LGBTQs in Comedy: Where We’ve Been and Where We’re Headed

After holding the record for longest-running female cast member (having joined in 2012), comedian Kate McKinnon won’t be returning to SNL this season (much to the disappointment of queer viewers like me).

Despite her departure, it’s still an exciting and prodigious time for LGBTQs in comedy.

Netflix has been awash with us as of late. Joel Kim Booster speaks candidly about threesomes and Grindr’s fetishization of gay men of color in his comedy special. In June, a Pride line-up featuring comedians like Margaret Cho and Tig Notaro brought facetious vitality to our screens.

It’s a welcome change. Tune in to SNL just 10 years ago, and humanizing representation of LGBTQs in comedy was much harder to come by.

“When I first started out, you wouldn’t see two gay comics on the same lineup,” Joel Kim Booster says in an interview with Paper Magazine. “You’d barely speak to another gay comic. There was still this idea of pulling up the ladder after you because we all knew there was only one spot. We’ve seen that change, and it’ll continue to change.”

In addition, more cheap shots were taken at us—known in the comedy world as punching down. Punching up, in contrast, means aiming jokes at those in positions power or known to have caused harm. Comedian Kamau Bell describes it as humor that “only steps on the toes of the oppressor and not the oppressed.” Meanwhile, Melissa Febos says that “the prose and people (she) find(s) funniest do not deploy their punchlines at the expense of those who cannot defend themselves.”

SNL is no longer punching down at the LGBTQ community quite as fragrantly. Or at least, more humanizing representations have filled in to balance out the knockdowns. Skits like Kate McKinnon’s lesbian period piece had me cry-laughing while also feeling deeply seen. The iconic Pride music video with Lil Nas X offered up a delightful celebratory treat for the LGBTQ community.

Still, remnants of othering and subtle homophobia linger. For every Bowen Yang killing it, there’s a John Krasinki and Pete Davidson kissing, or a Michael Che chuckling about “don’t ask, don’t tuck.”

Delia Harrington wrote (in Nerdist) of this distasteful joke: “Instead of mocking the then-president, who imposed the ban on transgender people in the military, or even Biden, who repealed it and whom the joke saddles with giving the policy the offensive name that forms the basis of his joke, the real target is transgender folks. The continued use of jokes like this sets a tone, both for viewers and those involved in creating the show.” 

By us, For us

Media and exposure are the tools through which bias gradually dissolves. Just as important as the subtractions, or pushing back against harmful comments when we hear them, are the additions. This means queer people creating their own content, or at least having significant input in the creation process.

Beyond LGBTQs in comedy alone, the teen rom-com Crush is a great example of media created by and for us. Charming and authentic, it lacks an anguished coming out trope. No long drawn out discussion about sexuality takes place—The closest a character gets to this is a simple comment alluding to how her mom was “totally fine with it.”

That so many queer people were involved in the making of it—actors, writers, and directors such as Aulili’ Cravahlho and Rowan Blanchard among them—in part made this possible.

People of color are familiar with consuming inauthentic, and thereby reductive, depictions. Examples in Hollywood include Emma Stone having played a half-Asian character in Aloha, Christian Bale the prophet Moses in Exodus, a white actor the Indian-American man who sued Zuckerberg in Social Network.

Queer author Carolina De Robertis has commented on how Toni Morrison spoke a great deal about unapologetically writing for and about black people.

“Everybody can read Morrison. I, as a non-black person, am absolutely free to open her books. Her writing for black people in no way shuts out readers. But her refusal to write for the white gaze gives us such an incredible gift. One of truth and honesty and power,” De Robertis says.

De Robertis’ novel Cantoras centers on five queer women in a beachside village during Uruguay’s 1970s dictatorship. These women find chosen family in a time when to be seen as subversive in any way carried great risk.

When the author set out to write it, she drew inspiration from Morrison and told herself she wasn’t going to explain anything.

“I’m going to write this as a love letter to queer people, to lesbians, to all of the above LGBTQ+,” De Robertis says.

“By us for us” means straight viewers are welcome to partake, but they won’t be the intended audience. When I watched the Kate McKinnon lesbian period piece, for instance, I knew there were details that wouldn’t land with non-queers due to their not having lived those experiences.

Yang and Rogers, in an article written by Mark Harris in The New York Times, described the vibe of their “Las Culturistas” piece as: “not gay as in ‘we’re here, we’re queer,’ but gay as in “We’re two adult men having an extremely long and impassioned discussion about Glenn Close—Don’t expect us to make it comfortable for you.” 

Moving forward

It’s unclear what the future of LGBTQs in comedy holds. Hopefully jokes that continue taking down the world’s Trumps and Putins. Jabs that skewer the people causing real harm with their words and actions. Fewer aimed at those minding their own business, or simply trying to live their best life with personal flair. This, along with a continued stream of queerified content written by us and for us.

Jokes that punch down at marginalized groups are never just harmless jokes. Not when they continue to spread reductive misconceptions. And not when they maintain prejudices rather than subverting, disproving, or dismantling them altogether.

Here’s to hoping that this upcoming season of SNL serves up more of the former, and far less of the latter.