SNL’s “Man Park” Skit Shows Us the Effects of Supremacy Culture on Men
Saturday Night Live’s Man Park skit on season 47 episode 6 illuminates for us one of the subtle ways supremacy culture’s conditioning has impacted men’s mental health.
It’s a powerful statement about straight men, women, emotional intimacy, and the pain of a lack of authentic connection.
If you’re a woman and you watch SNL (and even if you don’t you might want to check out the skit I’m talking about toady…) then you probably got a kick out of their “Man Park” skit that they did this past weekend on November 13, 2021.
Every single second of the skit was 100% accurate to the core!
Even my husband was laughing at the accuracy of it.
Woman walks through the door and man, without giving her a moment to breathe (or helping her take off her coat), starts to barrage her with all of his thoughts, his ideas, and his woes for the day.
She, of course, is exasperated, takes a big sigh, and rolls her eyes.
She even tells him, “I need you to go out the house and make a friend so that you have other people to talk about this stuff and not just me.”
On the outside, the premise of the skit is: if only there were a place men could go so that they can socialize with each other and build emotional support outside of their relationship.
In true SNL fashion the solution they chose was a “Man Park.” And yes, according to the narrator, “it’s like a dog park, but for men in relationships so that they can make friends and have an outlet besides their girlfriends and wives.”
The skit is even set in what looks like a dog park. Complete with green wire fence in the background, a hydrant for the men to hydrate at (with IPAs), and a bench for the women to sit and chat with each other about the men they brought to the park.
The men are kind of hanging out in groups of two or three, and then there’s the awkward shy one who finally gets up the courage to approach another group where they thankfully have the same interest (“Marvel?” he asks. “Marvel. Marvel. Marvel. Marvel. Marvel!” they respond).
Though on the surface it’s hilarious, when you take a closer look at the skit it tells a story that runs several layers deep and is steeped with many of the subtle ways supremacy culture’s conditioning shows up in the ways men have been culturally socialized (and I’m not taking about their socialization at the man park).
The skit opens with the line:
“According to studies, many men say they have no close friendships, and three in four report receiving all their emotional support from their wives or girlfriends, often the moment they come home from work.”
This statistic is not a lie.
Men are some of the most isolated members of our society. The toxic masculinity born of supremacy culture teaches men that they’re supposed to be the strong ones, the ones who hold it all together, the ones you can rely on, the ones who aren’t supposed to share, let alone have, their innermost feelings and desires.
At one point the narrator says, “It’s not their fault masculinity makes intimacy so hard.”
Living under systems of supremacy and the toxic masculinity that is a byproduct of that, men have also been conditioned to believe that to be vulnerable is to be weak and that intimacy is contained to only what happens physically while engaging in sex.
In my role as a relationship therapist I cannot tell you how many times men come to therapy dragged by their wives and their main goal is they want more sex. On the other hand, their wives crave the connection that comes from emotional intimacy.
Unfortunately when men do make an attempt to connect, they do it in a way that’s one sided and not conducive to cultivating the intimacy that both partners desire.
In the skit Heidi Gardner says, “When I walk in the door my husband sort of rockets information at me for 25 minutes straight.”
As a wife, I can attest to the number of times I walk in the house for my lunch break or at the end of the day, and my husband approaches me in the same way. Admittedly we’ve even gotten into it a time or two because I didn’t have the ability to ask for what I needed (some time and space to decompress, or *gasp* for him to ask me how’s my day).
In those moments I engage with him in a passive aggressive way, he gets upset, I get upset, now both of us are upset and we eat our meal in angry silence. There was even the time he told me, “There, now you got your quiet meal” (yeah, not my best moment, but hey, I’m human!).
Under supremacy’s conditioning (which btw is also what patriarchy was born of) women carry a majority of the weight of the caretaking and emotional labor. Men, under supremacy, have not been taught the tools for relating. To be quite honest, none of us have.
I speak a little bit about the burden we carry as women in Season 2 of my podcast, Fierce Authenticity. When we’re already carrying a load that’s so heavy it can be even more burdensome to also take on the emotional stunted-ness of the men we love.
And you know what happens when we stay in this pattern and dynamic for too long?
Men continue to feel more isolated. Women continue to feel more unsupported. And the distance between us grows.
Ultimately, that’s supremacy culture’s goal; to keep us out of authentic, joyful, pleasurable connection and relationships with one another.
There’s so much more that I can say about this, because we haven’t even addressed yet men’s mental health or the superficial connections the men make as they continue to lack the skills for relating, but for now I’ll wrap it up and end it in the same way as the skit:
“Men are taught that it’s weak to rely on each other, so in that way, and don’t quote me on this, it’s harder to be a man.”
Living under supremacy’s conditioning, it’s hard for all of us…and yes, it’s true, at times it can be somewhat harder on men.
Shirani M. Pathak is an author, speaker, relationship therapist, consultant and healer with one mission: to help us heal from the trauma of supremacy culture so that we can experience more love and less disconnection and fear. You can learn more about her, her work, and join her complimentary newsletter community at www.shiranimpathak.com.
