Estro-Maxx Ad on Saturday Night Live

[Jacquelyn]

I can understand where this is a touchy subject, but along with many others I have to agree that humor is the best way to break through serious situations. SNL is not always tasteful, per se, but to be honest I don't think that their aim is ever to offend (though sometimes that is the end result). I think that it's bad for us to take ourselves seriously all the time. SNL tends to poke fun at everyone from the WASP-esque families to the flamboyantly gay men who live in the Chelsea area of NYC. We are all human, and we have to be able to laugh through things, especially the things that most people don't see eye to eye on. Humor usually breeds discourse, discourse fuels change.

During the election Sarah Palin was constantly the butt of many jokes and many uber conservatives were offended, there were African American's that were offended because Fred Armison often portrayed Barack Obama (though he is not an African American himself). During the election SNL caught a lot of slack from the Republican party because they are staffed with such liberal writers. With this commercial someone mentioned that they did use quite a bit of terminology that the general population doesn't typically throw around, and to be honest it wouldn't surprise me if one of their staff writers was TG/TS. I don't see that work space as being one that would be exclusionary in the least.

At the end of the day, the writers have done their job. In their business if people aren't talking about the skits that they wrote, or if they weren't memorable, they won't be working for long.

[long.897]

I couldn't disagree with you more. We saw what SNL did to Sarah Palin. Of course her base wasn't phased but the rest of the country most certainly was impacted by it. The same can be said about this skit.

Now I have to walk through my campus knowing a lot of people watched that skit and are now looking at me and seeing a man in a skirt. Maybe I am a bit more sensitive than some but to me this is a real issue.

Sarah Palin wasn't ridiculed because of SNL, she was ridiculed because her IQ is equivalent to that of a bag of oranges.  She was unable to name a SINGLE SCOTUS case excluding Roe v. Wade, she openly admitted that she didn't know what the vice president DID, and her understanding of science is laughable.  SNL may have given the public some funny sound bites, but if she hadn't made a fool of herself already there'd be nothing TO caricature. 

[CaitJ]

I don't understand what the humourous component of this skit was supposed to be.
It's really no different to making a 'humourous' advert about chemotherapy and showing bald people with tumours and lesions.

[Sean]

What is interesting to me is that this is the second time in the same week that I've participated in a discussion about satire/making fun of a group of people. The first time, it was someone who got upset that he made fun of gay people and they were too sensitive. This time, it is the transgender community, particularly MTFs, who were the target.

Nothing like having the group targeted shift to see if you still stand by your own test.

My problem with the guy who was making fun of gay people is that he confused "satire" with "making fun of." Satire presumes there is actually a joke or satirical situation in there, not just a list or portrayal of stereotypes or negative comments about the group. Making fun of is NOT the same as satire.

This SNL sketch is making fun of MTFs. It is not satiring transsexuals at all. There is no joke besides the fact that MTFs are men transitioning to be women.

It *is* satiring drug commercials in the States. That pseudo-computer scan image of the body comes directly from late night drug commercials. The non-warning/warning at the end is satirizing the side effects warnings of drug commercials (e.g., taking a drug for an erection will give you an erection!). Etc.

The problem I have is that there is no reason that the satire of the drug commercial needed to be combined with making fun of transsexuals. You could have inserted ANY targeted group and treatment and used them as the example. They *didn't* use cancer patients and cancer drugs, nor did they use drugs for other diseases like Alzheimer's or Parkinson's or MS - illnesses that all affect white, upper-middle class, men and women who are viewed as "normal."

The only "joke" to the audience came from men pretending to be women, men with tits, men having a long wig and big woman's butt, etc.

To me, that's not satire. That's making fun of trans people without having any other joke to it there.

[n00bsWithBoobs]

Wow... that commercial was hilarious! I absolutely loved it!

So... what was the problem with it? Did it *really* make fun of transsexuals? Was any of the information inaccurate? I could tell that they went the extra mile to satirize drug company commercials using transsexualism as a backdrop without really being disrespectful. Do we all look like that? No. Do some of us look like that? Yep. One of the things that absolutely scared me off transitioning when I was 22 was meeting this 50 year old mtf working at Borders who told me that no one could tell she was a transsexual, but it was so painfully obvious... That's a moot point, however.

