SNL is giving Shane Gillis another chance. Here’s what that proves about comedy.

In 2016, three years before comedian Shane Gillis was hired and then immediately fired. Saturday night live, told an interviewer that he was experimenting with his comedy to see what he could get away with. “You can be racist towards Asians,” she said. saying. “That’s what we’re finding out.”

He was confronted with the absurdity of this claim in 2019, when SNL fired Gillis for calling other comedians “fucking comedians” and referring to Chinese people as “fucking idiots” on his podcast the previous year.

However, since then, Gillis’s fame as a comedian has only grown. He has been a repeat guest on Joe Rogan’s hugely influential podcast. His own podcast boasts 80,000 Patreon subscribers who reward you with at least $180,000 one month, making their show the most subscribed show on the Patreon platform. he has obtained support from opposing comics like Dave Chappelle and Ricky Gervais. Last year he even landed his own Netflix comedy special.

Now, in what could be considered a comedic coup de grâce, Gillis returns to Saturday night live this weekend, not as a cast member, but as host.

This change of attitude on the part of SNL could lead his viewers to believe that Gillis has atoned for his past sins. But Gillis has shown no interest in atonement. Quite the opposite: “I definitely wouldn’t have changed what we did, our podcast,” she says. saying in 2021 when asked what he would do differently. Instead, she has continued to use her comedy to be openly intolerant of marginalized groups and continue to participate in racist, anti-trans, anti-gay, antisemiticand possibly white supremacist statements. If anything, he has doubled down on his beliefs, while comedy fans, advertisersand the media types moved on, including, it seems, SNL producer Lorne Michaels.

In other words, what we are “discovering” is that in 2024, Gillis’ brand of racism is more acceptable than ever.

When Shane Gillis tells you who he is, believe him

Shane Gillis is a 36-year-old from Pennsylvania who was pursuing a budding career as a comedian when he started. moving forward in 2016 through comedy podcasting. This included a stint hosting a show called a fair one for Compound Media, a podcast network created by Anthony Cumia, a notoriously offensive athlete known for his own racist comments. Composite media also hosted Gavin McInnes, the white nationalist who brought together other members of the network to form the Proud Boys, the extremist group that played a major role in both the 2017 Charlottesville Unite the Right rally and the January 6 insurrection.

Compound Media was the platform on which Gillis hurled the racist insults that ultimately got him fired. SNL. But it was not the only medium in which he expressed his opinions. In her independent comedy work and other projects, she had no qualms about expressing repugnant opinions. Like a Philly comedy club noted in 2019 in a since-deleted file cheep“We, like many, were quickly disgusted by Shane Gillis’ overt racism, sexism, homophobia and transphobia, expressed both on and off stage, while working with him years ago.”

In 2019, comedy critic Seth Simons for the first time drew attention to racism from Gillis’ podcast after the announcement that SNL had hired Gillis. In February 2024, in response to the announcement of Gillis’ return to SNLSimons compiled a list of puzzling evidence to the LA Times that supports the idea that Gillis isn’t even being “ironic” about his use of racism in comedy, but rather is, rather, simply and truly a racist person. As Simons points out, the jokes that Gillis made before was famous, which included a litany of racist and anti-Semitic insults and stereotypes, are so horrible that “they should horrify us not because they are hateful but because they are full of joy.” As if all this were not enough, Simons points out that along with the rampant bigotry, Gillis has also expressed his ironic enthusiasm for McInnes, claiming that McInnes “crushes” his debate opponents.

Simons then goes on to explore all the offensive opinions Gillis has continued to share. from His fame took off in 2019 after his SNL hiring and firing. In most cases, these have been hidden behind the paywall of Matt and Shane’s Secret Podcast, which he hosts with fellow comedian Matt McCusker for the aforementioned 80,000 Patreon subscribers. These include a parade of unapologetically racist stereotypes and mockery, as well as ableist slurs and a whole range of anti-trans sentiments.

With all this context as a backdrop, Gillis’s cultural rehabilitation seems artificial, to put it mildly. TO New Yorker Profile 2022 He overlooked Gillis’s self-proclaimed affinity for Trump, portraying him as “conciliatory” toward left-wing audiences while taking a “jovial but firm” approach by downplaying the ironic support of his right-wing supporters.

Gillis fans, including more liberal comedians like Jerrod Carmichael, seem to believe that rather than actually being racist, Gillis is consciously cultivating his offensive character solely for the purposes of his comedy work. This vision is as old as comedy itself, but in today’s cultural era it has evolved into what NPR’s Eric Deggans has called “intolerance denial syndrome.” A comedy project is thought to have a certain level of importance and purpose, which level should justify the offensive material and completely negate any suspicion that the comedian actually believe what platforms are there, much less what they deserve consequences for offensive material.

In Gillis’ case, it seems more accurate to say that he is not practicing ironic racism at all: it is based on other people’s good faith belief that he has to be acting totally joking.

Additionally, Gillis claims to use his comedy to call attention to what he believes to be other people’s hypocrisy, but not in the way you might think. In that interview 2016 With Gillis, a portrait of him in the years before his fame, he claimed to be conducting experiments on his audience: “It’s funny what people laugh at, compared to what they are so eager to prove they are not.” laughing at.”

Now, after a full cycle of “cancel culture” and legions of fans, Gillis seems to have no need to bother being discreet. “If my blood goes to my head, all my blood is racist,” he said in a 2022 paid podcast episode, according to Simons’ report.

With all this in mind, the question is: What the hell, SNL?

SNLGillis’s ambivalence ignores the damage this type of comedy can cause.

According to the New York article by Kelefa Sanneh, SNL Producer Michaels “was and is a Gillis fan,” despite all the racism and anti-LGBTQ comments and everything else. At the time SNL Firing him, Michaels described Gillis’ previous comedy as “offensive, hurtful and unacceptable.” However, Sanneh attributed Gillis’s firing not to her behavior but to “panic” on the part of NBC’s top brass.

The conclusion we are left with is that all that panic, as it usually does whenever someone is supposedly “cancelled,” has subsided, and has probably dissipated in the wake of Gillis’ continued success. Vulture put forward Two reasons for the hosting gig and its timing: that perhaps Michaels is trying to remain apolitical during an election year, and wants to do so by opening a platform for comedians who appeal to the right, and that “Michaels lives for drama.”

It is worth noting that SNL‘s long story of racism is well known; It took until 2019 for the show to welcome a Chinese comedian: Bowen Yang, who was ironically cast alongside Gillis.

The reality is that this plausible deniability of fanaticism is exactly what has allowed the spread of extremism over the last decade. It’s simply not true that you can practice racism for entertainment without trapping true bigots in your web and affirming to them everything they want to believe, which is that these views are not only acceptable, but common; after all, they are common. You’re being voiced by a celebrity. Even if the celebrity disowns the worst of their fans in public, when they hide behind a paywall and then, e.g. repeatedly platform Holocaust deniersthose previous apologies and denials become irrelevant.

Meanwhile, for the rest of us, every time another comedian like Gillis, Chappelle or Louis CK is welcomed back into the fold of mainstream comedy culture (if they were ever ousted to begin with), it gets harder convince detractors that intolerance is intolerance, regardless of the type of “humor” that surrounds it. When someone like Gillis can successfully promote the idea that course We all secretly laugh at his bigoted jokes, his lack of remorse, coupled with his industry’s willingness to look the other way, becomes a broader form of gaslighting: he appears on the network’s top comedy show American, live from New York this weekend.