Saturday Night Live and Censorship
"Saturday Night Live" (SNL) is a long-running live sketch comedy show that has been entertaining audiences since its debut on October 11, 1975. With a format that includes opening monologues, comedy sketches, and musical performances, SNL has showcased a variety of comedic talents over the years. However, the show's live broadcast nature often puts it at odds with network censors from NBC, who enforce standards and guidelines to prevent offensive content.
Producers and writers frequently navigate these censorship challenges, sometimes leading to conflicts over skits deemed inappropriate. Notably, some performers have pushed back against censorship, as seen in instances where they defied network directives during live broadcasts. The show has also faced backlash from audiences, prompting the network to censor or alter content for reruns. Events like Martin Lawrence's controversial monologue and Sinead O'Connor's actions on air illustrate the ongoing tension between creative expression and broadcasting standards. Additionally, SNL's pre-recorded digital shorts must also adhere to censorship rules, highlighting the complexities of producing comedy in a regulated environment. Overall, the intersection of comedy and censorship on SNL provides an intriguing lens through which to examine the challenges faced by live television.
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Saturday Night Live and Censorship
Type of work: Television program
Broadcast: 1975-
Subject matter: Comedy monologues, skits, topical humor, and popular music
Significance: This television program’s satire and general irreverence have frequently provoked network censors
Since Saturday Night Live began airing on October 11, 1975, with Lorne Michaels as executive producer, it has featured comedians such as Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Steve Martin, Will Ferrell, Tina Fey, Jimmy Fallon, and Kristin Wiig. The program’s format has typically involved an opening monologue by a guest host, several comedy sketches, and performances by guest musicians. True to its title, it has been broadcast live—in the Eastern time zone—from New York City’s Rockefeller Center.
Over the years Saturday Night Live’s producers and writers have frequently clashed with network censors. The National Broadcasting Company’s (NBC) broadcast standards department has employed an editor to act as censor in the show’s control room. The editor has been responsible for enforcing the provisions of the network’s broadcast standards handbook and for ensuring that viewers not become overly angry at the show. The standards department has frequently insisted that the show’s producer and writers rewrite or eliminate skits that may be regarded as offensive. Sometimes, however, the live nature of the program has given performers opportunities to circumvent the censors. For example, Dan Aykroyd once performed a sketch in which he played a refrigerator repairman whose pants fell low enough to reveal a significant portion of his posterior cleavage each time he bent over. After rehearsals of the sketch, the network censor ordered Aykroyd to cover up, but the actor defied the censor during the live performance. On some occasions when performers circumvented the wishes of censors, the network acted to remove objectionable material before airing the show’s taped version to West Coast audiences, or before rerunning an episode of the show.
In 1994 the network censored comedian Martin Lawrence’s opening monologue and “bleeped” his language in several skits when the show was rebroadcast on the West Coast. Because of his opening monologue (which was improvised and, in addition to containing profanity, inappropriately discussed women), he was banned by Michaels from returning to the show. In September 2009, new cast member Jenny Slate slipped and used an obscenity in a sketch during her first show. The word was replaced with "freakin'" for the West Coast broadcast. Slate was kept on for the rest of the season, but was fired when the season ended.
Occasionally, protests made subsequent to a broadcast have moved the network to revise the show prior to repeating it. In June 1993, for example, the network deleted a joke about President Bill Clinton’s daughter, Chelsea, which had drawn numerous protests from viewers upon its original airing six months earlier. Similarly, that same year, Irish singer and songwriter Sinead O’Connor tore up a picture of Pope John Paul II during her appearance on the show. When the network rebroadcast the show later, it substituted an uncontroversial tape of O’Connor’s dress-rehearsal performance for the one in which she tore up the pope’s picture.
Though the majority of the show is recorded live, presenting unique challenges to the network's censors, SNL also produces very popular digital shorts, skits filmed in advance that allow for more advanced production values than a live skit. These shorts, however, are still subjected to censorship and profanity must be bleeped out or otherwise edited.
Bibliography
Miller, James Andrew, and Tom Shales. Live From New York: The Complete, Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live as Told by Its Stars, Writers, and Guests. New York: Back Bay, 2015. Print.
Hill, Doug, and Jeff Weingrad. Saturday Night: A Backstage History of Saturday Night Live. San Francisco: Untreed, 2014. Print.
"Obscene, Indecent and Profane Broadcasts." FCC. Federal Communications Commission, n.d. Web. 11 Nov. 2015.
Steinberg, Jacques. "Censored 'Saturday Night Live' Sketch Jumps Bleepless onto the Internet—Technology & Media—International Herald Tribune." New York Times. New York Times, 21 Dec. 2006. Web. 11 Nov. 2015.
"What is Censorship?" American Civil Liberties Union. ACLU, 2015. Web. 11 Nov. 2015.