“Hallelujah”: Parody, Political Catharsis, and Grieving the 2016 Election with Saturday Night Live

Abstract

In the aftermath of a bitter election, Kate McKinnon opened the November 12th episode of Saturday Night Live dressed as Hillary Clinton and singing Leonard Cohen’s classic, “Hallelujah.” The performance rhetorically employs the hidden polemic of parody to intertwine the affective responses to Cohen’s death and the 2016 election, thereby creating a political catharsis. McKinnon’s parody, which eschewed the traditionally rational rhetoric associated with the political sphere in favor of a pathetic appeal, capitalized on the kairotic moment to affectively move the public through grief to a place of action.

Keywords:

• affect
• parody
• catharsis
• grief
• popular culture

Notes

¹ Ritchie King, “The Polarization of Red and Blue States From McGovern to Trump in One Chart,” FiveThirtyEight, last modified August 30, 2016, https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-polarization-of-red-and-blue-states-from-mcgovern-to-trump-in-one-chart/.

² Grebory Holyk and Gary Langer, “Poll: Clinton Unpopulaity at New High, on Par with Trump,” ABC News, August 31, 2016, http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/poll-clinton-unpopularity-high-par-trump/story?id=41752050.

³ Megan Twohey and Michael Barbaro, “Two Women Say Donald Trump Touched Them Innapropriately,” New York Times, October 12, 2016, https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/13/us/politics/donald-trump-women.html?_r=0; Chauncey Devega, “‘Proto-Fascist Thug Demagoguery’: Ted Cruz, Donald Trump and the Right’s New Race Lie,” Salon, December 2, 2015, www.salon.com/2015/12/02/proto_fascist_thug_demagoguery_ted_cruz_donald_trump_and_the_rights_new_race_lie/; and Alicia Melville-Smith, “J. K. Rowling Says Trump is Way Worse than Voldemort,” BuzzFeed News, December 8, 2015, https://www.buzzfeed.com/aliciamelvillesmith/he-who-can-not-be-named?utm_term=.ryO6LDGBN#.ovmMKO7nL.

⁴ Michelle Malkin, “Hillary’s Climate of Hate,” National Review, October 26, 2016, http://www.nationalreview.com/article/441441/hillary-clinton-nasty-corrupt-evil-crooked-ruthless.

⁵ Joe Barnes, “‘Meltdown of the Night’ Bitter News Anchor Bemoans Trump’s Election Success,” Express, November 10, 2016, http://www.express.co.uk/news/world/730317/us-election-donald-trump-hillary-clinton-msnbc-coverage-rachel-maddow.

⁶ Jim Norman, “Trump Victory Surprises Americans; Four in 10 Afraid,” Gallup, November 11, 2016, http://www.gallup.com/poll/197375/trump-victory-surprises-americans-four-afraid.aspx?g_source=&g_medium=&g_campaign=tiles.

⁷ Hillary Clinton, “Concession Speech” (speech, New York, NY, November 9, 2016), CNN Politics, http://www.cnn.com/2016/11/09/politics/hillary-clinton-concession-speech/.

⁸ Barack Obama, “Remarks on Donald Trump’s Election” (speech, Washington, DC, November 9, 2016), Washington Post, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/11/09/transcript-president-obamas-remarks-on-donald-trumps-election/?utm_term=.a71208c3c7e9; Paul Ryan, “Speech on Donald Trump’s Victory,” (speech, Janesville, WI, November 9, 2016), Time Magazine, http://time.com/4564832/paul-ryan-speech-donald-trump-election/; and Donald Trump, “Victory Speech” (speech, New York, NY, November 8, 2016), New York Times, https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/10/us/politics/trump-speech-transcript.html.

⁹ Saturday Night Live, “Dave Chappelle/A Tribe Called Quest,” Season 42, Episode 6. Directed by Don Roy Kking, Paul Briganti, Dave McCary, and Osmany Rodriguez. Written by Chris Kelly, Sarah Schnieder, and Bryan Tucker. NBC, November 12, 2016.

