SNL101

Lady Gaga’s second time hosting (and as musical guest) on March 8, 2025 generated a lot of feelings, some good, some bad, some funny, some sad. We discuss the power of satire in the Trump, Musk and Rubio Meeting Cold Open, satirizing masculinity and power in Weekend Update: Lord Gaga on His Unwavering Support for His Wife Lady Gaga, the manic pixie dream girl and commodity feminism in Mascara Commercial, and language and power in No More Slay. Readings include the social history of single women in the United States, the effects of income imbalance within marriages, and a 1979 essay by James Baldwin entitled,” If Black English Isn’t a Language, Then Tell me What Is.”  

Listen at Libsyn: https://five.libsyn.com/show/episodes/view/35660460
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Readings

Baldwin, J. (1979 Jul 29). “If Black English Isn’t a Language, Then Tell me What Is.” New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/1979/07/29/archives/if-black-english-isnt-a-language-then-tell-me-what-is.html

Bertrand, M., Kamenica, E., & Pan, J. (2015). Gender identity and relative income within households. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 130(2), 571-614. https://academic.oup.com/qje/article-abstract/130/2/571/2330321 

Corsbie-Massay, C.L. (2023). Diversity and Satire: Laughing at Processes of Marginalization. Wiley. 

Damirjian, A. (2025). The social significance of slang. Mind & Language. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/mila.12530 

Gouck, J. (2023). The problematic (im) persistence of the manic pixie dream girl in popular culture and YA fiction. Women’s Studies, 52(5), 525-544. https://doi.org/10.1080/00497878.2023.2216933 

L’Pree, C. (2017 Feb 19). Mary Tyler Moore: The Exemplary Disruption of the Single City Girl Archetype. Flow. https://www.flowjournal.org/2017/02/disruption-of-the-single-city-girl-archetype/ 

Rabin, N. (2014 Jul 15). I’m sorry for coining the phrase “Manic Pixie Dream Girl.” https://www.salon.com/2014/07/15/im_sorry_for_coining_the_phrase_manic_pixie_dream_girl/

Traister, R. (2016). All the single ladies: Unmarried women and the rise of an independent nation. Simon and Schuster.  https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/All-the-Single-Ladies/Rebecca-Traister/9781476716572