Kevin’s Hart’s SNL Turn as “Pope Quvenzhane”: Seriously Not Funny

Kevin Hart’s “hilarious” sketch from last Saturday’s episode of Saturday Night Live, in which he donned a dress and mocked 9-year-old “Beasts of the Southern Wild” star Quvenzhane Wallis, was anything but amusing.  In what was ostensibly a skit spoofing CNN’s show the “Situation Room” and host Wolf Blitzer, SNL pounced on a tasteless opportunity to craft yet another media attack on the child actress and Oscar nominee.  Hart’s SNL debut, which received tepid reviews, had more than a few strange race moments and missed marks.  Yet in the “Situation Room” sketch alone, Hart managed to fall for the “black comic in a dress” trick, demean a talented black girl, and aid in discrediting the notion of a black pope.

Set up as a news segment, the skit pokes light fun at anchor Blitzer’s (Jason Sudeikis) occasional mumbling and the hokey news banter between Blitzer and correspondent Erin Carbonal (Cecliy Strong).  Initially, the skit appears to be yet another rag on CNN’s obsession with the Pope’s successor and other less than “newsy news”, but it becomes clear that the joke isn’t on real life Blitzer or the news network.

In the sketch, Strong’s character posits that the selection of Ghana’s Cardinal Peter Turkson as the “first African pope” (not likely the first, actually) would signal a “new, more progressive Catholic Church”.  Seconds later, she announces the Conclave of Cardinals has selected a new pope: Quvenzhane Wallis.  Out walks Kevin Hart, dressed as “Quvenzhane Wallis” in a blue dress reminiscent of the child’s Oscar night gown and making a decidedly unfortunate little girl – with facial hair, earrings, loosely applied curls atop his closely shorn head, and a pope’s mitre.

“Pope Quvenzhane” is hailed as the first African American, first female, and first child pope. And then it gets worse.

Hart-as-Wallis strikes “her signature muscle man pose”, does the Dougie (a shallow dig at the First Lady, Dougie connoisseur), and announces, in alleged Latin, “Who Da Man? I’m Da Man”, before “riding a cardinal like a horsey”, a moment Blitzer punctuates with thinly veiled blue joke.  As Hart executes each antic, “Blitzer” and “Carbonal” quip about Hart-as-Wallis’s cuteness, but the compliments ring hollow beneath the fluffy misogyny, subtly derisive black/hip-hop cultural references and monolithic suggestions. Note to SNL: There are many African American Catholics, and many in Louisiana, where Wallis is from. 

Despite a thin frosty layer, the sketch screams: Isn’t it all so ridiculous? A black man considered for pope? That makes about as much sense as appointing Quvenzhane Wallis to the Papacy…or about as much sense as nominating a little black girl for an Oscar or celebrating her achievements!  It’s all just ludicrous!  It’s hilarious!  It’s as funny as a black man in a dress!

SNL frequently offers up negative or troubling images of black womanhood.  But this depiction was a new low, one that signaled a willingness to grasp at thin air for the chance to jump on the bandwagon of assaults launched at a child actress by a cavalcade of cultural bullies, and one that manipulated Wallis’s image and signature confidence for the purposes of ridicule.

With the show, SNL joined a larger trend of public insults hurled at the young Wallis in recent weeks.

Kevin Hart’s participation as a central figure was a significant betrayal, because, as an African American man, his performance sanctioned this hideous behavior.  His choice is heartbreaking, because Hart is the father of a beautiful daughter, a little brown girl about the age Quvenzhane Wallis was when she shot “Beasts”.  It’s disappointing because Hart has spoken fondly of his own late mother, and the sacrifices she made for him.  As “Pope Quvenzhane”, Hart gleefully turned his back on black girls and women for a cheap, hackneyed skit.  (Portraying Ghanaian Cardinal Peter Turkson, Kenan Thompson was dead wrong too, but we expect little from someone so consistent in his lack of integrity).

