Timothée Chalamet celebrates the end of the SAG-AFTRA strike in SNL monologue
The Dune star also popped up as Troye Sivan and made a controversial joke about Hamas
Aux News Timothée Chalamet
Timothée Chalamet returned to Saturday Night Live last night for the show’s first episode since the end of the SAG-AFTRA strike, meaning hosts no longer have to dance around who they are and why they’re there so they don’t look like scabs, and Chalamet celebrated the opportunity to get back to normal in a heavily promotional monologue that featured the Wonka star singing a new version of “Pure Imagination” about “shameless self-promotion” that shouted out, yes, Wonka, but also Dune, Killers Of The Flower Moon (which he’s not even in), and the Chanel ad that he filmed with Martin Scorsese. It was a cute gag, but, ironically, he and some of the cast followed it up with a less-cute rap about baby-faced boys that seemed like something the writers had come up with before the strike and didn’t want to throw away:
Chalamet’s breakout sketch of the night was one where Sarah Squirm played a woman suffering from a reoccurring dream about some mysterious figure, with Bowen Yang playing a doctor who can create a visualization of the man. It turns out to be Chalamet as Troye Sivan, introducing himself as an “Australian YouTube twink turned indie pop star and model turned HBO actor Troye Sivan being played by an American actor who can’t do an Australian accent” (with the crowd whooping and hollering throughout), and he proceeded to do Sivan’s various viral dances and pull down his pants to shake his butt. Then the members of musical guest Boygenius showed up as other Troye Sivans and everybody danced.
The real Sivan reacted to the sketch early this morning on TikTok, saying it was “a weird fucking dream,” saying, “Like, imagine: Timothée Chalamet was in my dream, but he was me, and he was wearing my clothes…” Sivan has since changed his Instagram profile picture to Chalamet as him, and fans both of guys seem to be getting a kick out of the whole thing.
Meanwhile, a pre-taped sketch with comedy trio Please Don’t Destroy is getting a different kind of a big reaction. In the sketch, Chalamet plays a man threatening to jump off a building, with the Please Don’t Destroy members trying to convince him not to. He explains that he’s a musician and plays his bad songs for them, which they agree to share on social media, until Chalamet’s character says that his band is called “Hay-mas,” spelled like “Hamas.”
One need only to glance at the comments of social media pop culture news aggregators to see the kind of predictable reaction this has received, with some questioning whether or not it was tasteless or offensive, others arguing that neither Palestine or Israel were the butt of the joke, and plenty of people pointing out just how many layers this joke had to go through before making it to air (regardless of how they feel about it).
73 Comments
WTF? Is it not more objectionable that the sketch ends with everyone laughing off a suicide? The Hamas thing is a total throwaway nothing.
Suicide vs. terrorism. By a sheer numbers perspective, terrorism is worse, unless the suicide is a mass Jonestown thing. On the other hand, suicide is a much more personal act, so making fun of it can seem a lot more crass, although terrorism is pretty personal if you’re part of the terrorised group. I think I’d have to go with terrorism, especially one that’s referencing current events, unless the suicide joke was about someone who had just killed themself. I think it comes down to the immediate context, rather than which act is more inherently offensive. But I think the comedy show on in the middle of the night on the weekend can joke about these things, because if that’s not the time for edgy humour, when is it?
I don’t see any possible interpretation of the joke as making fun of terrorism. It’s making fun of a guy who’s too dense to realize the name of his band is the same as a terrorist group. Who is this offending?
I don’t think the suicide is offensive either.
It’s like rock-paper-scissors. Suicide beats divorce, terrorism beats suicide, and, weirdly, divorce beats terrorism.
No. By a sheer numbers perspective suicide is nearly four times as bad as terrorism: “Terrorism is a rare cause of death globally. Globally, around 20,000 people died from terrorism in 2019.” vs. “ A total of 759028 (523883 male and 235145 female) suicide deaths were reported worldwide in 2019.”
I hadn’t considered it that way. I meant specific incidents of terrorism, which tend to kill multiple people vs. a specific incident of suicide which tends to be one person. But I guess you’re right. Terrorism is funnier.
That was some really bad math on my part! By the numbers suicide actually kills thirty-eight times more people than terrorism. My humanities side (slightly smarter) says this is not a great way to judge humor. I have seen many more jokes about suicide, mostly in French movies where self-murder is funny because it is counter to what most people expect (basically, self preservation at all costs). From the description, the SNL sketch was more breaking-a-taboo humor: it is funny because it is not allowed to be funny, which makes suicide look smaller and less terrible and it is definitely not ok to make recent, specific acts of terrorism look less terrible. I can only think of ONE good terrorism joke (but I don’t know comedy very well so you may know manny more): the “People’s Front of Judea vs the Judea People’s Front” sketch from The Life of Brian, which makes (imaginary, ancient) terrorists look stupid and incompetent but does not mock specific acts of terror.
This was just a joke. I think the premise got away from me. Of course suicide is funnier.
Well, I did say, “I don’t know comedy very well”!
You know Python, and that’s enough for me.
I love how ChatAVC decided just to stop writing this article midstream. Like “Yeah, I’m going back to plotting humanity’s demise, I can’t be bothered with this show anymore.”
Just realized as I noticed the writer as AV Club Staff. Interesting…
Yeah they should just give it a random name like “Chuck” or something.
Even computer applications can only pretend to be interested in SNL for so long.
It’s like they saw the reaction to the AVC Chatbot articles and thought the problem was that they were being too honest.
