It is no secret that we have a lot of thoughts/feels on all things popular culture. There are only so many hours in a day and so we simply cannot recap everything, placing some constraints on what we can dissect here. Having said that, I came across something the other day that gave me so many feelings that I needed to sit down and work them out somewhere. I probably should have done it THAT DAY, because such is the relevance and shelf life of these things but, as always…we do what we want.
Variety posted, “Diversity Done Wrong: How SNL Mishandled Casting a Black Woman.” For those of you who are unaware, SNL received a great deal of criticism in the fall when it introduced half a dozen new featured players, nearly all of whom were white men. Kenan Thompson has refused to continue playing women, as in the five years since the show last had a black woman on its cast, he has become the go-to when they need someone to play a black woman. This week, they announced that that Sasheer Zamata is joining the cast as a featured player. The too long; didn’t read version of Wallenstein’s piece? A white man laments that a media property acknowledged and tried to correct its lack of diversity which is TOTALLY RACIST.
Let’s break it down.
Wallenstein begins by acknowledging that the “whiteness” of television, in the face of changing demographics in the United States, is a problem and that “kudos” are deserved by efforts to correct this. He offers no actual examples of what constitutes a kudos-worthy effort to correct this problem; it is apparently sufficient to say that you value diversity. Great! All done here! As long as you can say that you value diversity then, like, you probs do, yeah?
After offering no alternative visions, he jumps right to his point: hiring Zamata was an act of tokenism.
[Before we go any further, if you sincerely believe that “reverse racism” is a thing — as an alarming number of white Americans genuinely do, just stop. (Click that last link if you want to cry ugly, ragey tears as you learn that many white Americans feel that anti-white racism is probably the social issue of our generation.) “Reverse racism” is bullshit and you know nothing of systemic racism (White Person Snow).]
Wallenstein whines that SNL just did this because of the tremendous backlash. Well, yes! Of course they did. They fucked up. People called them out. They listened and responded accordingly. This is part of why we make noise when people do fucked up things. The fact that they hired six new cast members in the fall and nobody on staff thought twice about the fact that five of them are white men is baffling. (Except not, because normalizing a certain group of people is exactly what a lack of media diversity does. You are probably unconsciously assuming parity in a great many crowd scenes that are actually only 17% female.) That said, hiring Zamata is absolutely an attempt to rectify that. As far as I can tell, nobody is denying this rather obvious fact.
Strangely, he goes on to argue against himself, insisting that SNL actually didn’t need to worry about this backlash, because they’re a cultural institution, you see! If SNL truly, in his estimation, had no need to be concerned with the backlash, then he’s legitimately just upset that they explicitly sought to make the show a little less white. He makes a valid argument later that pertains to diversity, but I wanted to call these two sections out because it seems that any deliberate attempt to diversify the show would have been inherently wrong in Wallenstein’s estimation. He’s upset that Lorne Michaels & co. tried to correct the overwhelming whiteness of a show that tries to offer satirical commentary on a society that Wallenstein acknowledges if far more diverse than the one it depicts. Great.
Equally troubling for Wallenstein, apparently, is this public acknowledgement of righting a wrong. “It wasn’t just that “SNL” wanted to right a wrong; it wanted to be seen as righting a wrong.” This, again, makes me question why he needed that whole section to wink-wink-nudge-nudge the audience into that whole, “It sure seems suspicious that they did this at this time!” given that one of his actual grievances is SNL’s acknowledgement of their motivations.
I get this plea for altruism. Yes, I would like more people to right wrongs for the sole sake of righting wrongs. However, in this case, the initial “wrong” is about media representation. It’s about who has access and what kind of version of our culture we present in our media and you simply can’t right that wrong without confronting it and making something of a spectacle out of it. The only way to do that would have been not to make the mistake in the first place. (If that’s what this piece had been concerned with, perhaps we’d be having a different conversation right now.)
The one truly legitimate point Wallenstein makes is in acknowledging that black/white is not the entire scope of the show’s excessive whiteness. (It’s also not just about race, though he neglects to bring this up. Lorne Michaels recently said that he’s not interested in hiring another woman as a repertory player because they already have five. 5/10, 50% — the highest they have ever had. Of course, with Zamata’s hire, they arrive at a whopping 2/7 featured players. One of the white dudes, Seth Meyers, is leaving soon and, of course, you couldn’t have more women as repertory players because gross. Their menstruation attracts bears!)* I’m glad that they did something to acknowledge/address the diversity problem, but yes, there’s work to be done.
[For a much more insightful consideration and fairer criticism of what’s going on over at SNL, check out Slate’s “SNL’s Real Race Problem It’s America’s, too.” He draws a conclusion near the end that I take issue with, but the whole is thoughtful and worth reading.]
This is where Wallenstein and anyone else placing the “asterisk” (as he calls it, while gamely shirking responsibility, suggesting that it will be other people to place that asterisk and certainly not him!) beside her name is getting it all sorts of wrong: if you think that “merit” is the only issue at play here, then you are, at best, incredibly naive. As with all such conversations it completely overlooks the access and opportunities that build up to that point. It overlooks the demographics of the audition process, the demographics of the SNL staging grounds (UCB, Groundlings, iO, etc.), and larger cultural norms surrounding who is encouraged to speak and when.
All of that is to say that explicitly seeking out a diverse cast is how you address the issue. Race/gender aren’t new issues for casting directors. Pretending that people doing the casting shouldn’t be considering those things is just silly. Acknowledging that certain voices aren’t being represented and finding ways to represent them is a solution.
The actual best thing that SNL did in all of this hubub was hire two of the black women they auditioned as writers. Diversifying your actors is only going to do so much if white dudes are still the ones writing their pieces. The more voices you have contributing, the greater the range of possibilities. Beyond trifling concerns like “doing the right thing” and “being socially responsible,” it just makes sense. I have high hopes for what might come out of a more diverse writers’ room.
And that’s what this is all about. The casting and writing staff alike will shape the jokes and stories the show tells. The writers can only work with what they have, both in terms of the cast that they are writing for and in terms of what they themselves bring to the table. If SNL wants to retain (or reclaim, depending on your perspective) cultural relevancy, this was a wise move.
Somewhat related, here’s a sketch Zamata co-wrote with Nicole Byer, who is in the piece. I just wanted to end this rant with a thematically relevant laugh.
And there’s this, in which Zamata has some sort of cousin to Lor’s “rage ninja” power and serves as a PSA The Snark Squad fully supports:
UPDATE:
* First, for those that don’t know the show “repertory players” are can be thought of as the “main cast” with “featured players” as the supporting cast.
Second, I may have been slightly unfair in my read of Michaels refusing to add an additional female repertory player, because unless someone else gets promoted now that Seth Meyers has moved on to Late Night, they will be 4:5 male:female repertory players, beating their current high of 50% with a 55% female group of repertory players. 5/7 featured players are still white men, but technically, yes, there will be more female repertory players than male for the remainder of the season.
Nicole is the co-captain of Snark Squad and these days she spends most of her time editing podcasts. She spends too much time on Twitter and very occasionally vlogs and blogs. In her day job she's a producer, editor, director, and sometimes host of educational YouTube channels. She loves travel, maps, panda gifs, and semicolons. Writing biographies stresses her out; she crowd sourced this one years ago and has been using a version of it ever since. She would like to thank Twitter for their help.
