Saturday Night Live will celebrate 40 years this Saturday. For those of you who only remember SNL of the '80s, forget all you have seen and look up the first ten yrs. on YOU TUBE.
When we were in our teens living in NY where the drinking age was 18 and everyone could go to bars at 16 because you had paper driving licenses and could erase the year you were born very easily and get into the bar (especially if you were a pretty girl), everyone went OUT to watch SNL on Saturday night!
Imagine being in a bar filled with people talking, laughing, listening to the music and then at 11:30 a hush falls over the place and all eyes turn to the TV. Usually there was only one TV in the bar. You would all squish together to see, listening intently to geniuses twisting and twining everyday events into humor so all of us could take the social and political upheaval known as the '70s with a grain of salt for that moment and not commit mass suicide at the unending barrage of shaninighans, lies and buffunery coming out of Washington DC at the time; not to mention the civil rights movement, ecology movement, anti-nuke movement, women's rights movement, war on drugs, Vietnam War, (the DRAFT alone would put anyone in their right mind over the edge having to watch the numbers cross the bottom of the TV screen every single fucking night during the news to see who you knew was going to have to go get killed or fucked up by the stupid war...).
We were a generation of people who were not going to let "the man" push them around anymore. We were long haired hippy freaks who didn't like signs, at least that's what the song said. But what we were mostly was a generation of young people who really really cared and were willing, at a very young age, to put our "sit ins" where our mouths were! We were ripe and ready for change!!
We went to college and protested injustice...ALOT!
So, when SNL started making fun of everything we all took so seriously it was a welcome break. Gilda Radner, doing Emily Litella and her editorials about "Russian Jewelry" (Jewry), the "deaf penalty", "endangered feces"...the list goes on...always wrong, Jane Curtain, the news anchor, correcting her and telling her how stupid she was. Emily Litella, the little old women in the dress and horned rimmed glasses, would say, "Nevermind" then BITCH under her breath. This whole skit was a mock of the fairness doctrine, which at the time said TV had to present opposing views on all issues.
Then there was John Belushi and the "Killer Bees" skit. They were poking fun at the Illegal Alien issue way back then. Yes, still in the news today. BTW the killer bees were Mexican..get it? They came into people's homes bearing knives in their teeth, trying to steal honey...yup...nothing was sacred.
Or how about the "Olympia Restaurant" skits, "Cheeseburger cheeseburger coke, no pepsi" ....you figure that one out. Even Mr. Roger's Neighborhood wasn't safe from the satire. Eddie Murphy changed the children's show into a bleak peek into American Ghettos.
But my very favorite all time, yes I said all time!! skit was Weekend Update, Point Counterpoint, with Jane Curtain and Dan Ackroyd talking about Lee Marvin vs. Michelle Triola's divorce. YOU HAVE TO YOU TUBE IT!! Point Counterpoint: Lee Marvin and Michelle Triola | Saturday Night Live - Yahoo Screen
Thank you so much SNL for making the political tornado that was the '70s bearable and, as they said every Saturday Night after the news, " Goodnight and have a pleasant tomorrow!"
PS. With a few exceptions the SNL of the mid to late '80s should be erased from memory forever, just sayin'. Not funny, not challenging, not risky, not ...just not.
No comments:
Post a Comment