On April 4, I was performing my favorite Saturday night ritual — curling up on the couch with my cats and watching “Saturday Night Live” — when suddenly, in the form of a sketch, inspiration for my next column was served on a silver platter.
The sketch in question, “The 301 Spartans,” featured an army of (you guessed it) 301 Spartans — the premise being that the battalia can only encompass 300 men in their battle against the Persian Empire. Right after the King of Sparta announces that one soldier will not be able to fight, the camera cuts to host Jack Black, intentionally depicted as the clear outlier. His elaborate chest piece is cut to reveal his round stomach, but he is seemingly oblivious to any differences between him and the rest of the army.
Believe me, I tried to get on board with this sketch. But it became immediately clear that the entire baseline of the joke was Black’s (larger) body.
In one of his first lines, he asks if any of the other Spartans are having an issue with their chest pieces, saying he thinks he got a “women’s small.” As the sketch progresses, Jack Black’s Spartan, Gorgo, becomes increasingly isolated, watching the Spartan king select soldier after soldier for his army until he is forced to choose between Gorgo and a literal child. As a surprise to no one, he picks the child.
In short, Gorgo played perfectly into a specific stereotype for larger people — someone socially awkward, physically incapable and virtually useless, but with a sense of confidence implying obliviousness to all these traits.
“The 301 Spartans” reminded me of the double-edged sword that is comedic representation.
When bodies are reduced to punchlines, we are told it’s okay to laugh at them, leaving us to subconsciously justify our judgment. Often, morality is tied to body weight in an effort to perpetuate the narrative that larger bodies are products of a lack of self-control. This then oversimplifies the nuanced scientific reasons for differences in weight between individuals.
Ultimately, the discussion about representation in comedy boils down to a singular unavoidable understanding: like it or not, comedy is political. What we are given permission to laugh at shapes our understanding of social expectations — expectations that, crucially, comedy has the power to both challenge and reinforce. Without a status quo, comedy could not exist. On the flip side, without a dominant culture to hold accountable, institutions of comedy such as SNL could not have the longstanding cultural influence they have today.
In other words, comedy can be a powerful political tool. By embodying themes of the dominant culture or countercultures in ways that are not only easily digestible but accessible, comedy can gradually upend harmful tropes and redefine the social norms that make up the status quo.
But it can also reinforce them, for crucial to our understanding of comedic representation is the fact that it doesn’t simply mean on-screen existence. It means being depicted in a way you have agency over. Positive comedic representation means that your existence is normalized and validated, rather than inherently being confined to a punchline.
When characters are simply the newest, most culturally relevant iterations of a long line of tired tropes and detrimental stereotypes, comedy loses its power.
Former SNL cast member Bowen Yang, who is Chinese American and gay, has spoken to these sentiments beautifully. Reflecting on his experience on the show, Yang discussed not being able to fit the archetype of the standard “straight man” — a term for the generic foil to whatever eccentric character they’re reacting off of.
“[SNL] is short and collapsed by necessity, so therefore it plays on archetypes,” Yang said in an interview with Variety. “These archetypes are also in a relationship with generic things, and there is a genericism in whiteness and in being a canvas to build upon. I came in pre-stretched, pre-dyed.”
The concept of the straight man is where so many covert cultural biases manifest, working together to reveal a problematic standard of “normal.” The straight characters almost always reinforce the gender binary, solely normalize heterosexual families and couples, and are white. In “The 301 Spartans,” the “straight men” were young, relatively thin, and mostly light-skinned men.
Towards the end of the sketch, Gorgo seems to be getting the memo that he doesn’t belong. Earnestly, he asks the Spartan King why he wasn’t chosen, eliciting a long list of insults — Gorgo is too short, too slow, unathletic, a coward, a weird runner and smells bad. The last one? He keeps saying he has a “Hard out at 5,” prompting Black’s last line to the King of Sparta: “Dinner is when dinner is!”
Ultimately, by focusing on Black’s body as a springboard for punchlines and relying on tired notions of laziness and self-indulgence to fuel his character, “The 301 Spartans” played off of a fatphobic status quo rather than condemning it.
Alternatively, when we are conscious consumers of comedy, we are more empowered to interrogate the norms it is subtly yet effectively promoting. If comedy is political, laughter is powerful.
