For the past few weeks, Saturday Night Live, one of America’s
top sources of entertainment, has been opening its shows with its own spoofs of
the presidential debates. Last night, SNL’s version of the third and final
debate was aired. In their scripts, the writers of the show use both metaphor
and satirical visuals to make a parody of the presidential debate. However, it
seems that the writers took a more aggressive stance towards Donald Trump than
Hillary Clinton.
As the debate was being introduced, the moderator compared the
night to the third Lord of the Rings movie
in that “you don’t really wanna watch but hey, you’ve made it this far.” This
made the audience, the general American people, question the legitimacy of the
debate (if they weren’t questioning it already). Then, as the candidates
introduce themselves, Hillary boasts, “In the first debate, I set the table, in
the second debate, I fired up the grill, and tonight, I feast.” She asserts her
dominance in the debate when she makes this claim. In addition, when she claims
“I feast,” she slices two knives against each other with a grin on her face, a quite
satirical gesture.
Besides the knives, the skit includes some other humorous
visuals. For instance, near the end of the debate, Trump tells the moderator he
wants a minute to make sure he didn’t forget to say anything. He picks up a
giant notecard, on which one side is written in large letters, “Bad hombre,”
and on the other side, “Nasty woman.” These are both quotes of his (in real
life) but by making them seem like Trump’s game plan, SNL depicts Trump as a
really insensitive man (although he debatably already is). This further places
Trump behind Hillary in the eyes of the viewers.
The skit’s primary purpose was to simply make the audience
laugh, and it did just that. However, the more extended purpose was to give
some perspective on Trump’s behavior compared to Hillary’s. It could be
well-argued that Hillary was already
beating Trump. However, SNL’s parody of the debate ensures this.