¹⁰ Daniel Kreps, “See Kate McKinnon’s Hillary Clinton Sing Leonard Cohen’s ‘Hallelujah’ on ‘SNL,’” Rolling Stone, November 13, 2016, http://www.rollingstone.com/tv/news/see-hillary-clinton-sing-leonard-cohens-hallelujah-on-snl-w450168.

¹¹ “The Fourth, The Fifth, The Minor Fall,” BBC, June 13, 2009, http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00f928x.

¹² Marty Kaplan, “Taking Our Country Back: We Must be Vigilant, and Remember That we are not Alone,” BillMoyers.com, last modified November 13, 2016, http://billmoyers.com/story/taking-country-back/.

¹³ Celeste M. Condit, “How Should our Rhetoric Make us Feel?” in Purpose, Practice, and Pedagogy in Rhetorical Criticism, edited by Jim A. Kuypers (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2014), 40. Zizi Papacharissi, Affective Publics: Sentiment, Technology, and Politics (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2015), 12.

¹⁴ Brian Massumi, Politics of Affect (Malden, MA: Polity Press, 2015), x.

¹⁵ Papacharissi, Affective Publics, 16.

¹⁶ Jay Brower, “Rhetorical Affects in Digital Media,” in Theorizing Digital Rhetoric, edited by Aaron Hess & Amber Davisson (New York, NY: Routledge, 2017), 44.

¹⁷ See Jenny Edbauer Rice, “The New ‘New’: Making a Case for Critical Affect Studies,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 94, no. 2 (2008): 200–12; E Cram ““Angie was Our Sister:’ Witnessing the Trans-Formation of Disgust in the Citizenry of Photography,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 98, no. 4 (2012): 411–38; Brian L. Ott, “The Visceral Politics of V for Vendetta: On Political Affect in Cinema,” Critical Studies in Media Communication 27, no. 1 (2010): 39–54; Davi Johnson Thornton, “Neuroscience, Affect, and the Entrepreneurialization of Motherhood,” Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies 8, no. 4 (2011): 399–424.

¹⁸ Celeste M. Condit, “Pathos in Criticism: Edwin Black’s Communism-As-Cancer Metaphor,” Quarterly Journal Of Speech 99, no. 1 (2013): 3

¹⁹ Thomas J. Scheff, Catharsis in Healing, Ritual, and Drama (Berkley, CA: University of California Press, 1979), 13.

²⁰ Gail Holst-Warhaft, The Cue for Passion: Grief and its Political Uses (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000), 1–2.

²¹ Gary Saul Morson and Caryl Emerson, Mikhail Bakhtin: Creation of a Prosaics (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1990), 147.

²² Mikhail Bakhtin, Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, trans. Caryl Emerson (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984), 197.

²³ Robert Hariman, “Political Parody and Public Culture,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 94, no. 3 (2008): 251.

²⁴ Ashley Hinck, “Ethical Frameworks and Ethical Modalities: Theorizing Communication and Citizenship in a Fluid World,” Communication Theory 26, no. 1 (2016): 3.

²⁵ Amber Day and Ethan Thompson, “Live From New York, It’s the Fake News! Saturday Night Live and the (Non)Politics of Parody,” Popular Communication 10, no. 1/2 (2012): 170–82.

²⁶ See Arhlene A. Lowers and Cory L. Young, “Parodying Palin: How Tina Fey’s Visual and Verbal Impersonations Revived a Comedy Show and Impacted the 2008 Election,” Journal Of Visual Literacy 29, no. 1 (2010): 47–67; Sarah Esralew and Dannagal Goldthwaite Young, “The Influence of Parodies on Mental Models: Exploring the Tina Fey–Sarah Palin Phenomenon,” Communication Quarterly 60, no. 3 (2012): 338–52; Dannagal G. Young, “Political Entertainment and the Press’ Construction of Sarah Feylin,” Popular Communication 9, no. 4 (2011): 251–65.

²⁷ Tina Fey, Bossypants (New York, NY: Hachette UK, 2011), 207.

