But its deeply specific references, and the authenticity of its queer performers, signal a shift in the way queer content gets portrayed on SNL. Pride is familiar enough that the sketch’s satirical tropes land universally. (Taylor-Joy managed to turn chess into a heart-hammering competitive sport for a full season, so we accept her allyship.) That’s because it’s both written by us – writer Celeste Yim co-wrote it with writer-turned-actor-and-forever-gay Bowen Yang, along with straight-but-we-stan-her Sudi Green - and performed by us, with Yang joining the other two openly-gay cast members and Lil Nas X for a glittering queer alliance. This sketch, more than any other sketch, and this SNL season, more than any other season, features queerness unfiltered through the lens of a straight audience. What I found word-worthy about “It’s Pride Again” was not its content, but its audience. Of course, nothing is less funny than writing about why something is funny, so I won’t – the sketch is funny, and you should go watch it. The song features a highly relatable drunk meltdown from Bowen Yang (“I don’t want to be funny, I want to be hot!”), Kate McKinnon and Anya Taylor-Joy as a lesbian couple who moved in way too fast, Punkie Johnson lamenting a plethora of lesbian-passing straights, and, of course, an iconic Lil Nas X exhorting us all to post hole, posthaste. It’s been well-received by the queer community (as expected, Twitter is aflutter with haters, though no one can seem to articulate what exactly is to hate). Saturday Night Live’s digital musical sketch, “It’s Pride Again,” which aired this past Saturday, sends up the hot mess that is Pride in a rambunctious pastiche of Madonna’s Holiday and Charlie XCX’s Girls Night Out. “Fresh pride!” my friends like to say whenever we attend pride in a new city – an opportunity to debase yourself thoroughly in front of a whole new audience. Any queer who’s been out for more than two cycles of pride is bound to have gotten entangled in some rainbow-themed nonsense, be it thanks to an excess of poppers, an excess of complimentary Smirnoff, or an excess of exes (my typical downfall). Is that my most embarrassing pride story? Not by a long shot. I still have the scar to remind myself what a cheap little shit I was. I made it up the wall, but tumbled onto the bar floor while climbing over the railing, and my shin bled in celebratory fashion for the rest of the night. In 2015, refusing to pay the exorbitant entrance fee to a lesbian party at Pensacola Pride – and drunk enough to think it was a good idea – my friend and I scaled a 20-foot beachfront wall to sneak into the party from the back.
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