Up until now, the string of attacks on Wallis have come largely white men or the halls of white male-dominated institutions.  These men seem to be incensed by Little Miss Quvenzhane’s power – and most have been too cowardly to own it.  For his part, Oscar host Seth MacFarlane didn’t bother to hide.  He used the bully pulpit of the nationally televised Oscar awards to undermine Wallis’s accomplishments and to make an aggressively inappropriate and suggestive joke about Wallis and George Clooney.  Even after a raft of racist, misogynist jokes, this disgusting remark about a 9-year old was a shocker.

But notably during Oscar week, three nameless representatives of white media publicly disrespected or berated the talented starlet.  A reporter, apparently too disrespectful and to learn Wallis’s name, decided to rename her “Annie”, a reference to her newly landed title role.  Miss Quvenzhane set the reporter straight, and right quick, but Ryan Seacrest and others took to using “Miss Q” and “Little Q” in shameless shows of dismissal.

Two other men, ensconced in anonymity and powerful majority institutions, didn’t bother to show their faces.  An Oscar Academy member pretended to critique Wallis’s performance while actually railing against her representation of cultural difference, referring to her contemptuously as “Alphabet Wallis” (because Quvenzhane Wallis is so much more difficult and outrageous than, say, Zack Galifianakis or Arnold Schwarzenegger).  An innominate Onion writer called Wallis the C-word, tweeting the sexually violent moniker to millions of followers on Oscar night.

Each of these culprits seemed terribly keen on renaming young Quvenzhane, an age-old practice of those seeking to control and suppress the self-determination of women and people of color.  And each of these cowardly acts points to a series of deeper truths about the backlash Quvenzhane Wallis has endured in recent weeks.  Much of the left-wing press and blogosphere have failed to make a concerted effort to call attention to these attacks, the body of which has been unprecedented and unmatched – We don’t remember these attacks on Dakota Fanning or Olson Twins as such young ages because they never happened.   Have watchdogs fallen down on the job because Quvenzhane Wallis is a talented, beautiful little black girl?

It’s important to note that these attacks are about Quvenzhane Wallis and they are not about Quvenzhane Wallis.  Recent incidents suggest that some Americans are riled by depictions of accomplished, high-powered black women and girls.  The prospect of thriving black women and girls in The White House was a call to arms for many who attacked The First Lady, the First Grandmother and the Obama daughters.  Malia’s natural hairstyles, especially, were a constant source of ire heaped on the family in the Conservative talk world.  While the press now understands that the Obama girls are largely off limits, Quvenzhane and other outstanding black girls and young women in the public eye remain vulnerable.  When Gabrielle Douglass went for the gold, America decided to rail about her hair.  When Venus Williams expressed elation over a rare embrace by an American audience at the 2012 U.S. Open, she was berated for being un-American.  When “Rue” played the Magical Negro savior and finally sacrificed her very life for “Katniss Everdeen”, young fans just couldn’t get into it because she was a black girl.

Back in the 1980s, “Rudy Huxtable” didn’t experience attacks at this level of intensity, but then, no one knew she could grow up to be Michelle Obama or Condelezza Rice.

During his SNL initiation last Saturday, Hart succeeded at a number of things.   He became another statistic in the ritual social castration of black men via surrogate black male comics in dresses– a lingering trope that even Dave Chappelle has taken the time to warn us about.   In a another sense, he joined the comic tradition of donning feminine costuming for sole purpose of humiliating women and girls – These performances are about ridicule, not comments on genuine gender complexity.  He participated in the age-old neutering of black children in media, a la “Farina” and “Buckwheat” of Our Gang and the Little Rascals, who, like their adult counterparts, were frequently represented as disempowered, de-sexed failures of white American standards of both femininity and masculinity.

But as a father, he also failed to protect Quvenzhane Wallis, along with his own daughter and so many little black girls who deserve to live in a country that upholds their right to excel.  Hart is a unique talent who fell hard on this skit for a chance at mainstream accolades, and I hope it was worth it.

Because while his performance was a lot of things, it wasn’t the least bit funny.

Tara Lake is a writer, artist, and educator based in Atlanta, GA.  She holds an M.A. in African American Studies from the University of California, Los Angeles.