Ask yourself what offended you about this commercial. Did you see a little bit of yourself in the satire? Good. That's what satire does. Is it annoying that we take so many pills? Yep. In our earlier periods of transition, do we look awkward with our confusing gender cues? Yep. Now, here's a really big question: In an SNL skit that you find funny, is whatever they are making fun of better or worse than the commercial you have a gripe about? I really feel that they made an effort to not pick on us as a community, but definitely make fun of the situations we find ourselves in sometimes. I'm sorry if you can't find humor in that...

[becky53]

Lets face it, the idea of a person transitioning and into HRT wearing a beard or mustache is simply ludicrus, and I think that's what they were going at. It is a parody.

This just hits a home because of the topic.  They've been making fun of Gays and just about anyone else for years,  transgendered are just not used to the attention.  I take it as a positive that there is enough recognition nationally to be part of a parody.  Look at is as progress and consider the source.

[becky53]

Someone made a great point.  This is a satire of pharmaceutical comercials with MTF Transsexuals as subject.  As typical, the parody is to the extreme.

[Dana Lane]

I am just curious, out of all of those defending this skit how many are full time or plan to go full time? I am not trying to prove a point but I need to wrap my brain around this.

Yesterday at work and walking home I felt like a walking target and was wondering who had seen it. I am a bit mortified knowing that at least some of the people I work with have seen it. It caused me significant anxiety.

[rejennyrated]

I am just curious, out of all of those defending this skit how many are full time or plan to go full time? I am not trying to prove a point but I need to wrap my brain around this.

Yesterday at work and walking home I felt like a walking target and was wondering who had seen it. I am a bit mortified knowing that at least some of the people I work with have seen it. It caused me significant anxiety.

But Dana nobody seeing you walking down the street would in any way associate you with any of that. You don't even remotely resemble those characters. You are are clearly a perfectly normal looking women.

In some ways that's the point. The programme makers (presumably deliberately) made the characters so OTT that they could never be mistaken for the real thing, by anyone with any level of intelligence.

And yes I am defending it up to a point... and of course when it comes to "length of service" so to speak with the vast majority of my life on the clock as postop transitioned or in childhood part transitioned, I think I am as qualified as any to hold a view.

I am genuinely sorry that you felt exposed, but I really doubt that anyone would be so naive as to mistake that sketch for reality, any more than they would something like a Punch & Judy show.

[Dana Lane]

But Dana nobody seeing you walking down the street would in any way associate you with any of that. You don't even remotely resemble those characters. You are are clearly a perfectly normal looking women.

Well, we can all take a good picture every once in a while. I do not pass as in my visual or audible presentation.

[tekla]

At least the only pop culture reference to ->-bleeped-<- isn't Norman Bates dressing up as his mom.  That's some progress.

The old media rule is that first you threaten, then you amuse, then you entertain, then you're boring.  So, if you look on the half-full side of the equation is that we only have one more hurdle before we hit full on boring.

So, it's not like we are stuck anymore just being the serial killer in Silence of the Lambs and Dressed to Kill.  We have some amusement value, Rocky Horror, RuPaul, Eddie Izzard, Dame Edna, and several of the top 10 AFI comedies involve gender switching, like Mrs. Doubtfire and Victor, Victoria including the number one and two comedies of all time, Some Like It Hot, and Tootsie.  And a few of the movies have moved beyond that an ramped it up to tragic-comic like Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (both far funnier and far more pointint than the American remake To Wong Foo...), Kinky Boots, Bruno (also known as The Dress Code) and Transamerica.

Greater visibility, greater recognizability, more public access and more public understanding of Trans Awareness brings with it more visibility, recognizability and awareness, and being included in the joke (because as others have pointed out, the point of the joke was not on trans persons, but on TV advertisements, a long standing target of SNL) is just a part of that increased public notice.

I mean - and perhaps it only makes it worse, sigh - it's hardly likely that the people who wrote, worked on and produced this little parody skit have never met or interacted with TG persons.  I'm sure they have, they are living the big time entertainment lifestyle in NYC and TG persons are a part of that milieu ranging from serious transitioners to the most fierce drag queens even to wear heels.

