Saturday Night Live: Word Association

Saturday Night Live, today in its 34th season, is a live, 90 minute sketch comedy show that appears every weekend on NBC. Created in 1975 by Lorne Michaels, the show is centered around a standard cast that appears every weekend and a guest host, who is a well-known celebrity, either in the entertainment or political sphere. This particular clip is from the 9th episode of the 1st season, which Richard Pryor hosted. The first black host for the show, Richard Pryor is seen in this particular sketch, sitting at a table with Chevy Chase, being interviewed for a job. The last part of the interview is a word association exercise, in which Chevy Chase starts off using very simple, non offensive terms. The exercise gets out of hand very quickly, with Chevy Chase using progressively offensive terms for blacks, while Richard Pryor fires back with progressively offensive terms for whites. Upon Chevy Chase's use of the "N" word, Richard Pryor calls him a "dead honky," which leads to Chevy Chase hiring Richard Pryor for $15,000 a year, the highest paid janitor in America, all after the initial offers of $5,000 and $7,500 per year garnered responses of "your mama" and "your grandmama," respectively.



Chase, Chevy, and Richard Pryor, perf. Saturday Night Live. NBC. 13 Dec. 1975. Hulu. 17 Feb. 2009.

Weekend Update: Celebrity

These are two Saturday Night Live Weekend Update skits, both featuring Seth Meyers as the host. The first also stars Kenan Thompson as Charles Barkley. SNL, a sketch comedy show started in the mid-seventies which now airs every Saturday night at 11:30 pm, is well-known as a parody show, taking current events and trends and turning them on their heads. This first sketch, originally aired on 1/10/09, starts off with the political news of the week, followed by an in-depth interview with Sir Barkley on his recent traffic violation. The second clip, aired 2/7/09, is Seth's analysis of Michael Phelps marijuana scandal.

Barkley and Phelps are the latest in a line of celebrities to be skewered by the SNL crew for immature behavior. These sketches bring up the debate on how celebrities and potential role models ought to be punished for behavior that would probably go unnoticed if they were not famous. Any other young adult male, for example, could have used a bong profusely and not suffered the consequences, but Phels only did so once (to our knowledge) and is loosing millions of dollars because of it. While the Barkley sketch doesn't have much of a complete argument, Seth and the writers clearly see Phelps' treatment as too harsh. Meyers points out how ridiculous the standards are for Phelps, and how the 12-time-gold-medal-winner ought to be given a few breaks every now and then. As the show is aimed at Phelps' age group, the audience will probably tend to agree with them.