SNL Spoofs the Fabulous Mr. Hyde

SNL has been rolling out the monster spoofs lately. In addition to the digital short “Firelight”, which replaced the monsters of Twilight with mummies and Frankensteins, SNL also has a skit on Dr. Jekyll and his randy counterpart Mr. Hyde.

Dr. Jekyll addresses a theater of medical men at a scientific symposium and reveals the existence of Mr. Hyde, his dark alter ego. SNL capitalizes on the suggestion of a homosexual “other” that Hyde represents, and Dr. Jekyll confesses that his serum transforms him into the “peculiar” Mr. Hyde who “has sex with men.” He then asks the academy for a research grant of 10,000 pounds to do “experiments” (either sexual or scientific) at Fire Island.

This comedic representation of Jekyll’s homosexuality brings out the implications of Robert Louis Stevenson's original text. The author never fully describes Hyde’s dark deeds, but like Oscar Wilde’s Dorian Gray, the suggestion of homosexuality is implicit, as can be seen in Jekyll’s full statement of the case:

The pleasures which I made haste to seek in my disguise were, as I have said, undignified; I would scarce use a harder term. But in the hands of Edward Hyde, they soon began to turn toward the monstrous. When I would come back from these excursions, I was often plunged into a kind of wonder at my vicarious depravity.