Truly so sorry to be adding yet another post about the Shane Gillis episode to the pile, but I hadn’t seen this mentioned so here goes.
Much has been said about that “whores” joke from the cold open. If it existed in a vacuum in that episode, maybe I could look past it as just an unfunny attempt by a mediocre comedian whose mind is stuck in the 80s. But there was an entire skit shortly thereafter that was deeply unsettling: the sneakers skit.
The essential joke of the skit is clever enough — haha, why are sneakers called sneakers, what a weird name. But the way they chose to tell it is by Shane Gillis marveling that sneakers are good for “sneaking” because, he says in rapturous awe, “She’ll never hear you!”
He says this line continuously throughout the skit as a sort of punchline. The first time I heard it, my blood ran cold. I heard it as something a predator would say: i.e., she’ll never hear you coming, wink wink. Then, after the first couple times he says the line, he explains that the context is that his wife would never hear him sneaking home late at night which is what happened in the past and led to his wife killing his mistress. Slight relief that it’s not a rape or murder joke (although it still feels like a dog whistle for creeps who are into that sort of thing). Perhaps a calculated attempt to say Look we’re not the boogeyman, it’s not what you thought! Except… the joke is still about, yup, you guessed it, violence against women. The lazy misogynist’s favorite form of comedy. The wife killed the girlfriend! A broad died! Ha ha! Brilliant writing, gentlemen!
Guess SNL is still living in the stone age. Shame on SNL for having him (x3) and shame on anyone trying to defend him or obscure the obvious. In this current climate of the Cornell 7 and sexual predators in the white house, do we really need to be tolerating jokes about violence against women as “comedy”? Yawn. Vom. Next.
