SNL: Kiss me I'm Irish controversy

Jack Kanoff

Dial Hard wrote: »

This again. It's fcuking Tito!

We know

Hande hoche!

emo72 wrote: »

flight of the doves is on rte1. get on there lads and lasses and get all nostalgic.

Sure child sacrifice was all the rage in the 1970s.

Skedaddle

SNL was dying on its rear end until Donald Trump came along and provided them with material that writes itself. The current American political regime basically satririses itself! You don’t need brilliant writers.

That sketch is just a load of paddywhakery that would end your career in a British TV station at this stage.

It's actually very unfunny when you're on the receiving end of that kind of "humor" when you are abroad too and I've had it a few times in the states and there's befuddlement when you're annoyed by it, yet if the shoe is on the other foot many of the same people can’t take being even critiqued about their broken political system, never mind being lampooned like that.

It's not only irish people who get this treatment from SNL. They do the "silly foreigners with funny accents" routine all the time, yet they would claim to be at the cutting edge of liberal, progressive media.

It's like something from the 1950s! These sketches are the kind of rubbish that they sent up on the Simpsons with Crusty the Clown's Chinese impressions.

It's neither clever nor funny.

What would be funny would be RTE sending them a large bill for using their logos without permission!

For Forks Sake

This is funny, SNL is not.

Franz Von Peppercorn

Skedaddle wrote: »

SNL was dying on its rear end until Donald Trump came along and provided them with material that writes itself. The current American political regime basically satririses itself! You don’t need brilliant writers.

That sketch is just a load of paddywhakery that would end your career in a British TV station at this stage.

It's actually very unfunny when you're on the receiving end of that kind of "humor" when you are abroad too and I've had it a few times in the states and there's befuddlement when you're annoyed by it, yet if the shoe is on the other foot many of the same people can’t take being even critiqued about their broken political system, never mind being lampooned like that.

It's not only irish people who get this treatment from SNL. They do the "silly foreigners with funny accents" routine all the time, yet they would claim to be at the cutting edge of liberal, progressive media.

It's like something from the 1950s! These sketches are the kind of rubbish that they sent up on the Simpsons with Crusty the Clown's Chinese impressions.

It's neither clever nor funny.

What would be funny would be RTE sending them a large bill for using their logos without permission!

Then they tell us we have all got white privilege or some such nonsense.

The US does pathologise Europeans a lot. Italians are gangsters, Germans Nazis or gangsters, the British effete or imperialists or gangsters, the French effeminate and the swedes are strange talking chefs.

take everything

Watched it last night.
Surprised there was no thread here last night.
Made me chuckle a bit initially but I'm at a loss as to why they obsessed over the inbreeding joke. Seemed strange rather than anything else.

I was anticipating more howls of outrage from Irish people though which would be funnier than the sketch. Now that (Irish prickliness) would be a funny SNL sketch.

SNL is pretty poor nowadays.

take everything

For Forks Sake wrote: »

This is funny, SNL is not.

I'm not mad about Family Guy but that was funny.

RacoonQueen

In fairness, probably pretty accurate about the sort of thing that happens in Doolin.

RobbingBandit

This one was funnier

Billy86

Pretty good example of how the Trump administration sketches have been saving SNL so much lately, otherwise the show has been useless for a good a good few years with the likes of Tina Fey, Adam Samberg and Bill Hader on it.

Still weird seeing adult Keenan from Keenan and Kel though.

inforfun

Needs more cow bell.

Skedaddle

What gets me a bit annoyed though is that you're sometimes subjected a load of nasty stuff like this and expected to just 'take it on the chin'.
You can laugh along, to a point, after which it starts to just become racist bullying.

I had an experience of this at work in England a few years ago. It started out as just stupid banter and then I blew up at someone when he asked me (for the 999th time) to say "thirty three and a third". It didn't even make sense as I don't pronounce "th" as "d" and he actually pronounced it as "f", as in: One, two, free.

Then when I responded by being annoyed, I was told that I was "letting out my Irish" and that "you aren't Irish - you've no sense of humour."

I put up with it for a few more weeks and just left - didn't see the point in dealing with him through HR.

Same guy was also giving a French person serious abuse like implying she didn't wash!

markodaly

Not really funny and I don't care.

However, to me its interesting that they still use the Irish stereotypes as a way to try and make comedy.
I suppose 'white privilege' has something to do with it. Would they do the same type of sketch with Mexicans, Blacks or other ethnic groups who are not white? Nope.

Skedaddle

I honestly think it's because we don't respond or just have a notion that we have to roll with the punches because it's part of our culture to be mocked.