Were they having a laugh at your expense.  Sure.  That's pretty much the nature of parody and satire.  Having a laugh at someone else's expense.  Were they out to destroy you and make you life a living hell and insure that most people would NEVER take you seriously again, like they did with Sara Palin?  No.


Thank to the site at AFI for references
http://www.afi.com/default.aspx

[Dana Lane]

So I guess it would be appropriate for SNL to do a parody of bullying against gay youths.

[tekla]

Sure, if the target of the humor is the bully.  I'd be down with that.

[Michelle.]

You realize that SNL most likely does additional skits based on the number of negative responses?

How many people who laughed at this are going to start a letter writing campaign asking for more?

Now consider those offended write into NYC. You don't think that producers of SNL have a metric that estimates positive reception based upon negative response?

The next installment of Estro-Fem... Pro-Growth:Progesterone. I'll leave the rest to the imagination. but it gets bad, PDQ.

[CaitJ]

Greater visibility, greater recognizability, more public access and more public understanding of Trans Awareness

I don't think shows/films about men dressing up as women increase visibility at all.
Documentaries about transgender people and shows/films about transgender people increase visibility 

[Apricot]

Here's what I'm seeing. Now, I don't want the community to come at me with pitch forks and torches because it's not my intention to flame anyone. A lot of folks who pass well, or are very late in their transition [in other words girls who are fairly confident in themselves] don't feel threatened by this, while a lot of folks on the other hand that I know who either don't pass very well or are early on in transition are very nervous about this commercial.

Now to further elaborate, this ad makes me VERY nervous. That's because I'm early in my transition and I don't quite have the confidence yet. I'm not out to everyone and I have to deal having to fight the stereotypes skits like this perpetuate when I present to my family, my job, and to my friends. The cold truth is the fact that during early transition, you WILL look like a man in drag, or at least a very ugly woman, and an ad like this hits at the core of those insecurities.

Of course when one passes very well, one deals with much less transphobia because the general public doesn't know you're transexual in the first place. The stereotypes don't affect your job or your personal relationships because no one you meet will feel as if they apply to you unless you're out to everyone - and even when it comes to that, it's easy to be the 'anti-stereotype' as a full fledged woman. In addition to that, you might have the confidence that surgery or FFS might give you. For those people, try to think about how an ad like this effects the younger closeted transgender who may be struggling to find the words to explain to their parents what they are without sounding crazy and possibly risk being disowned. Now imagine this skit shows up on TV. The message is that as a transgender, you'll never be a real girl, you'll only ever be a man in drag. These are the kind of messages that contribute to so much youth suicide because there's so little positive reinforcement.

I'm not saying that the ad should be yanked off the waves, I'm saying that for SOME of us these ads are hurtful and even destructive. It's worth staying empathetic and keeping that in mind. The ad isn't discrimination by any stretch of the imagination. It's just sophomoric and tasteless. It's not worth defending.

[Kitpup]

I already spoke in the other thread about this but I want to add here that while it does show MtFs with facial hair (and even a pretty ridiculous moustache) it also shows them behaving like COMPLETELY NORMAL PEOPLE. Going through airport security (with no problems), at the office, at the gym, palling around at home with a glass of wine. To me that screams 'white upper middle class woman'. And it will to every other american, whether they realize it or not. Yes, they basically showed us men in drag, but they did so in a way that says 'and it's pretty normal.'

[CaitJ]

Of course when one passes very well, one deals with much less transphobia because the general public doesn't know you're transexual in the first place.

Which is why I think it is even more important to stand with our 'non-passing' sisters and give them our backing and support in matters like this 

[SamanthaElle]

I thought it was hilarious. It's one's choice to be offended or not, and being offended is quite unecessary. "Some people have very sensitive corns, and the only way to live with them is to step on those corns until they are used to it." — Wolfgang Pauli

[Nigella]

I still think its funny and I am qualified to say that as I have transitioned 3+ years fully and post op since last year.

The thing with the add is that it shows men, not transsexuals. None of us would still have the full beard and go down to the gym would we? of course not. That's what makes it completely and utterly ridiculous and its the ridiculous nature of it that makes it funny.

Stardust