New SNL cast member Shane Gillis' racist material isn't pushing boundaries -- it's hackneyed comedy

Variety

Gillis defended himself as "a comedian who pushes boundaries" and "sometimes that requires risks" in his Twitter statement last night in response to the backlash over his past racist and homophobic jokes. "This is all hard to believe, and not for the reason Gillis and his vitriolic supporters crying 'PC police!' might think," says Caroline Framke. "The thing about this supposedly 'edgy' comedy like Gillis’ is that it’s rarely edgy or boundary-pushing at all, but the exact opposite. In the grand scheme of comedy, 'LOL minorities' is truly as basic as it gets. As long as there have been comedians, there have been comedians who rely on hackneyed stereotypes to get kneejerk laughs. Minstrel shows didn’t become one of America’s most time-honored forms of entertainment out of nowhere; white people crafting offensive punchlines that depend on slurs is one of comedy’s most basic traditions. There have always been comedians who built a fanbase by catering to their fans’ basest instincts. There have always been routines based on lazy clichés about marginalized people. There have always been racist punchlines that reach for the lowest common denominator, that playact biases under the guise of just 'telling it like it is.' Spitting stereotypes into a mic like Gillis does isn’t just vile, it’s boring. Claiming otherwise is maybe the best joke he’s told yet. And yet, Gillis’ fans and some other comedians are holding him up as some paragon of truth, as a guy who will say what they’re all thinking and get punished for it. This, too, is a boring line that we’ve heard a million times before."

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• Gillis' past comments shows how little respect he has for diverse voices: "Backbiting in the comedy scene isn’t a rare phenomenon, but Gillis’s grousing underlines just how little respect he has for any diversity of voices in a medium whose purported values he’s invoking to defend himself," says David Sims. "His tweeted statement suggests anything terrible he might have said was all to help develop his craft, and yet his conception of that craft is frustratingly narrow. Decades after its debut, Saturday Night Live remains a career pinnacle that so many comedy professionals aspire to; the question now is whether Michaels and NBC will reflect on what it would mean for working and aspiring comics if the show included Gillis in the cast."
• Focusing on Gillis' past is fair game: "Now, appointing yourself as a 'comedian' and calling the things you say 'jokes' does not erase accountability, nor does people finding them and pointing them out constitute an attempt at 'canceling' or ruining someone's life," says Tom Philip. "Raising real, cultural concern about an already-popular performer being given a national (and still seminal) platform is valid. No matter what becomes of Gillis's relationship with SNL, he will remain in profitable work with a significant fanbase. Considering all the above, it's obviously just better he doesn't get to do it on a broadcast network."
• Patton Oswalt mocks Gillis' statement: "strap in ‘cuz my comedy is SUPER EDGY"