SNL's Political Impact (1974-Present)

This Day

Jody Avirgan & Radiotopia

History

4.6 • 982 Ratings

🗓️ 31 October 2024

⏱️ 25 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

It's October 31st. Happy Halloween! In October 1974, Saturday Night Live premiered and, from the jump, included political satire.

Jody, Niki, and Kellie discuss the way that SNL's spoofs have changed, whether their skits have had a political impact -- and why it can be a struggle to do spoofs in the Trump era.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and welcome to this day in esoteric political history from radiotopia.
0:07.0	My name is Jody Avergan.
0:10.0	This day, October 1975, Saturday Night Live debuts 50 years ago. Not exactly on this day or sort of earlier in October,
0:18.0	but obviously there has been a lot of coverage of the 50th anniversary of SNL. They are doing a big reunion thing later this season.
0:25.2	There's a new movie out all about that very first episode of S&L.
0:30.2	And for us we thought we would take a moment to talk about the political impact of
0:34.1	SNL maybe specifically the election impact. This is from spoofs of Carter and
0:39.3	Ford to Sarah Palin and Donald Trump of course and listeners as you know this episode of
0:45.2	ours is coming out on Halloween lots of the skits on us and now feature costumes
0:49.0	so there you have it this is counting as our Halloween episode as well.
0:52.7	See how I've just sort of put it all together.
0:54.4	There you go.
0:55.2	Yeah.
0:56.6	But by the way, the whole like dressing up as a politician
1:01.3	from that year's election, Halloween thing that happens every four years
1:03.8	that feels like it's gone a little by the way so I don't know you think you're going to see some
1:07.2	Trump masks and some common outfits out there?
1:10.3	Yeah.
1:11.3	Also the churn is so fast now like the things that you would have thought would have been a good Halloween costume back in like August.
1:16.8	Yeah, no one even remembers the thing everyone's gonna go is mooding.
1:20.0	Yeah, you might you might see some little black girls as Kamala. You might but like
1:27.3	But I don't think you're gonna see people as Trump and it and it gets to this larger question which relates to
	...

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