²⁸ Trevor Parry-Giles and Shawn J. Parry-Giles, “Expanding the Discipline’s Debate Contributions: New Potentials, Beyond Effects,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 101, no. 1 (2015): 122.

²⁹ Joey Nolfi, “Saturday Night Live Ratings: Season 42 Opens to 8-year Premiere High.” Entertainment Weekly, October 2, 2016, http://ew.com/article/2016/10/02/snl-season-42-premiere-ratings/; Michael O’Connell, “TV Ratings: Post-Election ‘Saturday Night Live’ Hits Season High.” The Hollywood Reporter, November 13, 2016, http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed/tv-ratings-post-election-saturday-night-live-hits-season-high-946866

³⁰ Deb Sopan, “‘Saturday Night Live’: The Most Memorable Moments This Season,” New York Times, May 19, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/19/arts/television/saturday-night-live-trump-spicer-baldwin.html; Elahe Izadi, “SNL’s First-Post Election Show had an Entirely Serious Cold Open,” Washington Post, November 13, 2016, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/arts-and-entertainment/wp/2016/11/13/snls-first-post-election-show-had-an-entirely-serious-cold-open/?utm_term=.fabca800c234; Sammy Nickalls, “Kate McKinnon’s Somber ‘Hallelujah’ Cold Open Mirrored SNL’s Post-9/11 Episode,” Esquire, November 13, 2016, http://www.esquire.com/entertainment/tv/news/a50618/kate-mckinnon-hallelujah/; Hillary Busis, “This Is How Saturday Night Live Mourned Hillary Clinton’s Loss,” Vanity Fair, November 13, 2016, http://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2016/11/snl-hillary-clinton-hallelujah-kate-mckinnon; and David Sims, “Saturday Night Live’s Post-Trump Blues,” Atlantic, November 14, 2016, https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2016/11/hope-isnt-enough-for-saturday-night-live/507593/

³¹ Hariman, “Political Parody and Public Culture,” 248–49.

³² Paul E. Corcoran, “Presidential Concession Speeches: The Rhetoric of Defeat,” Political Communication 11, no. 2 (1994): 109.

³³ Condit, “How Should Our Rhetoric Make us Feel?” 47.

³⁴ Jarkko Arjatsalo, Anne Riise, and Ken Kurzweil, “A Thousand Covers Deep: Leonard Cohen Covered by Other Artists,” last modified June 6, 2008, https://web-beta.archive.org/web/20080607153922/http://leonardcohenfiles.com:80/coverlist.php?sortby=Song

³⁵ Dana L. Cloud and Kathleen Eaton Feyh, “Reason in Revolt: Emotional Fidelity and Working Class Standpoint in the ‘Internationale,’” Rhetoric Society Quarterly 45, no. 4 (2015): 300–23.

³⁶ Jackie Hong, “10 Versions of Leonard Cohen’s ‘Hallelujah’ you need to hear,” The Toronto Star, November 11, 2016, https://www.thestar.com/entertainment/2016/11/11/10-versions-of-leonard-cohens-hallelujah-you-need-to-hear.html

³⁷ Josh Tyrangiel, “Keeping up the Ghost,” Time, December 12, 2004, http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1006590,00.html

³⁸ Tyrangiel, “Keeping up the Ghost.”

³⁹ Danielle Allen, “Sorry Hillary, You are the Establishment,” Washington Post, February 5, 2016, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/sorry-hillary-you-are-the-establishment/2016/02/05/0aa7cf80-cc27-11e5-a7b2-5a2f824b02c9_story.html?utm_term=.7718c40e3950; Conor Friedersdorf, “Of Course Hillary Clinton Exemplifies the Establishment,” Atlantic, February 5, 2016, https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/02/of-course-hillary-clinton-is-part-of-the-establishment/460125/; Mark Leibovich, “The Decorous Demise of the ‘Establishment,’” New York Times, March 1, 2016, https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/06/magazine/the-decorous-demise-of-the-establishment.html.

