implying she might think he could assault her. He claimed it had been so long since he went to the gym that “he didn’t know that women now dress like whores.” He said it was because of the shorts that women wear: “Neon-colored, with wrinkles that wrap around the buttocks and meet at the anus area.” He also lamented that now you cannot look at girls at the gym because they record you with their phones and post it on TikTok to report you. He spoke of some hypothetical older sisters: “I have two huge, fat, very bitchy sisters.” The way to protect himself from this crude humor was to include himself in the physical humiliations. He closed the monologue commenting that the hairstyle he had either looked gay or looked like Hitler. It was predictable: unimaginative comedians, when they want to be provocative, always make Hitler appear in their jokes as the only resource they have to achieve irreverence.

In 2019, Shane Gillis was signed by SNL to be part of the show's regular cast. Before debuting, however, he appeared on a podcast where he made racist comments and used homophobic slurs. The show fired him. Even so, they invited him back years later as a host. This was his third time there and he has left a disappointing trail. Various comedians have attacked his monologue, criticizing this sleazy sexism. But Gillis's problem goes beyond sexism. Claiming that women at the gym look like prostitutes is such a poor and limited remark, typical of a disturbed adolescent, that it shows his incompetence far outweighs his sexism. For too many years, transgressive humor has been confused with a simple lack of talent.