The blogosphere is buzzing about this past weekend’s “Saturday Night Live” show, which featured a skit that parodied the current Tiger Woods drama. It featured Kenan Thompson as Tiger Woods and host Blake Lively as his wife, Elin Nordengren. The segment is being called into controversy because it showed Tiger being increasingly hurt by his wife. By the end of the clip, he has tire marks across his shirt, Band-Aids on his face, his arm is in a brace and a golf club is smashed over his head.
Critics are arguing that if the real-life situation had been reversed, and a husband was suspected of inflicting injuries on his wife, there would have been no SNL skit at all because our society takes male-on-female domestic violence much more seriously.
A commenter named “washyuu” of the gossip website OhNoTheyDidnt commented that “I hate when it’s okay to [laugh] at women being the violent ones. It isn’t. Domestic abuse, regardless of which gender is the aggressor, is unfunny and not something to high five over.”
Even more unsettling with those who feel that domestic violence should not be parodied is the fact that the musical guest for the night was Rihanna, who as we all know was abused by then-boyfriend Chris Brown earlier this year and has only very recently spoken about the incident publicly. Some found the skit inappropriate and insensitive for that reason.
However, another commenter named “orangeglo” pointed out that “They do rehearsals. Including a full dress rehearsal before the live show. I’m sure Rihanna/her people knew about the sketch way before it was aired. If she had a problem with it, they probably would’ve changed it/cut it all together.”
Although intended to be light-hearted and funny, there are definitely a lot of implicit messages in this sketch about the way our society regards gender roles and expectations. Not only does the clip downplay the severity of domestic violence in general, it also insinuates that a woman who possess strength and a man who cries about a beating are rare characters that deserve to be laughed at. Maybe “jokes” like this one are the reason that so many cases of female-on-male abuse go unreported, or the reason that women are often regarded as the weaker sex?
Or maybe everyone just needs to relax and not over-think it? What do you all think…watch the skit and then vote in the poll:
ETA: The original video has been removed by NBC, so I’m posting this ABC News clip that pretty much discusses the same thing I am:
