Saturday Night Live and Philosophy: Deep Thoughts Through the Decades

by Jason Southworth (Editor), Ruth Tallman (Editor), William Irwin (Editor)

This hilarious cast of star philosophers will make you laugh while you think as they explore the moral conundrums, ridiculous paradoxes, and wild implications of  Saturday Night Live   Comedian-philosophers from Socrates to Sartre have always prodded and provoked us, critiquing our most sacred institutions and urging us to examine ourselves in the process. In  Saturday Night Live and Philosophy , a star-studded cast of philosophers takes a close look at the “deep thoughts” beneath the surface of NBC’s award-winning late-night variety show and its hosts’ zany antics. In this book, philosophy and comedy join forces, just like the Ambiguously Gay Duo, to explore the meaning of life itself through the riffs and beats of the subversive parody that gives the show its razor-sharp wit and undeniable cultural and political significance. Our guest hosts raise some eyebrows with questions

Genres: Philosophy

272 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 21, 2020

Reviews

[Eli Johnson]

The exploration of what the skits of SNL reveal about humanity, pop culture, and the philosophical examination of the popular characters throughout the show’s history were really interesting. Some essays were a little self-indulgent though, (for example, “What does, “Live from New York, it’s Saturday night!” mean?”) Maybe that’s a part of reading philosophy but that and the chapter on what makes a spectator felt unnecessary.

[Jason Roland]

It was interesting but I think there were a lot of leaps as to whether SNL writers were thinking about Plato and Sartre while writing the Church Lady and Wayne's World. Maybe on Deep Thoughts :-)

Still glad I read it!

[Ryk Stanton]

Very enjoyable revisiting skits from the past and gaining an increased understanding of how ideas work philosophically.

[Jude]

I really liked this one

[Petty Lisbon]

I liked this more than the other entry I read in the series and enjoyed the more meta/real world ones.

[I Read, Therefore I Blog]

Jason Southworth is a philosophy instructor at several colleges and universities. Ruth Tallman is department chair and teaches philosophy at Hillsborough Community College. This mixed bag of 20 essays (part of a series on philosophy and pop culture) examines the elements of Saturday Night Live through various philosophical schools of thought but you need to be a hardcore SNL fan or an undergraduate philosophy student to get the most from it.