Saturday Night Live RapeWatch: Zach Galfinakis Edition

This week Zack Galfinakis returned to host for a second time, and while I'm not familiar with the man's comedy, I've always found him a distractingly unpleasant presence in the few film appearances that I've seen. He was similarly off-putting on SNL last week, but that's not my main point of contention with the episode. No, my distaste for last week's SNL revolves entirely around the fact that it offered the return of Scared Straight, the rape-themed sketch that inspired this series of articles in the first place.

In addition to that abomination the episode featured a spike in gay jokes over the year's average. In addition to the threats of gay rape that permeate Scared Straight, there was some cruel stereotyping in the opening monologue, as well as a sketch about the show 'The Talk', a third of the jokes revolved around the fact that co-host Sara Gilbert is gay. Well, I say 'jokes', but in reality there wasn't anything that could be called a joke in the sketch, just endless restatements of the fact that she is, in fact, gay, possibly hoping that some comedy could be gleaned from the repetition.

It wasn't.

The tally follows:

Rape - 1

Homophobia - 3

See you back here at the beginning of April, when Elton John hosts and is the musical guest! Man, I'm really going to have to rethink my definitions of homophobia-based humour for that episode...