The REAL Message Behind the Hank Jr. / Chris Farley SNL Skit

Random Notes 102 Comments


Recently, a Saturday Night Live skit featuring comedian Chris Farley impersonating Hank Williams Jr. has been making the rounds online. Originally aired as part of Season 23, Episode 4 on October 25th, 1997, the skit is quite hilarious, with Farley playing an overly-exaggerated caricaturist version of Bocephus, and Will Ferrell and Tim Meadows playing snooty studio engineers mocking the country legend. But the most recent viral clip shows only the first portion of the original skit, and keeps out an important social commentary that the original segment included.

The premise for the skit was Hank Jr. recording the names of the teams for the Monday Night Football theme song that he sang between 1989 and 2011, which was based off his hit song “All My Rowdy Friends Are Coming Over Tonight.” Bocephus was fired from that position during a social contagion in 2011, then came back between 2017 and 2020 before being permanently replaced.

Whiskey Riff recently ran a story on the SNL clip, and numerous other social media accounts have been rebroadcasting it. How people are able to take clearly copyrighted material like videos and post them all over the internet is quite quizzical, especially since you can’t post a video on YouTube with even five seconds of a copyrighted song in it without it getting flagged. Also, this stuff takes away from today’s creators, including musicians looking for attention in the algorithm. But that’s a topic for another day.

At the risk of showing my age, I remember witnessing the Hank Jr. SNL skit in real time in 1997 when Saturday Night Live was considered by many as essential viewing, and have referenced the skit in articles previously. The second half is really the most important part of it, after the most recent viral video cuts off.

Long story short, after a drunk “Bocephus” makes an ass of himself in front of the snooty New York studio engineers, they start making fun of him, and Hank’s friend named “Jack” who he brings in the studio with him. “Isn’t there a barn somewhere where Jack should be sniffing glue in?” the Will Ferrell character asks. Then Tim Meadows pips in, “Someone should tell Jack they’re taping Hee-Haw three doors down.”

That’s when the segment turns a bit more serious. Chris Farley portraying Hank Jr. pipes up, “Hey that ain’t cool. Why y’all making fun of us?”

The Will Ferrell and Tim Meadows characters continue to mock before Chris Farley says,

“Listen man, I sing music for working people. I know it isn’t the most sophisticated stuff in the world, but it comes from the heart.”

“We didn’t mean to make fun…” the Will Ferrell character then says.

“Yeah you did,” Farley retorts. “And I understand. We must look pretty ridiculous to you folks. Truth is, people like us don’t have many role models. So may career is important to many people … all I’m trying to do in my own kind of awkward way is bring people together.”

I’ve searched for the whole segment many times, but have only found snippets of it. But after seeing it go viral once again, I did a deeper search, and did find the whole segment on Instagram (sorry, not embeddable).

The sketch turns a little silly again after the above commentary, with everyone singing a more genteel version of “Are You Ready For The Football?” But it ends with Chris Farley turning to the camera and saying, “Remember, no matter how dirtbag anyone seems, underneath it all, they still got a heart. I should know. I’m Bocephus.”

Of course, this is SNL, and the skit is not meant to be taken too seriously, and someone can run the risk of doing so. But like all great comedy, it’s the element of truth behind it that makes it so potent.

Country artists, country fans, and country music in general are commonly looked down upon by the upper crust of American society, including by many of the media personalities that are tasked to cover it, like Jon Caramanica at The New York Times, and the Rolling Stone Country crew. In truth, they see many country artists and their fans that don’t share their values as uncouth, uneducated, and beneath them, and you see the bleed through into their coverage.

Hank Williams Jr., Morgan Wallen, Kid Rock, Jason Aldean, and others have become the favorite punching bags for many, and in certain respects, for good reason. Some of the criticism they’ve brought on themselves, and it’s legitimate. But attacking and attempting to “cancel” them under spurious circumstances hasn’t resulted in their depreciation. It’s only made them more popular.

Why? Because like the Bocephus portrayal in the SNL segment illustrates, many country artists over the years have become role models and folk heroes for people who otherwise don’t have any, similar to how hip-hop stars are regaled in depressed urban communities. Fans revere these individuals as representatives of themselves in the greater culture, and see their struggles for acceptance and legitimacy as parallel to their own.

Even if you think this assessment is a sad commentary on country music or the state of America, understanding why people find such appeal in these characters is important to understanding their popularity, especially if you feel like that popularity deserves to be addressed or even challenged.

The broad brushing of America’s rural population as a bunch of hayseeds who don’t even know how to keep their own self-interests in line is a dangerous stereotype. Everyone does have a heart like Chris Farley’s portrayal of Bocephus says, and deserves respect and basic human dignity, especially if you want that respect to be reciprocated.

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