I’ve discovered that showing the popular Saturday Night Live skit, “Washington’s Dream,”[1] in my early American survey class is a hit with students, and I want you to discover that, too. Play the YouTube clip in class and then ask your students the same question over and over: “Why is this skit funny?” By doing so, your students will give you increasingly sophisticated answers that hit on important themes of the American Revolution and our nation’s historical memory of it.

30 Rock Plaza, the famed filming site of Saturday Night Live (Wikimedia Commons).

Here’s how the exercise might go down.

Play the skit for the first time and say nothing. Then ask, “Why is this skit funny?”

Because these students are being asked this question by their history professor in a history class, the first thing they will probably point out is what is to historians the main schtick of the skit: the hypocrisy of the existence of slavery during our county’s famous fight for liberty. When you ask for details, students will point to one of the three scenes in which Kenan Thompson’s unnamed Black soldier character asks George Washington questions. Stop here to ask the students: Is this character enslaved, a freedman, or born free? (The skit never says.) This is a useful pedagogical question: If you’ve already lectured about Black experiences of the American Revolution, it’s a good test of what they’ve read or remembered, and a useful reminder that legal status differentiated such experiences; if you haven’t, then it’s a useful segue into that very lecture.

In the first scene featuring speaking lines from the Black soldier, he asks Washington, “In this new country, what plans are there for men of color such as I?” The timing of his question within the skit is wickedly smart: Washington has just laid out detailed plans about how, in this new fought-for country of his dreams, weights and measures will be systematized. This establishes the Washington character as a forward-thinking, detail-oriented man, even down to his planning of things as mundane as pounds and tons. Yet his answer to the Black man’s question is a brief pause, before he starts again with the measurements monologue (“Distance will be measured in . . .”). The audience quickly gasps then laughs. A similar dialogue happens near the end of the skit: the Black character asks Washington, “And the slaves, sir, what of them?” Washington blatantly gaslights the man to avoid answering his question: “You asked about the temperature.” The Black man immediately pushes back: “I did not.” A long pause between the characters ensues as the two actors wait for the wildly laughing audience to quiet down. (This is when the audience laughs the loudest throughout the entire skit.) Finally, Washington confidently continues his avoidance of the question by saying, “We shall have two different, unrelated scales of temperature,” and the audience laughs again. These two get the final scene together, as well: after Washington exultantly declares they fight for “a land of liberty,” the Black character follows with: “Where all men are free!” Washington responds with an awkward-for-laughs silence. He then condescendingly places his hand on the man’s shoulders and walks away without a word. The Black character shouts after him: “Where all men are free, right?” as the audience laughs and claps.

The skit makes clear: when it came to Black people, America’s great Revolutionary hero, General and President George Washington, had no answer. In the world of the skit, Washington has no plans to make people of different races more equal in this supposedly “free” society he wants to establish. The joke here, then, can be formed into a question for your students: What is the skit trying to say here about the historical reality of “freedom” for Black people during the Revolution? Another question could also get at the same theme by leaning into the hyperbolic, not-quite-accurate world of the skit: How could our nation’s great general be nitpicky enough to plan out innocuous things like inches versus yards for our country, but not have a single plan for the far more important and literally life-changing things like ending slavery or giving Black people more rights? Your students’ answers should get at what they have learned about, or will learn about, regarding why some Founders-era thinkers (white and Black) saw the hypocrisy inherent in Patriots’ desires for freedom from the Crown while enslaving their fellow man; and, why most others not only didn’t, but saw their own freedom in the new republic as dependent upon Black people’s continued unfreedom.

Ask again: “Why is this skit funny?”

Most likely, the next answer students will give is what lay audiences will see as the main joke of the skit. The skit begins with Washington listing out the different reasons that soldiers should fight in this revolution. The first two reasons are well-worn to the audience and distinctly American: for a country where we “choose our own laws” and “choose our own leaders.” These two reasons aren’t surprising or funny. But Washington quickly follows with the hilarious, and first, punchline of the skit: for a new country where we can “choose our own systems of weights and measures.” Here, the joke is multilayered.

The quick jump from the realistic, historical reasons to an unrelated, ahistorical (read: anachronistic; see below) reason is a funny non sequitur. Like the soldiers in the world of the skit, the audience finds this third reason quite unexpected, surprising, and confusing. Hence, laughter.

The skit argues that our country’s use of aberrant “systems of weights and measures” compared to the rest of the world is worth laughing at. Washington emphasizes that to fight for American “freedom” means, for example, to fight for the right to call 2,000 pounds a ton but have no word for 1,000 pounds. Being “free” means being “free to measure liquids in liters and milliliters, but not all liquids; only soda, wine, and alcohol.” When a soldier asks him to clarify, then, how many liters should be in a gallon, Washington loftily stares out into the distance and confidently answers with a non-answer: “Nobody knows.” The audience howls. The lack of any real answer doesn’t bother Washington at all; to him, “nobody knows” is a perfectly acceptable, even obvious, answer. The conceit continues: Rulers will have inches and centimeters marked on both sides, but they’ll never line up. Why? Because of “liberty, son.” Liberty and freedom are oft-used but never-defined words in this skit on purpose (more on that below).

SNL actor Kenan Thompson, who portrayed the unnamed Black soldier in the skit (Wikimedia Commons).

Connecting the audience’s familiarity with the timeworn and cherished but ultimately broad and hazy idea of American “freedom” to the contemporary and rarely considered minutiae of, say, deciding to go with Fahrenheit over Celsius is a funny conceit that the writers lean into. This conceit at once makes sense—it’s technically true that Americans freely chose our own “systems of weights and measures” over time—and, it doesn’t make sense. The latter part of this conceit is what makes it all so funny. It makes us stop and ask ourselves, wait—why do we use these confusing measurements? Through Washington’s character, the writers give the same hilarious non-answer over and over: Because, America. (More on that later.)