⁴⁰ See Amber Davisson, “Mashing up, Remixing, and Contesting the Popular Memory of Hillary Clinton,” Transformative Works and Cultures 22 (2016); Shawn J. Parry‐Giles, “Mediating Hillary Rodham Clinton: Television News Practices and Image‐Making in the Postmodern age,” Critical Studies in Media Communication 17, no. 2 (2000): 205–26; Shawn J. Parry-Giles, Hillary Clinton in the News: Gender and Authenticity in American Politics (Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2014).

⁴¹ Judith Butler, “Violence, Mourning, Politics,” Studies in Gender and Sexuality 4, no. 1 (2003): 11.

⁴² Deanna Sellnow and Timothy Sellnow, “The ‘Illusion of Life’ Rhetorical Perspective: An Integrated Approach to the Study of Music as Communication,” Critical Studies In Media Communication 18, no. 4 (2001): 408–09.

⁴³ Michael Barclay, “Goodnight, Grocer of Despair,” Maclean’s 129, no. 47 (November 28, 2016): 52.

⁴⁴ Saturday Night Live, “Reese Witherspoon/Alicia Keys.” Season 27, Episode 1. Directed by Beth McCarthy-Miller, Stacey Foster, and James Signorelli. Written by Tina Fey and Dennis McNicholas. NBC, September 29, 2001; and Saturday Night Live, “Martin Short/Paul McCartney.” Season 38, Episode 10. Directed by Don Roy King. Written by Colin Jost and Seth Meyers.

⁴⁵ Mary Green and Patrick Gomez, “Emmys 2016 Women of Comedy the Faces of Funny,” People 86, no. 8 (August 22, 2016): 80.

⁴⁶ Hillary Clinton, “Twitter Post,” September 18, 2016 (6:00 p.m.). https://twitter.com/HillaryClinton/status/777673718982184964

⁴⁷ Today Show, “Episode dated 26 September 2016.” Directed by Camille Connolly. NBC; Morris, Alex, “Saturday Night Live’s Weirdo in Chief.” Rolling Stone no. 1272 (October 20, 2016): 26; and J., L., “Kate McKinnon,” Adweek 57, no. 32 (October 3, 2016): 27.

⁴⁸ Morris, “Saturday Night Live’s Weirdo in Chief,” 26.

⁴⁹ J. L., “Kate McKinnon,” 27.

⁵⁰ Morris, “Saturday Night Live’s Weirdo in Chief,” 26.

⁵¹ Philip Elliott, “Anatomy of a Hillary Clinton Impression,” Time 186, no. 15 (October 19, 2015): 30.

⁵² Today Show, “Episode dated 26 September 2016.”

⁵³ Lacey Rose. “‘SNL’s’ Yuuuge Year: 20 Insiders Reveal Alec Baldwin’s Future as Trump, ‘Spicey’ Secrets and Lorne Michaels’ Election Pep Talk.” Hollywood Reporter, May 15, 2017, http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/features/snl-trump-ratings-bump-you-almost-feel-like-a-war-profiteer-1003540

⁵⁴ Hillary Kelly, “Hillary Clinton’s White Inauguration Pantsuit Is Just the Symbol Women Need Today,” Glamour, January 20, 2017, https://www.glamour.com/story/hillary-clinton-inauguration-white-pantsuit; and Kenzie Bryant, “The Symbolism of Hillary Clinton Wearing Purple During Her Concession Speech,” Vanity Fair, November 9, 2016, http://www.vanityfair.com/style/2016/11/hillary-clinton-purple-concession-speech.

⁵⁵ Morris, “Saturday Night Live’s Weirdo in Chief,” 26.

⁵⁶ See Marian Sawer, “Wearing Your Politics on Your Sleeve: The Role of Political Colours in Social Movements,” Social Movement Studies 6, no. 1 (2007): 39–56.

⁵⁷ See Margaret Mary Finnegan, Selling Suffrage: Consumer Culture & Votes for Women (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1999).

