The Re-Pedro Pascalification of This Mind of Mine
The Re-Pedro Pascalification of This Mind of Mine
And Live From New York, it was bound to happen.
Welcome to Hyperfixate! This is a newsletter that wouldn’t exist if JC Chandor hadn’t cast a certain Chilean actor in his follow-up to A Most Violent Year. Sign up here. Support Ari on Ko-Fi here.
It seems fitting that to celebrate this newsletter’s second birthday (happy Hyperfixate-versary, everyone), I would talk about Pedro Pascal. This newsletter owes a lot to his career, I can’t ever seem to shut up about him.
I am not immune to Pedro Pascal. I’ve stopped trying to resist the pull. There’s no point. The Last of Us is on the air and Lorne Michaels said we need to market that shit like crazy! Get that man in Studio 6H ASAP-pington!
What really interests me about him at the moment is how rabid his fans are. It’s not that this is unheard of, I’ve just never seen an actor whose work primarily exists in the Western hemisphere be treated like he’s a 6th member of One Direction in their heyday.
Celebrity worship has yet to be reinvented, but this second wind Pascal has gotten is so fascinating to me. It’s like I’m re-living the premiere of The Mandalorian all over again. I’m seeing people openly rewatch Narcos and Kingsman 2: The Golden Circle to make fancams. I am seeing an increased Oberyn Martell presence across social media platforms. We need to stand up! We can’t be doing this again!
But who am I to deny anyone their rite of passage through Pedro Pascalification? It’s so funny seeing him gain a passionate TikTok following, to the point that subculture was addressed in a sketch on SNL.
In the sketch, Pascal plays teacher Mr. Ben who leads an assembly on proper internet conduct at the school. He reminds the students that they shouldn’t be making fancams of faculty at all, referencing the plethora of his own edits and fancams online (that he’s allegedly watched whenever he feels down).
I’m so intrigued by fan culture hitting the mainstream, and being adopted by it to become part of mass culture. The younger writing staff obviously have a grasp on the zeitgeist—the use of AAVE and queer slang co-opted as “stan twitter language” making up most of the punchlines in the sketch. There’s an irony that isn’t lost on me both as someone incredibly online and a comic trying to break into this hamster wheel industry where I’m trying to hyperintellectualise (or at least try to form a coherent opinion) about a sketch on an institution like Saturday Night Live.
I wrote my undergraduate thesis on SNL, on how this era of post-network television (streaming, the apps, what have you) contributes to audience fragmentation. It sounds like a load of BS because it probably was (I got a First, so it wasn’t entirely BS, I just need to work on talking about my work in a kinder way). Watching Pedro Pascal host Saturday Night Live reminded me of why I was driven to write about the show in that way in the first place because so much has changed in the last four years in the way we consume ‘content’—a word I despise as a catch-all for any form of media—and the kind of ‘content’ being produced is constantly shifting to try and get closer to us somehow.
That fancam sketch is emblematic of this—I used to think SNL didn’t know who it’s audience was as it goes on, that the show’s gatekeepers hadn’t caught up to the new status quo, or were trying to maintain their status quo. But with writers like Gary Richardson, Celeste Yim, and Will Stephen as writing supervisors, Streeter Seidell moving up to Head Writer, and the Please Don’t Destroy boys on staff, it feels like my demographic (and younger) finally have a semblance of a voice we recognize.
They address why the younger end of Gen Z have become “terminally online” during and post-pandemic (there’s not really a post-pandemic, it’s still going on right now, we’re just outside more), why they have to film everything and idolize celebrities or, in the case of this sketch, authority figures. The fake fancam they made with Pascal posing sultrily in front of a green screen set to SZA’s hook on Big Boys from a sketch earlier in the season tied it all together. I couldn’t have thought of a better host to pair that idea with. SNL thrives on self-reference and with Pascal lending a bit of his really sold the whole premise.
It was also cool to watch Pascal, notably a trained theatre actor, really hold his own under the pressures of the show. It looked effortless, almost second nature. One of my favourite sketches of the night was one where he played Marcello Hernandez’s mother when he brings home his white college girlfriend (Chloe Fineman). It had all the specificities that only Pascal and Hernandez could have brought and played to all three performers’ strengths.
The pre-taped segments were alright, they were on the money in the grand scheme of the episode’s structure, but they weren’t anything to cry home about. They were, as SNL continues to demonstrate, responses to whatever’s been popular online.
I remember when Pedro Pascal deleted his Twitter. He used to interact with fans all the time. Until, of course, it got weird.
That “getting weird” always seems to be the natural conclusion in the celebrity life cycle. The cycle starts anew in reboot culture, in the rewatch/reunion podcast epidemic, in getting a second wind when a huge franchise show crops up.
It wasn’t like this for Moon Knight. I feel like, despite their friendship and presence in the Star Wars franchise at large, Oscar Isaac and Pedro Pascal have two very different kinds of fanbases even if they overlap. Isaac has no social media presence outside of his wife & production company’s instagram, but he plays into the whole internet boyfriend thing similarly to fellow Triple Frontier cast member. Pascal, on the other hand, has removed himself from Twitter but is leaning into the “slutty daddy” thing because it entertains him. I’m glad he’s found a way to walk that self-marketing line really carefully, enough that there’s still an allure and the illusion of accessibility. He’s pandering and it’s working.
Again, I’m not immune to Pedro Pascal. I sort of divorced myself from that part of my brain (the bit I used to do on this newsletter was that he resided in the resort he built in my mind) when he happened to gain fans that were annoying and tactless. It’s why I make One Direction comparisons, a lot of their fans are annoying and tactless, as most people are online. I think letting myself back into Pedro Pascal Brainrot gave me a chance to set my own boundaries with how I feel about the internet as someone who grew up both with and without it.
I thought Pedro was very good on SNL, he’s one of the better hosts this season, and I think this new crop of writers and performers are finding their footing better than I’ve seen in past incarnations of the show. Maybe it’s just because a lot of the staffers are my age now, but I’m rooting for them. And I’m still rooting for Pedro Pascal even if the very thought of him drives me up the wall sometimes, too.
Baby (Sher)Lock Them Doors and Turn The Lights Down Low
ADTLM is back and we’re more embarrassed than ever! Returning guest and my bestie Lintang joins me to unpack all the psychological damage BBC’s Sherlock has caused us over the years. You can listen to it here:
Forgive me for the Monday post, I spent all of yesterday rewatching Teen Wolf because the film reboot really pissed me off. We’ll talk about that another time. The following was also written in a few hours sitting in a cafe, so it’s not as well-edited as I’d like it to be.
That’s all for now!
All my love,
Ari