Saturday Night Live put its foot down in September 2019 when it fired Shane Gillis just days after announcing him as a featured player—and before he ever appeared on the show—after recordings surfaced of him using racist and homophobic slurs. But in the past three consecutive years, the late-night sketch series has welcomed him back as host. His latest appearance has left audiences wondering why he’s been invited back repeatedly.
On October 10, Gillis used a sexually degrading slur to describe women wearing revealing gym clothes in his opening monologue. The joke barely got a laugh, but Gillis pushed on, doubling down on his “observation.”
Later in the program, Gillis appeared in a sneakers sketch in which his character imagines using quiet shoes to sneak home after seeing his mistress. While the comedy was meant to mock would-be adulterous men, it was in striking contrast to his monologue: a woman’s clothing choice became a degrading label, while a man’s actual betrayal was acknowledged and rewarded.
Gillis’s material often crosses boundaries. At Kevin Hart’s Netflix roast in May, he made a lynching joke about Hart’s height. The comedian later acknowledged that he could have dropped the line. But using shocking, fear-based material as a punchline is becoming too normalized for audiences.
His joke about women’s gym clothing polices women’s bodies, making it unacceptable to wear what you want while working out. Black women have long faced stereotypes that cast them as hypersexual, making clothing-based shaming especially loaded. Gillis’s Hart joke, based on racial terror, makes these horrific images feel acceptable at a time when history sadly seems to be repeating itself.
Gillis seems to seek the lowest common denominator to create comedy that is, at best, offensive and shocking and, at worst, harmful enough to put someone in harm’s way. A 2007 PubMed study entitled “Just a Joke” supported the hypothesis that, for sexist men, exposure to sexist humor can promote the behavioral release of prejudice against women.
SNL already has an abundance of males, predominantly white, this season, and it still hasn’t given its lone Black female actress a moment to really shine on screen. Giving hosting opportunities to comedians who seem to thrive on shaming others with comedy feels like the wrong choice.
If nothing else, Gillis should lose his hosting privileges permanently for dropping an F-bomb on live television. For someone who’s done the show three times, keeping it broadcast-ready seems like a fairly low bar. And even that was too high.