Tom Hanks delivers ‘in memoriam’ tribute to SNL sketches that aged badly – including ‘Gay Hitler’
The character of “Gay Hitler” played by Chris Kattan, first appeared in 2001. (NBC)
Saturday Night Live (SNL) recently celebrated its 50th anniversary with a special episode featuring a speech that paid tribute to the show’s old sketches and characters – many of which have aged poorly, including “Gay Hitler.”
Tom Hanks led an “in memoriam” segment, similar to those at awards shows like the Oscars, donned in a tuxedo and soberly began the homage.
He said: “As we celebrate the achievements of the past 50 years, we must also take a moment to remember those who we’ve lost. Countless members of the SNL family taken from us way too soon. I’m speaking, of course, about SNL characters and sketches that have aged horribly.”
Hanks went on to say that the “accents and characters and… ethnic wigs” used in those sketches “were unquestionably in poor taste” but joked that audience members found them funny at the time so it should be them who was “cancelled.”
The sketches shown on screen included John Belushi’s samurai, footage of Adrien Brody introducing Jamaican musical guest Sean Paul while wearing dreadlocks, as well as a number of other clips accompanied by on-screen graphics calling out the “ethnic stereotypes”, “sexism”, “child molestation”, “animal cruelty”, “body shaming” and “gay panic” invoked in sketches of SNL past.
The “in memoriam” segment also included a sketch titled “Gay Hitler” from the early 2000s, which featured Tina Fey and Jimmy Fallon as newsreaders announcing a new theory about Adolf Hitler’s sexuality and joking about him writing a book called Mein Boyfriend.
Then Chris Kattan appears dressed as Hitler but wearing a pink scarf and pink Nazi armbands and says “auf wiedersehen, queerbos.” The caption reads: “Maybe this is OK? Not sure.”
Hanks’ “in memoriam’ segment continued by confessing to the “problematic guests” SNL has had in the last 50 years, including O.J. Simpson, Robert Blake, R. Kelly, Diddy, and Jared Fogel from Subway.
Surprisingly, Donald Trump was not among the “problematic guests.” He guest-hosted the show in April 2004 and November 2015.
The video ends with a sketch from SNL‘s first season in 1975, called Word Association, in which an employer (Chevy Chase) is interviewing a potential employee (Richard Pryor).
The sketch starts with Chase carrying out a “psychological” word association test on Pryor; he begins innocently enough – saying words like “dog”, “fast” and “rain” before the words become far more offensive – soon, he’s just listing racial slurs for Black people. An increasingly angry Pryor responds in kind with slurs for white people.
The in memoriam segment above bleeped the N-word, used by Chase at the end of the sketch, but the original version didn’t. It was wildly popular at the time, and was responsible for SNL’s continuing success. Maybe, as Tom Hanks suggests, the audience should have been cancelled.
How did this story make you feel?
