Watching Shane Gillis tickle himself to the point of being red in the face during his third “Saturday Night Live” hosting gig last weekend, I’d bet no one thinks Shane Gillis is funnier than Shane Gillis. But even if that’s a safe bet, his confidence in his own comedic stylings can’t get him all the credit for getting him to where he is: appearances on a show he was fired from, Bud Light commercials where, as he points out, he “looked like a lesbian,” and a TV show about tires that 59 percent of critics hate and 91 percent of people probably hate. Also I find it funny to hear women called whores in love.
No, we can thank everyone who, in his 38 years on this earth, politely made fun of one of the zingers in Gillis’ “Cornell 7’s Big Book of Punchlines.” And extra thanks to Lorne Michaels, who knows a cow in ratings and headlines when he sees one, even if he doesn’t want to house it in his own barn at the end of the night.
Just as journalists who deserve their salaries learn to avoid making headlines with puns or swearing because it’s lazy work, many successful comedians refrain from desperate for an easy laugh by calling women whores or attacking their “fat sisters,” as Gillis did in his Saturday night monologue. Leanne Morgan, to my knowledge, has never joked about going to the gym and that the men there are sluts because they wear sweatpants that show off their D’s and B’s, and she probably goes to the gym. Oh wait, Gillis said in his monologue that he felt most comfortable working out at “his friend Joe Rogan’s private gym.” RIGHT. Riiiiiiiight.
It’s not controversy alone that has value for a show like “SNL”; it’s giving a platform to someone who is more than willing to stand there, in front of a live audience, and verbalize the ugly things that people are afraid to say out loud. . . for now. But if they see enough people doing it, they might just have the audacity to do the same.
The fact is that happy, successful, confident, beloved comedians are creative and secure enough to reach toward their material, not directly into their own butts. There’s a difference between being a “controversial” comic and appealing to the lowest common denominator. Dave Chappelle is just as awful, content-wise, but at least he’s good at being the absolute worst, if that can be a thing for the sake of this argument. It’s worth noting here that even though he’s been in the game much longer than Gillis, Chappelle’s hosting number is only one bigger than his. . . I wonder why?
Gillis has made a career out of appealing to people champing at the bit for the chance to storm the Capitol, and apparently there’s now a home for that on “SNL,” a show that has lasted 51 years and counting by offering a little something for everyone and making space for everyone — except women and people of color, and, increasingly, viewers who haven’t been able to wear a red cap since 2017. Who’s laughing now? He’s not someone I’d want to be next to on the treadmill.
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It’s not controversy alone that has value for a show like “SNL”; it’s giving a platform to someone who is more than willing to stand there, in front of a live audience, and verbalize the ugly things that people are afraid to say out loud. . . for now. But if they see enough people doing it, they might just have the audacity to do the same. And so on, and here we are. The audience just wants to look at themselves in a mirror, even if they themselves internally despise what they see in that mirror.
Gillis has gotten enough polite, awkward laughs at his sad, misogynistic clown gimmick so far from friends, relatives, and dates who were just waiting for him to shut up so they could order appetizers that now he not only has an entire career showcasing this shtick, but a built-in audience of like-minded fans who have been told by one too many people that they have “a great sense of humor.” We are all paying a sickening price today, and all those who paved the way are complicit.
But “SNL” is a liberal showyou might be thinking. I mean . . . Of course? But it’s also a show with a sound archive spanning decades that includes hits like “Jane, you ignorant slut,” from a late ’70s “Weekend Update” sketch with Dan Aykroyd and Jane Curtin. I’ll spare you the Google. There is more.
Gillis has gotten enough polite, awkward laughs at his sad, misogynistic clown gimmick so far from friends, relatives, and dates who were just waiting for him to shut up so they could order appetizers that now he not only has an entire career showcasing this shtick, but a built-in audience of like-minded fans who have been told by one too many people that they have “a great sense of humor.”
Following Gillis’ latest hosting gig, it’s been refreshing to see men in the entertainment industry calling him out. Michael Che, who started at “SNL” as a writer in 2013 and moved to an on-screen role as co-anchor of “Weekend Update” the following year, weighed in on Gillis’ monologue via a series of Instagram Stories, writing, “I have to do more press this week to promote the special… I wonder what all the damn questions are going to be about… thank you so much, Shane.” “Schitt’s Creek” star Dan Levy, son of “SCTV” alum Eugene Levy, also took to Instagram with a more direct and thoughtful approach, saying, “Women who wear short shorts to the gym don’t make them whores. It makes men calling them whores misogynists.”
But the most effective statement would be Lorne Michaels’s, which he could make by honoring his first instinct to place Gillis in the persona non grata pile after clips from his podcast, “Matt and Shane’s Secret Podcast,” showed him using racist and homophobic slurs, prompting Gillis to be removed from the “SNL” cast just days after his hiring was announced.
Personally, I regret every time I throw wind in the sails of a deeply unfunny and offensive man by laughing politely, feeling too embarrassed to correct the moment. Most women experience these moments. I had one at my first job, when I was 15, and I made fun of the security guard twice my age who joked about his pants being tight after mentioning that I had a girlfriend. I had one when I was driving with an old friend and gave nothing more than a warning “you have to be careful with stuff like that” when he launched into a rant about how the women attacked by Harvey Weinstein “shouldn’t have been surprised” that he acted the way he did. It’s hard to stand up in times like these, but look what happens when we don’t. Shane Gillis is a cystic pimple. Everything else is pus.
Lorne Michaels will likely invite Gillis back. The fact that I and countless other writers write similar reviews virtually guarantees it. But what he should ask himself is whether the audience he’s targeting with jokes like the ones Gillis made last weekend is an audience he would feel comfortable in. This should matter. And more people should say something if it seems like that’s not the case.
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