SNL Did A Segment On How The Big Oscar Nominated Films Are About White Male Rage And It’s Surprisingly Spot On
Saturday Night Live’s Melissa Villaseñor enraged white males by singing a song about white male rage on the show. With the Oscars around the corner, SNL offered its own little analysis of the nominees during their ‘Weekend Update’ segment. In the skit Villaseñor discusses the biggest Oscar nominees and sings songs about how all the plots are based around, or sparked by (you guessed it) while male rage —and tbh, it’s kind of on point.
Villaseñor was brought on to discuss the big Oscar nominees and began by singing a song about Todd Phillips’ Joker.
In a visit to Colin Jost’s Weekend Update desk, cast member Melissa Villaseñor educated Jost on the Best Picture nominees, singing a silly and kind of accurate song about “Joker” and “The Irishman.” The song started off simply outlining the plot of the film until it took a turn; “But the thing that this movie is really about is white male rage, white male rage, white male rage.” The comedian then proceeded to sing a ditty about The Irishman and the tune ended with the observation that, in fact, the picture is also, actually all about white male rage.
Jost plays the straight man who disagrees.
Playing the straight man, Jost said of Villaseñor’s song: “It seemed like it was just a description of the movie, and then it took a weird turn into social commentary.” You can guess what happens when she moves onto Martin Scorsese’s Netflix masterpiece “The Irishman.”
When Jost asked how many more songs there were, Villaseñor said she had “a whole bunch”…
But said she would “combine them all,” rattling through nominated films that shared the narrative of “white male rage” such as “Once Upon A Time … In Hollywood,” “Jojo Rabbit” and “1917” — while adding that “Little Women” director Greta Gerwig, whose film was not about “white male rage,” was snubbed for a best director nomination.
#WhiteMaleRage became a trending topic on Twitter.
Me listening to SNL's #whitemalerage while white males rage about it. pic.twitter.com/94U4zipXns
— Greg A Elysée – BlerdCon A-106 (@GregAndElysee) January 26, 2020
The words, which were written by Villaseñor and SNL writers Dan Bulla and Steven Castillo, struck a chord on Twitter, where the #WhiteMaleRage hashtag began trending and had over 14,000 tweets by Sunday afternoon.
As you might have predicted, the white men of the internet reacted, well, angrily.
Can someone plz explain how a skit on @nbcsnl with a song "White Male Rage" is not racist. Its this garbage that continues a divide that was created 10 yrs ago at a time we should have moved past this as. #stopracistpoliticsofdivide and Unite as a proud Nation that's indivisable
— USMC Vet (@NYMedic422) January 26, 2020
As they tend to do, white men were busy being upset about people pointing out the obvious. #WhiteMaleRage wasn’t a suggestion up for debate. It was merely a fact. Take a look at the Oscar noms for Best Picture this year and tell us Melissa is wrong?
The irony was clearly lost on these people.
But some just couldn’t let go…
Other Twitter users found the skit pretty funny, and even agreed with the message.
.@melissavcomedy gives the best summary of Oscar season thus far. #WhiteMaleRage
— DANNY G 🌊🌹 (@dr_graz) January 26, 2020
This isn’t the first skit or celebrity to talk about the issues the Oscars continue to face. Just two years ago #OscarsSoWhite was trending across social media and it seems like the Academy has totally forgotten that controversy this year.
This tweet perfectly summed up what many were thinking…
Fragile men set out to prove that SNL is completely irrelevant by…tweeting about it all night long 😂 #WhiteMaleRage pic.twitter.com/PfuQQ1sMDM
— Queer Curmudgeon (@QueerCurmudgeon) January 26, 2020
Airing on January 25, last week’s “Saturday Night Live” was the 11th episode of the NBC sketch show’s 45th season. Oscar nominee Adam Driver was the host with the musical performance by Halsey. (Driver is nominated for Best Actor for his turn as a father fighting for custody of his son during a contentious divorce in Noah Baumbach’s “Marriage Story.”)