SNL’s Vanessa Bayer grills Sleater-Kinney on feminism. Prepare to laugh your brains off.
We’re pretty obsessed with Sound Advice, a web series in which SNL’s Vanessa Bayer plays Janessa Slater (hee hee!) a media coach who gives sound (re: terrible) advice to music celebrities about their personal image. It’s both a pun AND it’s ironic, everything is great. Sound Advice is basically the Between Two Ferns approach to comedy— an over-the-top fictional personality weirding out the rich and famous, but IRL you KNOW everyone’s in on the joke (everyone WAS in on the joke for Between Two Ferns, right???)
Previously on the show we saw Janessa advise Drake to change his name to something more “hip-hop” like “Graham Crack-a” or “Drake Time.” She also advised that Drake join J-Date. Janessa has also interviewed the artists/bands FUN, Demi Lovato, NOFX, Sarah Bareilles, Haim, Tegan and Sara, Bastille, The Wanted, and LeAnn Rimes.
Most recently, Janessa interviewed Sleater-Kinney AKA Carrie Brownstein from Portlandia‘s reunited riot grrrl band. And once again, Janessa brought her TERRIBLE advice game with her. She starts off by misinterpreting Susan B. Anthony’s “message.”
“Be a girl, get dressed up, look pretty, you know? Guys are running this place, but we can do stuff, too! And for every monster truck and for every Lamborghini or whatever, there’s also a flower shop. At heart, we’re just all little riot grrrls!’
That’s when Brownstein HAS to step in:
“I feel like your understanding of riot grrrls is vague, at best,” Brownstein comments.
When asked to elaborate, vocalist/guitarist Corin Tucker explains that it was “a movement of activists, who did events, played music, made art to talk about violence against women..”
Janessa once again misconstrues, assuming that riot grrrls are all about getting men to “treat women nicely, like, to dinners.”
Then, later, when Janessa refers to Sleater-Kinney as an “all-girl band,” Brownstein gently explains that “Usually, we don’t refer to ourselves as an ‘all-girl band.’ Like, you wouldn’t refer to a male band as a ‘male band.’
The episode ends with Janessa blowing a kiss directed to Susan B. Anthony and saying “We miss you, SBA. Take that, misogynists everywhere,”
So, progress? Of course. A female comic we love getting the message out about one of our favorite female musical movements = the best.
Watch the hilariousness below:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMb0bDay0Tc
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