“Finally, someone makes sense!” While we laugh at Mr. Garvey expels “A-A-Ron” from the classroom and then goes on to call for “Tym-oh-thee.” To everyone’s surprise, the class’s only black student, played by Jordan Peele, emerges suddenly from behind a white student and calmly responds, “Present.” “Thank you!” Mr. Garvey, played by Keegan-Michael Key, is convinced that students are intentionally mispronouncing their names to disrupt the class and undermine his authority, and becomes increasingly exasperated. Garvey’s pronunciations and offer the common pronunciations of their names, Mr. Garvey during roll call, Jacqueline becomes “Jay-Quellin,” Blake becomes “Bala-Kay,” and Denice becomes “Dee-Nice.” And of course, Aaron becomes A-A-Ron. “Substitute Teacher” plays with our cultural conceptions of stereotypically black and white names.
#Key and peele substitute series#
Like other Key & Peele sketches that elicit laughter while delivering social commentary, the “Substitute Teacher” series brilliantly explores cultural relativism and educational inequality. Garvey does not follow that well-worn path: he is paranoid that his well-behaved students are “messing” with him and, in response, takes an excessively aggressive and authoritarian tack, creating hilarious classroom interactions. The sketch offers a parody of the familiar film convention of white teachers as inner-city savior figures, in which they overcome resistance from unmotivated students of color to eventually lead them, through tough love, to a bright future.
#Key and peele substitute full#
Garvey, a black substitute teacher from an inner-city school, is maladapted to a classroom full of white middle-class students.
The success of the sketch is, in part, attributed to its simple premise: Mr. This is a now iconic line from “Substitute Teacher,” Key & Peele’s most viewed comedy sketch on YouTube, with 188 million views and counting. Garvey, a substitute teacher, at Aaron, an innocent-looking student, pointing at him with both an index finger and a pinky. Chava Willig Levy on Eric Satie’s Gymnopédie No.“You done messed up, A-A-Ron!” yells Mr.on Christina Rossetti’s In The Bleak Midwinter (1872) on Christina Rossetti’s In The Bleak Midwinter (1872).Rob on Wassily Kandinsky’s Yellow-Red-Blue (1925).on Wassily Kandinsky’s Yellow-Red-Blue (1925).Wassily Kandinsky’s Yellow-Red-Blue (1925).
“You done messed up, A-A-Ron!”Įnter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email. With excellent contributions from the supporting cast of students whose names are so amusingly mangled, it’s very, very funny.
The concept of Substitute Teacher is very clever and Key absolutely nails his character. Any attempted correction is seen as an affront and there’s no way he’s going to take it, so he forces them to acknowledge themselves by his incorrect pronunciations and threatens to send them to Principal O’Shaughnessy’s office (whose name he pronounces “O-Shag-hennessy”). Since Mr Garvey is presumably used to teaching kids with first names having every spelling and pronunciation under the sun, he struggles with the regular spellings and pronunciations of these white kids’ names: when taking the class roll he pronounces Jacqueline as “Jay-kwellin”, Blake as “Balarkay”, Denise as “Dee-nice” and Aaron as “A-A-Ron”. In these, Key plays Mr Garvey, an angry and intimidating substitute teacher and veteran of inner-city schooling, who has come to teach a class of white, mild-mannered suburban students. Key and Peele are black Americans and their sketches often focus on ethnic stereotypes and social awkwardness in race relations but they are very funny with it, and no more so than in their two Substitute Teacher sketches.
#Key and peele substitute tv#
The two first worked together on American sketch comedy series Mad TV but broke out with their own series on Comedy Central. I have seen the first two of those movies, and they are intriguing, slick psychological horror films, but it’s his comedy with partner Keegan-Michael Key that interests us here. I came across the comedy duo Key & Peele just prior to Jordan Peele’s directorial career blowing up with the release of his films Get Out (2017), Us (2019) and, just last month, Nope.
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