Let’s Overanalyze An SNL Skit: J-Pop Talk Show

Now that we’ve established that, yes, there are people who aren’t Asian who like Asian music, leave it up to Saturday Night Live to present this in a comedy skit called J-Pop America Fun Time Now, a mock college TV show where two white anime fans honor Japanese culture by looking like idiots. Read how the writers of a TV show are able to make jokes about Japanese people without getting protested by Huffington Post commenters, after the jump.

For those budding humor writers out there: if you too would like to write race and culture jokes and get away with it, add a character like the off-camera Japanese professor who reminds the audience that the hosts are “drawing a line between homage and racism” – that way, people can still make fun of the way Japanese people talk and dress, but they’ll also have a character who reminds them that the main characters are from, essentially, a well meaning Japanese minstrel show – so you relate with the professor which makes you feel smug and unracist, while secretly laughing at those kids, because, you know. And note that it’s SNL, so by laugh, I mean “eh, that’s clever” for about two minutes, then roll your eyes as it goes on for way too long. (Now if you excuse me, I have to go back to my 500-page thesis deconstructing Dane Cook.)