Written by Rachel Haynes, Staff Writer
About a week ago, actor Finn Wolfhard hosted a Saturday Night Live episode and was criticized heavily for some jokes he made. But were these accusations made by fans truly justified?
Finn Wolfhard, who played the character Mike Wheeler from Stranger Things, received some backlash on the comedic sketches that poked fun at the Netflix show Stranger Things. Some of the jokes are being called crude and homophobic, but is this truly the case or are people just nitpicking due to some other factors? The situation may seem simplistic on the surface, but I believe it runs into deeper topics about the world of acting and Hollywood.
There are three main jokes that were seen as controversial, which include a joke about a woman’s anatomy, one about intimacy, and the coming out scene of another Stranger Things character, Will Byers.
While people may view these sketches as problematic, I think we all need to consider that SNL has a long history of being poorly written. While I agree that SNL is not funny and these jokes in particular were foul, I do not believe there was any malicious intent behind them. People read into them too much when they were meant to be lighthearted. I think they landed poorly and were not funny but were nothing more than that.
It may also be uncomfortable for some to see Wolfhard, as well as Caleb McLaughlin and Gaten Matarazzo, both actors in Stranger Things and part of some of the sketches, making more adult jokes. As many have seen these actors grow up through television, it might be hard for some to remember that they are grown, adult men now. It is not inappropriate for them to be making some of these jokes now. Unknowingly, people also put them into a box that confines them to their character. People may forget that they don’t actually know them at all, and it is easy for them to blame the actors rather than the jokes.
There was also the coming of scene joke, which is being called homophobic. I think people missed the point here. The writers at SNL were not making fun of the character Will Byers for being gay, but were criticizing the length and quality of the scene in question. This is not a new joke as many people thought the Duffer Brothers did not write this scene well; it was too long with unusual circumstances that made it feel inauthentic to many. Jokes were already being made about it online which is why it was odd to see people having such a problem with it all of a sudden. I think the difference here is that people did not like that Wolfhard was criticizing the show he was a part of. Since many were already upset with season 5, it may have been hard for them to watch one of the actors make fun of it. It was sort of like a punch in the gut or a reminder as to how badly the show concluded. Again, I think that this joke was just poorly executed and people were trying to tie this to morals rather than just admitting the fact that it was not funny.
Truly, I do not think these jokes had deeper and darker meanings than people make it out to be. The root cause of this controversy is that they were unfunny and made by a person society may view as a child still. The short lived outrage was unnecessary in my opinion, and sometimes people just take things too seriously. All we need to do is just remember that the actors we see on screen are real people that do not revolve around the screen. If people start seeing them more as real humans rather than characters then jokes like these may be received more positively.