Kenan, Kenan, Kenan. What hast thou wrought?
In case you missed it, Saturday Night Live cast member Kenan Thompson stepped into the issue of why SNL doesn’t have any black female cast members the past six years.
While comments about cast and writer diversity have plagued SNL for years and years, the past two years have seen the show come under increasing scrutiny for not just lack of diversity, but not hiring black women.
When Thompson was asked by TV Guide why he thought it was the case, he said that the show’s producers “never find the ones that are ready” in auditions.
Cue the firestorm, as people legitimately asked, “What’s up with that, Kenan?”
And there’s a lot to have a firestorm over. Black women are all over mainstream pop culture – Beyonce, Nicki Minaj, Kerry Washington in Scandal, and the First Lady of the United States – yet SNL can’t hold a mirror up to them.
Unless Washington is going to cram them all in when she hosts Nov. 2, this season may be bereft of black female presence.
Since the show hit the air in 1975, it’s had four black female cast members, and none since Maya Rudolph left the show in 2007. (SNL outsourced Michelle Obama duties to her in the past.) By comparison, “MADtv” (remember them?) had at least three black female cast members in its run from 1995 to 2009.
At the very least, Thompson could have been in step with fellow black cast member Jay Pharoah, who told TheGrio that SNL‘s administrators “need to pay attention” and find a black woman.
However, I also am a little suspect of the TV Guide article. It reads that Thompson said there is a lack of black female comedians, without actually quoting him saying that. If that is what Thompson meant, then yes, he deserves his share of the firestorm. But does he really say that?
The article reads this:
Instead of blaming showrunner Lorne Michaels or the series, which currently only employs three actors of color out of 16 cast members (Thompson, Pharaoh and the Iranian Nasim Pedrad), Thompson blames the lack of quality black female comedians. “It’s just a tough part of the business,” Thompson says. “Like in auditions, they just never find ones that are ready.”
There is another way of reading Thompson’s words, without knowing the full text of his answers or the question he was asked. Those same quotes could be read as digs at the structure of the show’s operation.
Thompson doesn’t openly blame his boss Michaels, but he says “the business” and “like in auditions, they [emphasis mine] just never find” black women ready for the show. He just as well could be questioning the showrunners’ process regarding diversity as he could be defending it.
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| Thompson, Jay Pharoah and Maya Rudolph |
If that’s the case, then Thompson’s comment about not doing drag to play black female characters anymore, along with Pharoah’s disinterest in the practice, seems to make better sense.
That’s a big if, but still an if. I’ve seen equality fights won with combinations of soft blows and quiet actions from the inside. Not every situation requires agitators and firebrands.
There’s openly challenging your bosses to improve by hiring a black female cast member by shaming them publicly with tsk-tsks or straight-up putting them on blast. Then there’s saying that, as Pharoah did on theGrio, the showrunners need to “pay attention” and offering Darmirra Brunson. And Thompson bringing up how SNL conducts auditions and whom they are finding, and adding that he and Pharoah aren’t doing black female characters or impersonations. He blankly says he doesn’t know how the show will handle pop spoofs of black women, adding that “we just haven’t done them.”
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| Darmirra Brunson |
Put all that together: There are no black women on SNL, the show hasn’t done anything that would require a black woman because of that, and the two black male cast members aren’t gonna play black women, in an atmosphere where having a black woman on the show appears necessary.The message is either, “and there’s no problem” or “whatcha gonna do now?”
I’m not saying that’s Thompson is issuing this challenge that pits circumstances against themselves to force change. I’m just saying it could be there. Maybe we’ll find out, if Thompson ever responds.
But c’mon, SNL. Waiting for a rebuke from one half of Good Burger isn’t a good look. I love SNL. I did a middle-school report on the original cast with a poster-size illustration of them. I read Wired: The Hard Life and Fast Times of John Belushi when I was 12. I saw Gilda Live a dozen times and read Radner’s memoir, It’s Always Something. I was just in Studio 8H at 30 Rock on a tour and was totally jazzed. But it’s time to get with the program.
Funny black women who do sketch comedy or can write comedy are out there. Cast a wider net, take some chances in places that aren’t the same places you always go. There’s at least one black women who is ready, or about to be ready, or can hit your writing room. Figure it out.
And you, Kenan: I would like to give you this tiny, micrometer-sized shred of doubt, but really I’m just going off my comprehension of language and knowledge of race-based persuasion tactics. Despite sounding like an upholder of the status quo, you also definitely took a stand on not doing drag anymore with full knowledge of how it applies to the greater issue at hand. (Though your Whoopi Goldberg was alright.)
For now, stop looking stupid when you talk as yourself. Leave that for those sweetly absurd “What’s Up With That?” sketches. Which, by the way, took place on the whitest BET show I’ve ever seen.