Well, Jez just went “Boom” so maybe we’ll get bots roughly six months before the election and then G/O Media will just vanish.Four other sites lost writers too.
It’ll rebrand as GPT/O Media
I think they hoped that the ‘Please Don’t Destroy’ guys would be the new ‘Lonely Island’, but while some of their stuff is ok, it all just seems like pretty generic straight white guy humour to me.
Their best one – Good Variant – is no longer on yt and it makes me sad.
SNL made an entire sketch about jokes on the Al-Qaeda name on the first show after 9/11.
And years later, we still have Y’all Qaeda in various parts of the U.S. and Canada.
Sounds like there maybe be disagreement on whether or not the Hamas joke was tasteless, but everyone seems to agree that it wasn’t funny.
I thought it was funny. Not “doubled over laughing” funny, but an amusing beat.
I guess this is in lieu of a review?
It’s in lieu of a Jim Spanfeller staff.
If they’re gonna halfass an article with AI, they could at least halfass a review with AI.
Or at least finish the article
I can’t tell what it is. It’s unreadable.
I can’t fairly call it unreadable because all those words in that does make sense, in theory. But it still doesn’t seem natural or human generated. I wonder if anyone has coined a term for the writing equivalent of the uncanny valley?
The rapping part of the monologue was fuckin’ hilarious, no mention of the brilliant 50 years of hip hop museum sketch and the “review” of the show just wanders off down the hall practically mid-sentence instead of ending in any comprehensible way. Thank god this site doesn’t have a pay wall. High five.
rarely do I feel super old watching SNL, but the Sivan sketch made me feel like I’m 90. Maybe the show is just bad now
While I’m not above the show being just bad, it has definitely now reached a point where a lot of the jokes are aimed at younger people, especially when they start making current pop culture jokes. I think there’s a point where you age out of SNL. Yes, their political humor/current events stuff can still be funny. But then they start referring to celebrities, TV shows, etc that you no longer recognize. So I guess to summarize, you may be 90.
“now” lol
lol I actually had “communist dolt who works at Jimmy John’s posts 30-minute video no one will watch from anarchist dolt who thinks Wakanda—yes, fucking Wakanda—would be what Africa would be like without the Transatlantic Slave Trade (and of course without Africa’s own internal practice of slavery)“ on my bingo card today.
The sleep demon sketch was baffling. The Jumper short was just bad. This is a weird article.
I think the sleep demon sketch was inspired by the new Nicholas Cage movie Dream Scenario but it was still baffling.
I miss the days of humans — even one who weren’t that good at their jobs — working for AVC. At the very least, there’d have been some mention of Chloe Troast getting her first breakout sketch in a bizarre Little Orphan Annie bit.
Thank you. Came here to say the same thing. What a voice! She could have a legit music career.
Best sketch of the night.
Ages ago they made some similar jokes to the Hay-mas thing. Like, some regular guy kept getting harassed cuz his name was “Al Kayda” or something. It’s a dumb joke but how’s it offensive. Unless I guess you could think any joking reference to the war at all is inappropriate.
I didn’t even make it through the second paragraph before realizing this piece was an AI generated word salad. Sure you guys are trying to do stuff on the cheap, but try to make it look like someone is working please.
Sarah Squirm? Really? It’s Sarah Sherman. Yeesh!!!
I thought the same thing, but she actually apparently does use the stage name Sarah Squirm in some contexts, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Is this the Scorsese ad?
Cause it looks pretty much like every other perfume ad I’ve ever seen.
Marty came in for an hour. Pointed a camera and said “action” and “cut”. Then hit craft services and grabbed his check.
No Letter Grade?
Jfc, this is absolutely unreadable.
There is a difference between a “baby face” and rather feminine features. Infants don’t typically have sharp cheekbones and chins like a garden spade.
Babies don’t have sharp cheekbones and chins like a garden spade? Then what’s sleeping in the nursery right now!?
I don’t know but maybe you should kill it with fire just to be safe
Sound like you got a Chad Baby on your hands.
Sounds like you may have a possum problem.
It’s not a problem. Everybody has some.
A possum ate your baby and it’s not a problem??
The real problem is that these dingoes keep disguising themselves as possums.
:O !!A secret, abondoned Leno and Witherspoon love child?
I find the lack of discussion about giant-tiny-horse troubling.
SO DO I.
What a strangely short review. :/I will say I too was curious why they chose to tag that rap onto the end of the monologue. It was cute, but it was a strange transition. It seemed like maybe it would have been a better fit on update or somewhere? The Troye Sivan (thanks for telling me how to spell it) was a bit too specific for me, like something Bowen Yang thinks is funny but no one else has ever heard of (but apparently I’m the only one who hasn’t heard of this person?). And no mention of the return of Tiny [Giant] Horse? Boo. I also enjoyed the imitation-palooza that was Britney Spears’s book, but a couple of them fell a bit flat. Werner Herzog? And a couple other pretty random, not-that-funny ones.Anyway, I think he’s a good host. He’s no Tom Hanks-level host, but he has fun and works hard.
The Troye Sivan sketch was the best of the night.
Absolute-pussy/coward-and-actual-communist-Jimmy-John-employee-SquidEatsDough-or-whatever dismissed my comment about how they posted a retarded breadtuber (but I repeat myself) so-called-anarchist-who-thinks-Africa-would-be-Wakanda (yes, I’m dead serious, Wakanda) if it weren’t for white people (and Africa’s own legacy of slavery) and I think that’s waaay funnier than SNL has been in forever. Anarchy! Except in the comments section! Bwahahahahahah