Lost in comic translation
For four decades now, “Saturday Night Live” has set a high standard for comedy on US TV. Unlike other “old” shows that lose their mojo and moxie due to age and dwindling rage, “SNL” continues to zing and sting, impudently generating caustic comedy from today’s headlines.
A curious offshoot of this exceptional success is that the US show has been “franchised off” to other countries and comedic climes—like, would you believe, South Korea?
Sight unseen of the finished product, it seems to be a really iffy proposition for an American comedy show to get successfully and effectively “transplanted” to another land, with its own lifestyle and laughstyle. What are the chances that it could possibly work?
To answer that question beyond cynical surmise, we caught “Saturday Night Live Korea” recently on E! Asia. The proof of the pudding is in the eating, right? So, was it “yum”?
Alas, the localized Korean version of “SNL” turned out to be too much of a comedic stretch. It did do its own spin on a few signature SNL features, like the news spoof and “Weekend Review” portion.
But, most of the time, it just opted for generically “crazy” humor, with a flurry of brisk and hectic comedy scenes and “blackout” skits to elicit bleats and whoops of “laughter at all cost” from astounded viewers.
Since the resident comics were Asian, the show reminded us not so much of the topically sardonic US original, but more of loopily zany Japanese TV laughfests, like the infamous show that derives weird “humor” from sadistically giving hapless WASP foreigners a really hard time.
There are no foreigner-victims on the Korean SNL, but its shrill and silly comedic style is the same. Unless something has been lost in translation, we don’t get much of the original US show’s more complicated and psychologically analytical flights of humorous fancy—and hubris.
Well, the Korean SNL is still good for an introductory view for inveterate TV buffs who want to sample how the universal “TV culture” is being “warped and woofed” in its latest incarnations.
The Korean show’s strengths include a few of its resident comics, who are unique and funny enough to survive the general comedic morass—and mess.
Given enough time, they should be able to hold their own, without the SNL brand to unproductively bank on for knee-jerk viewership.
