Has anyone ever found Kenan Thompson funny? He was the worst on all that as a kid and his performances on SNL disgrace the comedic tradition of that show. He may have had a few sketches that made me giggle, but he has been on the show for 15 years. I feel like getting it right less times than I have fingers does not warrant him still being on the show or getting his own sitcom.
I think the brilliance of Kenan Thompson is that he's not only very funny, he's a funny straight-man; his reactions (or underreactions) to things are often as funny as the things themselves. And that's a tricky water to wade into, because "funny black man reacting to things" is a long-standing trope with some dicey racial baggage to it. If you've ever heard the word "ghosteses," or heard the Christmas song "'Zat You, Sanna Claus?," you'll know that Hollywood and the mostly-white media has a long history of milking the old-fashioned stereotype that black people are superstitious, dim-witted, cowardly and prone to overreaction. And Kenan, with his giant eyes and wide smile, looks so much like a classic minstrel-show icon that his tendency to play the overreacting type would be racist... if it weren't for the fact that when Kenan overreacts or freaks out in a sketch, he's almost always right, and everyone else underplaying looks like a fool. (The "ghost kids" sketch a few weeks ago was a perfect example of this: he's not a buffoon overreacting to some Scooby-Doo shenanigans, he's being logically freaked out- in a funny way- by weird scenarios everyone else is taking for granted.)
You can almost see Kenan as the last minstrel comedian, but one who has recaptured and recontextualized these stereotyped traits and performance styles to make him the joker instead of the butt of the jokes. His enormous facial expressions, bugged-out eyes and comical overreactions are the sort of things you would have seen in minstrelsy or vaudeville (Kenan is DEFINITELY a disciple of vaudevillian Mantan Moreland), but even when he plays with stereotypes, Kenan is always smarter, slyer or more in control than his (often white) counterparts. If it's a minstrel show, Kenan is the interlocutor, not the clown.
Plus: Kenan got nominated for Kenan and Aidy for Shrill. Also, Alec Baldwin, Dave Chappelle, Daniel Kaluuya, Dan Levy, Maya Rudolph, and Kristen Wiig all got nominated for hosting and/or appearing as Trump.
We all love him. Heβs wholesome AF. Why is he not plastered everywhere?
