Last night’s Rachel Brosnahan-hosted episode of SNL included a Kool-Aid-themed parody of the Gillette’s commercial “We Believe.” Like its inspiration, this fake-ad aims to sell a product by tackling toxic masculinity — but in this case, the pernicious culture is specifically men crashing through walls with jugs of Kool-Aid saying “Oh yeah!”
The sketch begins with a recreation of one of those old ’80s ads where two teenage boys are talking about how they worked up a big thirst during basketball practice, and the Kool-Aid mascot crashes through the wall, much to their delight. “Is this a Kool-Aid man?” a voice says. “Oh yeah? More like oh no.” The action then shifts to a montage of boys and men imitating the Kool-Aid Man in all sorts of absurd scenarios, including a business presentation from a female executive. “Something finally changed,” the narrator says, as news anchors report about Kool-Aid-related controversies. “There will be no going back, because we believe in the best in a Kool-Aid man, to say the right thing, and act the right way.” The sketch ends with clips of bros helping other bros curb their Kool-Aid Man impulses.
While it’s very funny to watch comedians Beck Bennet and Alex Moffat channel the ’80s mascot, this sketch also works because it skillfully skewers the self-serious tone of the original commercial. And “We Believe” is certainly ripe for parody: As Vox’s Kaitlyn Tiffany notes, the Gillette commercial is “a blatant attempt to make money off a painful and ongoing collective action that has not even an indirect relationship to face razors.”
• SNL [YouTube]
• Why Gillette’s toxic masculinity ad is annoying both sexists and feminists [Vox]