It's not that we don't notice it, or that we just ignore it as we've a history of big power like the English, the French or even the Italians. It's more that we just are used to being bullied and either disarm it with humour or sort of absorb it. I don't think it's actually a particularly healthy thing from a national / cultural psyche to just accept the role of court jester.

I mean let's face it, we've been the butt of jokes generated from what originates in English establishment vs Irish antiestablishment culture for centuries and it clearly bleeds over into the US as they have that same old anglosphere original cultural bias.

If you dig back through it, the origins are largely sectarian and very much buried in nasty and toxic older incarnations of Anglo-Irish relations. The present day Americans repeating that paddywhackery likely don't really comprehend the origins, but just repeat the kinds of nonsense stereotypes that were in Punch magazine in the 1800s. It's not much different from reciting old racist nursery rhymes that mocked black people. That was culturally and socially acceptable until very recently.

It's just a stupid gag, and a lampooning of a national stereotype, but if you dig a bit, it's just the remnants of a very, very nasty old interethnic conflict that still percolates out in stuff like this long after you'd expect it to be dead and buried.

It's much like any racial bias. It's not as extreme as what skin-colour based racism is now, but it is still racism.

If anything, it's incidents like this and stupid sketches like this that should show Irish people just how insidious and nasty racism and xenophobia is and why Irish people should always be the first ones to call it out when it happens here too.

If you're Irish you do have a feeling for what it's like to be on the wrong side of supremacists and an establishment that doesn't particularly like you. It's something that we've broken down over the last century but it should give us a window into a world experienced by a lot of people who end up on the receiving end of far worse than ill conceived and badly written SNL sketches.

razorblunt

It’s a known fact that nobody will ever find SNL as funny as the actors breaking character during the sketches.

OldMrBrennan83

This post has been deleted.

Skedaddle

I wonder when Trump and Co are inevitably replaced by an era of sensible politics, will SNL just die out as there'll be no easy material and they clearly couldn't write a creative sketch to save their own lives.

mad muffin

Four leaf clover?! Saints preserve us! :rolleyes:

one armed dwarf

I wonder why they make these sketches so long and linger on a single detail like for instance the incest thing.

I'm not a precious snowflake about this type of thing but it's painfully bad.

They need some lessons from the Brits on this taking the piss out of the Irish business

ED E

Has SNL ever been funny?

Gwynplaine

It just shows how thick the septics are really.

BowSideChamp

I thought it was funny. Dragged out far too much though.

Skedaddle

I'm surprised they didn't get a few more jokes in about dogs on aeroplanes. You know that old Aer Lingus thing that we all know about.

Agricola

I think everything you need to know about SNL can be summed up by the worship Alec Baldwin is getting about his Trump impression. You'd have to agree with Trump himself! It's really not that good. He doesn't get any of the nuance/essence of Trump like a good mimic would. And the voice and facial expressions aren't at the races either.

Strange because Alec Baldwin actually does a decent Al Pacino.


Their Irish skits really reek of outsiders attempting to send up a thing they really know nothing about. It would be like a team of Irish comedians doing a sketch about American white trash/mobile home dwellers. It would be "our" idea on the subject but would probably seem ridiculous to people who actually know and experience it first hand.

FCIM

Franz Von Peppercorn wrote: »

American comedy can be pretty good. Just not this.

There are a few gems in the rough, the operative word being few.

goose2005

Wibbs wrote: »

Saturday Night Live, an American TV institution that never translated overseas, mostly because it's dreadfully, nay puzzlingly unfunny.

You'd think by now they'd have realised that producing a decent sketch show in a week just isn't possible.

BrokenArrows

Dont start getting all offended now ffs.
One of the things ive always loved about being irish is we can take a ****ing joke.

People attempting irish accents and playing up the irish stereotypes is always good craic. I DO not want Ireland to become another list of **** that people are getting offended about these days.

Billy86

BrokenArrows wrote: »

Dont start getting all offended now ffs.
One of the things ive always loved about being irish is we can take a ****ing joke.

People attempting irish accents and playing up the irish stereotypes is always good craic. I DO not want Ireland to become another list of **** that people are getting offended about these days.

To be honest your offense and the thought of people getting offended is one of the most 'offended' posts in the whole thread.

Hardly anyone seems to care, it was just a sh*te sketch.

Professor Moriarty

Ironically, it was an American who said: “He who takes offense when no offense is intended is a fool, and he who takes offense when offense is intended is a greater fool.”

Mena Mitty

I thought it was funny. I was wondering why number one was sitting with her hands behind her back.