⁵⁸ Laura Ashley and Beth Olson, “Constructing Reality: Print Media’s Framing of the Women’s Movement, 1966 to 1986,” Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly 75, no. 2 (1998): 263–77.

⁵⁹ Vicky Carnegy, Fashions of a Decade (New York, NY: Infobase Publishing, 2006); and Tammy L. Brown, “‘A New Era in American Politics’: Shirley Chisholm and the Discourse of Identity,” Callaloo 31, no. 4 (2008): 1013–25.

⁶⁰ Vanessa Friedman, “On Election Day, the Hillary Clinton White Suit Effect,” New York Times, November 7, 2016, https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/07/fashion/hillary-clinton-suffragists-white-clothing.html?_r=0.

⁶¹ Erika Harwood, “Hillary Clinton Wears Symbolic White to Donald Trump’s Inauguration,” Vanity Fair, January 20, 2017, http://www.vanityfair.com/style/2017/01/hillary-clinton-white-ralph-lauren-suit-inauguration.

⁶² Karoun Demirjian, “Democratic Women Wear White in Honor of Suffragettes,” Washington Post, February 28, 2017, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2017/live-updates/trump-white-house/real-time-fact-checking-and-analysis-of-trumps-address-to-congress/democratic-women-wear-white-in-honor-of-suffragettes/?utm_term=.7dd5719dbdbb.

⁶³ Morris, “Saturday Night Live’s Weirdo in Chief,” 26.

⁶⁴ Kayla and Audrey, “Kate McKinnon’s 10 Gayest ‘Ghostbusters’ Gay Moments of Gay.” Autostraddle, July 19, 2016, https://www.autostraddle.com/kate-mckinnons-10-gayest-ghostbusters-gay-moments-of-gay-345576/.

⁶⁵ Shauna Miller, “The Radical Queerness of Kate McKinnon’s Justin Bieber,” Atlantic, February 17, 2015, https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2015/02/the-radical-queerness-of-kate-mckinnons-justin-bieber/385567/.

⁶⁶ Aaron Brady, “Twitter post,” November 13, 2016 (6:33 a.m.). https://twitter.com/zunguzungu/status/797809682756702208

⁶⁷ Catherine Baker, “Queer Grief and the Secret Chord With Kate McKinnon: It’s a Cold and it’s a Broken Hallelujah,” Little Queer Ideograms, last modified March 27, 2017, https://littlequeerideograms.wordpress.com/2016/11/14/queer-grief-and-the-secret-chord-with-kate-mckinnon-its-a-cold-and-its-a-broken-hallelujah/

⁶⁸ Sammy Nickalls, “Kate McKinnon’s Somber ‘Hallelujah’ Cold Open Mirrored SNL’s Post-9/11 Episode,” Esquire, November 13, 2016, http://www.esquire.com/entertainment/tv/news/a50618/kate-mckinnon-hallelujah/.

⁶⁹ Baker, “Queer Grief and the Secret Chord with Kate McKinnon.”

⁷⁰ Ashley Hinck, “Theorizing a Public Engagement Keystone: Seeing Fandom’s Integral Connection to Civic Engagement Through the Case of the Harry Potter Alliance,” Transformative Works and Culture, 10 (2010).

⁷¹ Hariman, “Political Parody and Public Culture,” 261.

⁷² Hariman, “Political Parody and Public Culture,” 262.

⁷³ Cheree Carlson and John E. Hocking, “Strategies of Redemption at the Vietnam Veterans’ Memorial,” Western Journal of Communication (includes Communication Reports) 52, no. 3 (1988): 203–15; Cheryl R. Jorgensen‐Earp and Lori A. Lanzilotti, “Public Memory and Private Grief: The Construction of Shrines at the Sites of Public Tragedy,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 84, no. 2 (1998): 150–70.

⁷⁴ Papacharissi, Affective Publics, 9.

