On October 15, 2022, Megan Thee Stallion, a rapper from Houston most known for her and Cardi B’s song “WAP,” appeared on Saturday Night Live as both the musical guest and host. Her performance was considered to be hilarious and “endearing” by many, and criticized by quite a few others across social media. The outfit she wore for her monologue, a sheer black dress and corset, raised many critics’ eyebrows and garnered hateful comments that appeared on SNL’s social media channels, especially Instagram.
Stallion sang three songs from her new album “Traumazine” for her musical performance, which were “Anxiety,” “NDA,” and “Plan B.” She also starred in several sketches, including “Girl Talk,” where the premise was a talk show where genuine advice is replaced with the popular reaction and expression “giiiiiirl,” “Deer,” which had Stallion acting as the daughter of Kenan Thompson, and “Hot Girl Hospital,” which was a hilarious parody of the many hospital shows on TV currently.
Stallion’s performances were met with plenty of positive opinions, sourced mainly from the younger viewers of SNL, while her mannerisms, outfit, singing and acting were harshly criticized by much of the older viewing audience of the show. Most notably, Stallion’s trademark of sticking her tongue out while singing or talking seemed to upset older viewers. In its 48th season, Saturday Night Live has a lot of long-time fans, including some who have been watching since the very beginning.
Over the years, the hosts of the show have broadened in diversity and background, and a few of this episode’s skits focused on blackness and addressed perpetuated black stereotypes as Stallion acted as a catalyst for the show to involve more Black premises and characters. In “Girl Talk,” the talk show parody skit, Stallion and Ego Nwodim discussed the problem of Stallion’s suspected cheating boyfriend by only using the word “girl,” using different inflections to reflect different meanings. When Punkie Johnson joined the scene, the subtitles read “for any white people or men tuning in.”
In the final sketch of the episode, “Classroom,” Stallion directly pushes back against a racist stereotype that Black students are not smart. Nwodim begins the sketch by making assumptions about the intelligence level of a Black high-school class, despite it being an honors physics class. Stallion responds that all of the students had to take a college-level exam in order to earn their spot in the class. The teacher’s satirically blatant racism throughout the sketch allowed Stallion’s character to directly push back against outdated stereotypes.
The fact that older viewers are negatively reviewing Stallion’s episode despite the antiracist content of the show’s sketches begs the question of whether the bad reviews are fueled by something as simple as a general dislike towards Stallion (or the confusion between generational gaps) or is representative of a collectively racist and sexist older audience. Stallion is also an artist whose songs contain many sexually explicit lyrics, which are generally frowned upon by older generations as it is.