I Can't Stop Thinking About One Specific Moment of Saturday Night Live
One of the highlights of the past year was writing up a series of disastrous individual episodes of Saturday Night Live for My World of Flops. Without exception each of these episodes was just as fascinatingly dire as their reputation would suggest.
I was particularly fascinated by the infamous Martin Lawrence episode. I’d certainly heard about the episode and, more specifically the monologue that ensured that Lawrence would never be asked to return but I’m not sure I ever saw it in its original airing.
That’s because everything that came after Lawrence’s stern insistence that “Some of you are not washing your ass properly!” was cut from reruns on NBC and in syndication for reasons that will be obvious for anyone who suffered through Lawrence’s extended treatise on the how the women of the 1990s were failing him, personally, through inadequate genital hygiene.
Saturday Night Live is generally such a well-oiled machine that you can plug non-entertainers like Steve Forbes or Rudy Giuliani into it and still somehow deliver a professional quality live ninety minute sketch comedy/variety program.
But sometimes a host will go rogue. Sometimes a performer who is only visiting will hijack the show. That’s what happened with Lawrence. He called an audible and decided that even though Lorne Michaels and the suits at NBC did not give him the green-light to deliver a solid two to three minute chunk of stand-up about douches and foul-smelling vaginas and urinary tract infections and other topics far too too filthy for network television he was going to do it anyway, consequences be damned.
The part of Lawrence’s monologue that was deemed too hot for TV was scatological to a pathological, disturbing extent but it was also vicious in its unabashed, undisguised misogyny.
Lawrence was reducing an entire gender to their genitalia and their sexuality. That’s what misogynists do. They do not see women as human beings with agency and inner lives and needs and desires that may or may not conflict with their own. They reduce women to sex objects to be leered at or used, not respected or understood.
The Bad Boys star exacerbates this awful tendency by reducing women to their genitalia and sexuality and then sternly informing the entire world that because some women do not take care of their genitalia as diligently as Lawrence would like their sexuality is consequently so repulsive that the comedian and actor feels the need to address it on live television, even if it means risking career suicide or inviting the wrath of censors.
Lawrence’s bit goes on and on and on and on. Just when it seems like he’s mercifully coming to an end he’ll begin a new tangent riffing on how some of the women failing him through insufficient genital cleanliness have such terrible yeast infections that croissants and bagels emanate from their lady parts.
I’ve seen and written about the forbidden portion of Lawrence’s monologue through the magic of Youtube. You can see just about anything there is to see on Youtube.
Saturday Night Live was left with a conundrum. Do you err on the side of caution and remove the Lawrence episode from circulation forever or do you try to salvage it by putting it in a context both appropriate and hilarious?
The show chose the second option. In reruns, the second half of Lawrence’s monologue was replaced head writer James Downey reading, in a perfectly neutral tone of voice, “At this point in his monologue, Martin begins a commentary on what he considers the decline in standards of feminine hygiene in this country. Although we at Saturday Night Live take no stand on this issue one way or the other, network policy prevents us from re-broadcasting this portion of his remarks. In summary, Martin feels, or felt at the time, that the failure of many young women to bathe thoroughly is a serious problem that demands our attention. He explores this problem, citing numerous examples from his personal experience, and ends by proposing several imaginative solutions. It was a frank and lively presentation, and nearly cost us all our jobs. We now return to the conclusion of Martin’s monologue.”
This is one of my very favorite moments from Saturday Night Live’s nearly fifty year history. The perfect response to Lawrence’s loathsome vulgarity and ugly misogyny was not more of the same but rather sly understatement.
It’s a beautifully worded piece of comedy, economical, efficient and droll. I am particularly enamored of the line, "It was a frank and lively presentation, and nearly cost us all our jobs.”
That phrase has taken up permanent residence in my psyche. Now, when I see a particularly vulgar, juvenile and proudly scatological piece of entertainment I will think of it as a frank and lively presentation.
Just thinking about those words makes me chuckle.
In a nifty bit of alchemy, one of the all-time worst moments in Saturday Night Live’s long and checkered history led directly to one of the best.
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