SNL and the Temple of Doom Effect

Mar 18

The Long Shadow of Racialized Representation

SNL Sketch from last week

Last week’s Saturday Night Live skit featuring Satanism and a reference to Hinduism ignited a wave of reactions across social media, with Twitter threads like "Distortion of Hindu Beliefs in Skits Like This Is Out of Malice" and "SNL’s Lazy Tropes Again", as well as Reddit discussions such as "Rampant Hinduphobia in the US: NBC’s SNL Show Demonizes Lord Ram" and "Fruitcakes Raging About an SNL Skit." Some dismissed the controversy as overblown, while others saw it as yet another instance of American pop culture recycling racist, outdated tropes.

For many South Asian and Indian American viewers, the skit evoked memories of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and other portrayals that have long associated Hinduism with sinister or cultish imagery. By invoking Hindu iconography in a Satanic ritual, the skit reinforced familiar yet troubling stereotypes of non-Western religions as dark, dangerous, or primitive. The ensuing debate underscored ongoing tensions around race, representation, and tradition in American media—issues that remain far from settled.

Kali Maa Scene from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom

The Long Echo of Orientalist Horror

For many older Indian Americans, the SNL skit immediately recalled Temple of Doom—a film that popularized the image of Hinduism as a terrifying, cultish faith. The movie’s portrayal of the “Thuggee” cult, complete with human sacrifice and demonic rituals, left an indelible mark on American pop culture, shaping how many non-South Asians viewed Hinduism. For younger South Asian Americans, the impact of Temple of Doom may be less direct, but its legacy lingers in the way mainstream media still struggles with religious representation. The SNL skit didn’t feature Kali-worshipping villains ripping hearts out, but it played on a similar set of associations: a non-Christian, non-Western faith used as an aesthetic shorthand for something eerie, unwholesome, or extreme.

Satire, Power, and Punching Down

To be fair, SNL has long taken aim at religion—Christianity, Judaism, Islam, and Scientology have all been subjects of its sketches. Defenders of the skit argue that no tradition is off-limits in satire and that those offended are overreacting. However, this argument ignores a key difference: context and power. In the U.S., Christian traditions are dominant, and making fun of them carries a different weight than misrepresenting a minority faith that has already been subject to decades of misunderstanding and stereotyping.

Moreover, SNL is not a radical, underground comedy collective—it is mainstream American television. When it invokes a racial or religious stereotype, it often does so in a way that reflects (or reinforces) the dominant culture’s biases. It’s one thing to mock the absurdities of religious extremism in a way that exposes power dynamics; it’s another to reinforce a centuries-old pattern of depicting non-Western faiths as sinister and grotesque.

Representation and the Changing American Political Landscape

The backlash to the skit also comes at a time when Hinduism is being invoked in different and often conflicting ways in American political discourse. The rise of Hindu nationalism, or Hindutva, has led to increased scrutiny of Hindu political movements, both in India and in the diaspora. Some supporters of Hindutva have seized on moments like the SNL skit to claim that Hinduism is uniquely disrespected in the West, often in an attempt to align with right-wing discourses of “anti-Hindu bias” that borrow heavily from Christian conservative narratives of victimhood.

At the same time, progressive Hindu voices have been working to challenge the idea that defending Hinduism means defending Hindu nationalism. These voices have criticized the SNL skit not because it offends religious sentiment, but because it lazily recycles racist tropes rather than engaging in substantive or meaningful critique. They argue that Hinduism, like any tradition, is vast and complex—containing strands of both liberation and oppression—and that mainstream media needs to develop a more nuanced understanding rather than falling back on old stereotypes.

Comedy, Accountability, and the Future of Representation

What does this moment reveal about the state of American comedy and its relationship to race and religion? For one, it highlights the limits of nostalgia-driven humor. The casual invocation of Hindu imagery as something vaguely spooky might have passed unnoticed in the 1980s, but today’s audiences—particularly those from marginalized communities—are far more attuned to the ways in which representation shapes public perception.

At the same time, this incident also serves as a reminder that representation is not just about visibility but about how that visibility is shaped. Simply including Hinduism in a sketch does not mean Hindus have been represented—especially when the portrayal leans on outdated, Orientalist ideas rather than engaging with the tradition in any meaningful way.

The challenge moving forward is not to call for censorship or to demand that religious traditions be treated as off-limits for humor. Rather, it is to push for comedy that is sharper, more self-aware, and less reliant on lazy tropes. True satire should challenge power and provoke thought, not merely repackage the anxieties of a bygone era.

For South Asian Americans and Indian Americans, the debate over the SNL skit is not just about a single moment of bad comedy. It is about the larger question of how minority communities are seen, how their histories are remembered, and how their traditions are understood in the ever-shifting landscape of American culture.