⁷⁵ In the section that follows, I provide examples of social media users activating what Zizi Papacharissi refers to as an affective public sphere. That activation happens through the sharing of both the video and the users’ affective response to the moment as expressed through the sharing of the video. All the examples, both those from well-known and lesser known speakers, come from public postings on Facebook and Twitter. The postings were found by searching the two sites for people talking about the cold opening and looking specifically for posts where users commented on their affective response to the video. An exhaustive network, circulation, or semantic analysis of the SNL cold opening video is beyond the scope of this project. The focus of this project is the cold opening itself. The examples provided here simply give context to the way the cold opening was used online to facilitate grief and catharsis. As such, they should be interpreted as representative of some of the ways that users shared the text online to engage in public grieving. They should not be interpreted as representative of the overall response of social media users to the cold opening. An interpretation of the overall response would require a more exhaustive analysis than was undertaken for the purpose of this project.

⁷⁶ Jorgensen‐Earp and Lanzilotti, “Public Memory and Private Grief,” 153.

⁷⁷ Elisabeth Nash Wren, “Facebook Post,” April 26, 2017 (7:45 p.m.), https://www.facebook.com/elisabethw/posts/10211586928442452?match=aGFsbGVsdWphaCxtY2tpbm5vbixzbmw%3D.

⁷⁸ HuffPost Queer Voices, “Facebook Post,” November 13, 2016 (10:31), https://www.facebook.com/HuffPostQueerVoices/posts/1301159039942533?match=aGFsbGVsdWphaCxtY2tpbm5vbixzbmw%3D.

⁷⁹ CommonWhiteGirl, “Twitter Post,” November 13, 2016 (10:09 am), https://twitter.com/_teen_problem/status/797863955754405888.

⁸⁰ Carlson and Hocking, “Strategies of Redemption,” 206.

⁸¹ Justin Levake, “Facebook Post,” November 14, 2016 (1:46 am), https://www.facebook.com/justin.levake/posts/10157829217965694?match=I0thdGUgTWNLaW5ub24sa2F0ZSBtY2tpbm5vbixtYXJjaCxrYXRl

⁸² Irene Tsouprake Holombo, “Facebook Post,” November 13 2016 (11:59 am), https://www.facebook.com/irene.tsouprake/posts/10154759568215802?match=a2F0ZSBtY2tpbm5vbixtYXJjaCBhbmQ%3D.

⁸³ Emily Griffith, “Twitter Post,” November 13, 2016, https://twitter.com/emilylgriffith_/status/797874002693799936.

⁸⁴ Katie Delach, “Facebook Post,” November 13, 2016 (12:49 pm), https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=10104413304429350&id=936516&match=a2F0ZSBtY2tpbm5vbixtYXJjaA%3D%3D.

⁸⁵ Claire Lampen. “Watch and Weep.” Mic, last modified November 13, 2016, https://mic.com/articles/159242/watch-and-weep-kate-mc-kinnon-sings-hallelujah-for-hillary-clinton-and-leonard-cohen?utm_campaign=social&utm_medium=main&utm_source=policymicFB#.hLXHeqyS6.

⁸⁶ Russell Berman. “I’m Afraid for my Grandchildren.” Atlantic, November 9, 2016, https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/11/clinton-election-supporters-manhattan-shock-tears/507065/.

⁸⁷ Jonathan Freedland. “The US has Elected its Most Dangerous Leader. We all Have Plenty to Fear.” Guardian, November 9, 2016, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/nov/09/donald-trump-us-president-nightmare.

⁸⁸ Betty Teng. “I’m a Therapist. Here’s how I Help Patients Traumatized by the Election.” Vox, November 29, 2016, https://www.vox.com/first-person/2016/11/29/13763816/trump-election-trauma-therapist.

⁸⁹ Eric Liu. “How Donald Trump is Reviving American Democracy.” Atlantic, March 8, 2017, https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/03/how-donald-trump-is-reviving-our-democracy/518928/.

⁹⁰ Hillary Rodham Clinton, What Happened (New York, NY: Simon & Schuster, 2017), 31.

⁹¹ Hariman, “Political Parody and Public Culture,” 249.