"I have every issue of Sassy Magazine. I like to cut out the model's eyes and put them on my eyelids, so when I'm asleep my bird's never feel alone and the ghosts think that I'm awake!"
“I’m gonna use this deodorant to cover the entire surface of my adult outdoor slide. It’s too fast!” crows Kristen Wiig’s Target Lady, brandishing two sticks of Degree Deodorant — and the scent is Cool Rush????.
This is one of my favourite quotes from Target Lady, the women often described as a “middle-aged turtle with brown lips and a hair helmet” that Kristen Wiig played multiple times during her tenure as cast member on Saturday Night Live. It’s indicative of the curious paradoxes that the character strives to embody — overwhelmingly excited about the most pedestrian of Target’s affordable goods, cautious and scared about everything outside of her job, joyously weird… and slightly lonely.
Here, watch this one:
A huge amount of the humour in Target Lady sketches comes from imagining the strange life of Target Lady, gleaned from the throwaway lines used as regular gags in the sketches.
“Yay, a gift card! I have an adult dollhouse, and sometimes I use these as bathmats” she says.
“I have every issue of Sassy Magazine. I like to cut out the model’s eyes and put them on my eyelids, so when I’m asleep my bird’s never feel alone and the ghosts think that I’m awake!”
As we go through the regular routine of a Target Lady sketch — sifting through the shopping trolleys of her various customers and commenting on them — we get dropped all these tantalising and absurd hints of how her life looks when she’s not maniacally swiping at the till. We get the picture of a woman both psychotically happy and sadly anxious in her own strange world, in a house surrounded by birds, heaped up with weird little projects and Target brand items.
“Sometimes I think I’m a hoarder” she says, grinning. “I don’t know you — but I think you probably are” answers her customer.
Sue. Dooneese. Judy Grimes. Target Lady. If Kristen Wiig returned to SNL, which one of her characters would you want to see most? pic.twitter.com/NLcc4BEBSv
— Gen Z Critics (@GenZCritics) August 22, 2017
One of the things I like the most about Target Lady as a recurring sketch, is that it does follow the same routine each time. It’s predictable in format — you can almost time to the minute what gag she’ll make next, such as getting confused by the item her customer has, and then running away to find it, leaving the customer alone and bemused.
But how that gag then plays out is always so offbeat and rewarding. It speaks a truth about our own lives– stuck in the same routine, but endlessly finding something new or worthwhile in the mundane.
“I learn something every day at Target. Yesterday, I learned that Coca Cola is dark brown,” she tells us solemnly.
Kristen Wiig is a deplorably funny character actress, who could probably make literally any half-baked concept funny. But I genuinely believe this is the best of her many extremely funny recurring characters from SNL, despite its outward simplicity. At her heart, Target Lady is just a weird wig that speaks with a mildly odd voice.
According to Wiig, the character germinated from a time she was served by a lady at Target, who had a kind of unplaceable accent. Nothing too weird happened, but the accent stuck with her.
“But it was her voice… there was something eggy about it?” she explains.
She then developed the characters with the Groundlings in LA, before taking it eventually to SNL.
Focusing in, doubling down, and above all, finding huge amounts of joy in exploring this strange voice seems to have allowed Wiig to create an almost perfect comedic creation. It’s a good lesson to remember! Things don’t need to be complicated to be hilarious.
I think a lot of the joy of Target Lady is that it’s such an imprecise comedic character — it’s not pointed enough to be considered cruel or callous. The comedy is not in the recognition or the parody. So even though we definitely laugh at the oddity that is Target Lady, we don’t need to feel bad about it. I worked at Target for a while, and people were weird — just not weird in this one particular way.
Our laughter also means almost nothing to her. She’s almost terminally oblivious to the effect she has on other people, which is usually annoyance from her customers, or in the case of Daniel Radcliffe’s cameo, forbidden lust.
She’s sheltered, and curious, and sometimes conservative — but never malicious, and never judgemental.
“I’ve never met a lesbian! Do you all wear vests?” she asks, her face contorted with confusion.
“I’m not wearing one right now,” answers Aidy Bryant.
“Stereotype busted!” exclaims Target Lady, genuinely happy to have her world view slightly expanded, from the safety of her till at Target, doing what she loves, oblivious and impenetrable to our criticism.
Target Lady, in many ways, is an iconic figure of resilience, and I’d love to have just a fraction of her joy for life, her relentless energy (after she’s had half an ahl-mond), and above all, her work ethic.
“I’m going to take these and clip myself into bed at night, because I have restless legs — and arms!”.
Patrick Lenton is the Editor of Junkee. He tweets @patricklenton.
