'Saturday Night Live' turns a sexual harassment sketch into a WTF bad comment on double standards
Wait. What?
Last week's "Welcome to Hell" sketch was Saturday Night Live at its best, turning a pop music video into a scathing rebuke of a culture that's enabled egregious acts of sexual misconduct. This week's "Sexual Harassment Charlie" sketch, on the other hand, was SNL at its absolute worst.
Let's set the scene. A company institutes a zero-tolerance policy on sexual harassment, and two men are being removed from their jobs as a result: Doug, the company's white CFO; and Charlie, the black "front desk guy." The announcement elicits two reactions from the women in the room: Triumph over Doug's removal, and disappointment over Charlie's.
The rest of the sketch follows that theme: Doug offers apology after apology for his assorted inappropriate remarks, which include pet names for one co-worker and telling another to smile more. Charlie also apologizes, sort of; really, he recaps his behavior and comments -- all of which are worse than Doug's -- without any real show of remorse.
The women in the room respond to Doug with derision and anger; Charlie, on the other hand, gets giggles and hand-waving acceptance. "It's Charlie!" Doug articulates the issue at the core of the sketch: "It just feels like you guys are going easier on him because he's a charming, old black man, and he's done way worse stuff!"
That seems to be the intended punchline. The sketch ends with the revelation that Charlie's firing isn't even related to sexual misconduct; really, he's a criminal who's wanted for kidnapping and has been living under an assumed name.
It's an awkward sketch that hints at a double-standard, though the nature of that double-standard isn't clear. Is it a race thing? Doug is white and Charlie's black. A power thing? Doug works in a position of authority; Charlie has a desk job.
Is the sketch trying to say that women are more accepting of bad behavior from one versus the other? There's a mountain of evidence in the public domain, built up over the past year-and-more, that says otherwise.
For those who have been paying attention, the big lesson of 2017 has been: Sexual misconduct in any form is unacceptable, hard stop (unless you're the U.S. president or someone he supports). And yet SNL's "Sexual Harassment Charlie" sketch seems to be saying, "Hey, look! Check out this vague double-standard that we're not even going to explicitly identify!"
This isn't a case of not getting the joke. It's just a bad joke, built on a bad idea, and it badly misses the mark. Good comedy pushes the envelope, but this isn't that; it's nothing more than a sketch built on a flawed, perhaps even non-existent base assumption. It's astoundingly tone deaf at best, openly offensive at worst. SNL owes its audience an apology.
Topics SNL
Adam Rosenberg is a Senior Games Reporter for Mashable, where he plays all the games. Every single one. From AAA blockbusters to indie darlings to mobile favorites and browser-based oddities, he consumes as much as he can, whenever he can.Adam brings more than a decade of experience working in the space to the Mashable Games team. He previously headed up all games coverage at Digital Trends, and prior to that was a long-time, full-time freelancer, writing for a diverse lineup of outlets that includes Rolling Stone, MTV, G4, Joystiq, IGN, Official Xbox Magazine, EGM, 1UP, UGO and others.Born and raised in the beautiful suburbs of New York, Adam has spent his life in and around the city. He's a New York University graduate with a double major in Journalism and Cinema Studios. He's also a certified audio engineer. Currently, Adam resides in Crown Heights with his dog and his partner's two cats. He's a lover of fine food, adorable animals, video games, all things geeky and shiny gadgets.
