Jack Black was the guest host of SNL tonight. For his monologue, he
went into that routine he does of singing melodramatic songs with
outrageous lyrics. He said, following in the footsteps of people like
Will Smith and Eminem, who were in movies that featured songs they had
written and performed themselves, he had written a song for the movie
he's currently in, KING KONG. He submitted it to Peter Jackson, he
claimed, but Jackson turned it down. It was all part of the buildup to
his joke, his performance of the song. Black then picked up a
microphone and launched into it. In the very first verse, he sang the
lyric "fucking," as plain as day. It's a live show, so what can anyone
do? There were a few supportive hoots from the audience, and I was
amused by it myself. But I remembered reading recently that Charles
Rocket got into a lot of trouble in the 80s for doing exactly the same
thing, saying "fuck" on television. I suppose all of the moral people
will get all uptight about it, like they did with Janet Jackson's
"wardrobe malfunction," which was a lot of nothing in a big way, since
her nipple was covered with a kind of sunflower-shaped pastie. It was a
scandal in the most manufactured sense, but it was all over for a couple
of weeks, and the FCC got into the act by fining CBS some great deal of
money. I'm wondering if NBC is going to be fined, and what the
repercussions to Black will be. Charles Rocket got into some career
trouble, and I think he was fired from the cast. Black can't be fired,
but he could be, like, blacklisted or something.
I happened to record the show on my DVD recorder, and as I played it
back for a closer look, Black seemed totally indifferent to what he had
just done, as if he was completely unaware of it. Did he perform the
song different from his rehearsal? If he had, it seemed that someone
would have said he can't do that. If he hadn't, his insertion of the
change lyric would have to be intentional. Why? Did he do it to be a
rebel? Maybe he did it as a publicity stunt, for the sake of the movie.
But that movie is closer to family fare, despite its intensity, in that
the values projected are basic and sensitive, befitting the period of
the film. Black might suffer some repercussions from the studios, the
opinion of studio execs being that he tainted the film at a critical
time, its opening weekend. Sometimes the executives mistake the noisy
voices of the offended few as MANY voices, giving them more power than
they actually have, and offense more weight than it really deserves.
They've been boycotting Disney for years, to no avail.
This will be interesting to see, what comes of it.
Alric Knebel
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