Principal Frye: Valentine’s Day Dance

http://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/principal-frye-valentines-day/n32605

This video is a sketch from Saturday Night Live titled Principal Frye: Valentine’s Day Dance. The sketch is from a high school dance in which the theme is abstinence. While the sketch speaks of abstinence and has a couple mention their experience, it ultimately is making fun of abstinence with the way it is spoken about and the students who mention it.

Virginity Loss Narratives in “Teen Drama” Television Programs explains several scripts for virginity loss in teen dramas. Included is the abstinence script, which indicates “a specific meaning of virginity as a gift, the pleasures of virginity and the positive consequences for maintaining virginity, and the physical, mental, and social dangers of sex and the negative consequences of premarital sex” (Kelly, 2010). In the SNL sketch, a couple tells the high school students “don’t do that thing until you get that ring” (2013). This quote may sound like it is promoting abstinence and the employing the script about maintaining virginity until marriage; it makes fun of this idea. The speech is followed by negative comments and booing from the audience. Therefore this clip is making fun of the abstinence script, possibly suggesting that this script may no longer hold.

This clip was created in 2013 while Carpenter’s study was done in 2005. This demonstrates that while the abstinence script may have been present in the teen dramas that were researched, the same scripts may no longer hold. SNL viewers consist of a wide range of ages beginning mainly with teenagers and continuing with fifty-year-olds. Although the dramas researched and SNL both have viewers that are in their teen years, they apply the script in opposite ways. While 7^th Heaven and One Tree Hill apply the abstinence script with the theme of virginity as a gift, SNL applies the same script however with humor added. The addition of humor has a drastically different effect as compared to the script being talked about seriously. The way the script is employed in SNL may cause high school viewers to want to lose their virginity because they may feel embarrassed after watching the sketch.

The abstinence script portrays the negative consequences of premarital sex. While SNL describes one negative consequence, it is not realistic. “You have sex, you explode,” is a quote from this clip (2013). This is not a true consequence of sex; therefore the clip is making fun of the dangers of sex rather than truly stating the dangers. Additionally, it is casually mentioned in the SNL sketch that someone gave birth in the photo booth. This mention of a high school girl giving birth is meant to cause laughter among the audience. This is similar to Coach Carr’s speech in Mean Girls that states, “Don’t have sex, because you will get pregnant and die” (Michaels, 2004). These examples may cause viewers to think of sex less heavily due to the humor in the way virginity loss, and even childbirth is spoken about. Overall, these examples employ the abstinence script in a humorous way, suggesting that the findings from the reading may no longer apply to media content today.

References:

Kelly, M. (2010). Virginity Loss Narratives in “Teen Drama” Television Programs. Journal of Sex Research, 47:5, 479-489.

Michaels, L. (Director). (2004). Mean Girls [Motion Picture]. Paramount.

Watch Principal Frye: Valentine’s Day Dance from Saturday Night Live on NBC.com. (2013). Retreived September 28, 2015.