Ask again: “Why else is this skit funny?” Your students will hopefully delve into the humorous power of anachronism. Juxtaposition, here, is the source of the skit’s anachronistic humor. It’s wildly funny to see men of the 1770s— dirty uniform-clad, colonial-era soldiers and the wig-wearing Washington—suddenly talking about twenty-first century things like soda and football or using phrases like “super random.” Thus, the juxtaposition of historical and serious Revolutionary soldiers speaking lines about modern and unserious topics they couldn’t have possibly known about—but we as the audience certainly do—creates another level of humor that is relatable to your students. It’s funny, too, to imagine that Americans’ ancestors fought our revered war not because of the hallowed ideas like liberty, tyranny, or independence that we all know, but instead, because we randomly wanted the right to make three feet become one yard and 5,280 feet become one mile. As if the thousands of Americans that died in the 1770s did so because they wanted to measure milk and paint using gallons, not liters. That’s actually, seriously, funny.

Back to “Because, America.” This gets into the next reason why the skit is funny: It mocks American exceptionalism. Like all stereotypes, there is a glimmer of truth to American exceptionalism. It’s true that our country was one of the first to choose a republican form of government—and keep it—after existing as a colony. But our culture has emphasized this easy truth over other more complicated truths for decades. So much so, that our exceptionalism has become distilled down into one bombastic idea: We are better than any other country, and we don’t have to explain why. The skit takes this idea and mocks it: We are better than any other country because the United States chooses unique “weights and measures” and we don’t have to explain why. An underlying implication—and joke—here is that Americans actually should be able to explain why we’ve chosen such anomalous ways of measuring and weighing, since we’re the odd man out in that choice. But we don’t, precisely because we think we’re above any explanation. But the real reason we don’t explain ourselves is because we actually don’t know the reason. In other words, Americans are proudly ignorant. And profoundly unashamed of that ignorance. Here is when you ask your students: “Sound familiar?”

Hopefully, they’ll pick up on what you’re putting down, and start connecting this skit to issues in the United States today. Ask your students: Why do you think some Americans take thoughtless pride in our country’s supposed exceptionalism? How do you square being proud of Americans’ belief in freedom and liberty with what you’ve learned about what white leaders thought about Black people, Indigenous people, and women in early America? The conversation may naturally turn into a discussion of “look how far we’ve come—or not.” Your students have grown up with awareness of police brutality against Black people and the Black Lives Matter protests. Now, they’re in the midst of the Trump administration’s white supremacist attempt to dismantle anything coded “DEI” (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) at federally funded institutions. Any early U.S. history survey should teach how contemporary anti-Black politics have deep roots in our country. This skit, and your guidance of your students through it, helps illustrate that historical reality.

During this conversation, it’s important to point out something else to your students. The fact that this skit transparently points out the hypocrisy of the Founding Fathers’ claims about liberty while keeping slavery alive means the writers trust the audience to “get it.” In other words, the writers could create this skit only if they believed most viewers were already aware that the history of Black oppression goes all the way back to our cherished American Revolutionary moment. This demonstrates how academics’ peer-reviewed findings do eventually become common knowledge to lay people. This, then, can be your segue (or cavernous jump) into a conversation about the historiography of the American Revolution.

Comedian Nate Bargatze, who depicted George Washington while serving as host for SNL (Wikimedia Commons).

The final layer of humor in this brilliant skit involves Americans’ historical memory of George Washington. George Washington is a larger-than-life figure in our nation’s historical memory. Students will know him as the stoic figure on the dollar bill or from high school history class. What makes him funny in the skit is that he’s played as both similar to this stereotype (as an obvious leader, he often stands while the others sit; he speaks in dignified tones and stares profoundly into space) but wildly different in his reasons for leading the American Revolution: It’s hilarious to believe our praised General fought off the British for the silly reason of getting rid of the u in certain words, and not because of all the usual, profound reasons we have learned all our lives. Having George Washington being played by a literal comedian makes the values that Washington stood for—freedom and the liberty, as the skit tells us—mockable. While we’re laughing with him as we imagine our ancestors fighting for silly measurements, we’re also laughing at him for thinking he should be this worshipped leader when he couldn’t even free the slaves for all his talk of liberty.

And I haven’t even talked about SNL’s follow-up skit, “Washington’s Dream 2.” It’s equally hilarious in its mocking nature of American norms; this time, the inexplicable inconsistencies of the English language (e.g., the first year of school will be called kindergarten but the second year of school will be called first grade; the number 12 gets to have another name but other numbers don’t.) It’s worth showing to your students for the two scenes featuring Kenan Thompson’s unnamed Black character again, in which he asks General Washington—twice, again—if slaves will be free (and Washington ignores him, twice, again.) If you only have time to show one of these skits, choose the first one. Both skits made the rounds on social media platforms after their debuts, marking their popularity among college-aged viewers. This gives you an advantage: you can be the cool professor by showing your students that you, too, are aware of what’s popular in the cultural milieu. By breaking down the six layers of humor of the skit in class together, you can help your students make new (and perhaps even valuable!) use of their social media scrolling.

Endnotes

[1] For the uninitiated, or, for those not terminally online like me: “Washington’s Dream” is set in a Continental Army camp at nighttime in 1777, and features George Washington (played by comedian and special guest Nate Bargatze) giving a pep talk to four unnamed soldiers (played by regular SNL cast members). One soldier is Black (Kenan Thompson). Two of the soldiers are white (Mikey Day and James Austin Johnson). The character of the third and final soldier is played as white within the world of the skit, even though the actor is Asian American (Bowen Yang).