Once again, concerning a "faith-friendly" SNL

If believers want to do real comedy, they can't settle for preaching to the choir

I have no idea why I forgot to mention Norm Macdonald when I wrote my recent commentary on faith and the importance of comedy in American popular culture.

I mean, consider these two “On Religion” columns — “What shaped the mysterious mind (and soul) of comedian Norm Macdonald” and “Norm Macdonald: Wisecracks about big, eternal questions while his clock ticked louder.”

Hold that thought, because I will come back to Macdonald.

Writing about online dialogues can get complicated, but I think it’s important — from time to time — to follow discussions linked to essays that are posted online.

After all, the Rational Sheep post that I mentioned earlier — “Try to imagine a faith-friendly Saturday Night Live” — was, in large part, written in response to a Marcus Pittman post published in his Poorly Written Substack newsletter on Substack. The double-decker headline on his post declared:

If we want to win the culture war, we need a Saturday Night Live.

For better or worse, Lorne Michaels single-handedly built the culture of the USA.

Here is the thesis statement from that original Pittman essay:

If you went back in time before the first airing of SNL and you Thanos snapped Lorne Michaels out of existence, the comedy landscape would be unrecognizable.

There would be no Adam Sandler, Chris Farley, Dana Carvey, David Spade, John Belushi or Dan Aykroyd. Bill Murray, Billy Crystal. Will Ferrell, Tina Faye, Amy Poehler, Jimmy Fallon or Conan O’Brien. All the movies they made. All the TV shows they made. Just gone.

But it’s not just the actors and movies that they made that’s snapped away with it, it’s all the artists and comedians that were inspired or platformed by the people platformed by Lorne.

I urged Rational Sheep readers to click over to the Pittman newsletter to check out his charts showing the massive financial impact of SNL in the entertainment marketplace. The SNL talent tree has “generated nearly $28 Billion dollars in movies and entertainment outside the SNL show itself.”

The bottom line, according to Pittman: Cultural conservatives — that’s the “we” in his headline and post — have failed to invest the decades of work and resources that it takes to build a creative culture that produces fresh talent and innovation in comedy.

To be blunt, I think that has been true, for several decades, in popular culture in general. For example, try to name mainstream Christian colleges and universities that offer solid degrees in screenwriting. A handful at most? (Three cheers, by the way, for the schools that are trying to do so.)

Here is Pittman, again:

Lorne Michaels did not just create a sketch comedy show. He created a platform for comedians to fail in front of a live audience, week after week. A place for writers to hone their skills. A place for talent to rise to the top in the most stressful of circumstances. Even Marvel and Disney took nearly 100 years to get to where we are.

This is what conservatives need to invest in if they really want to change the culture. Something that can change over the course of decades and appeal to new audiences as they grow up. Not a mega studio. Not a Hollywood competitor.

We need to think in terms of incubators and talent generators. We need to platform artists that no one knows about and create mechanisms where unknowns can build a name for themselves. … It’s not about hiring the most well known actors, but building the next generation of cultural influencers, and then doing it over and over again.

Now, at The Monadnock Review, the large-O Orthodox scribe Michael Stefan has continued this dialogue with a new essay: “Prospects Of A Faith-Friendly Saturday Night Live — Responding to Marcus Pittman and Terry Mattingly.”