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02/15/2015
SNL's forty years of gay visibility: As messy and imperfect as America's own journey (#SNL40)
Having come into being in the mid-'70s, a time when the gay rights movement was itself coming into its own, the forty year history of Saturday Night Live is a sort of archival document of our visibility, our treatment in the media, and overall picture of acceptance. Like that larger course, SNL's treatment has been a bumpy roller coaster, with highpoint jokes that laugh with us and low point jokes that very much laugh at us. But while some will make you groan and others will make you cheer (and others still will just make you laugh, ideally), it is a fascinating document to have on record.
With the show gearing up for a major four-and-a-half celebration tonight on its NBC home network, here's a roundup of many (but certainly not all) of the sketches that both tapped into and helped shape the American consciousness of the particular era.
'70s:
(*must be a Hulu Plus subscriber to watch this next one; otherwise, transcript is here)
(*must be a Hulu Plus subscriber to watch this next one; otherwise, transcript is here)
(*must be a Hulu Plus subscriber to watch this next one; otherwise, synopsis can be found here. We should also note that gay activists protested this one at the time of its airing, in the show's fourth episode)
(*must be a Hulu Plus subscriber to watch this next one; otherwise, transcript is here)
(*must be a Hulu Plus subscriber to watch this next one; otherwise, transcript is here)
'80s:
(Transcript for rest of sketch is here.)
'90s:
'00s:
'10s:
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