Key & Peele

Aug 19, 2015 12:37

Crosby and Huggy Bear turned me on to Key and Peele many months ago, I'm guessing just before New Year's. I googled what I could remember of the name and found that it was one of those words and phrases that popped up instantly, no matter how badly you screwed up the spelling. I tried a few Youtube examples of their work and my initial impression was of a couple of extremely bright, well-educated, homies applying some especially new spit and polish on some very old themes.

Cros and Huggy both recommended "The Substitute Teacher" clip and, as it happens, there are about four different versions of it on Youtube. I just happened upon the lamest of the four routines, the one where the darker skinned Jordan Peele (and, don't for a moment think the difference in their skin complexions doesn't play some role in their comedy) plays a substitute teacher for a mostly minority class we are to assume is located in the inner-city. It lasts all of two minutes and culminates in the menacing sub accidentally farting.

That was my introduction to Key & Peele and, to be honest, it wasn't a very auspicious one. I thought white, college-aged audiences must be pretty starved for black comedians these days if a fart joke can still garner a million hits on the internets.

But, then came the winter and (now) summer of "Black Lives Matter" and, suddenly, black lives - especially the lives of the black poor - are of interest again and the focus of a national conversation around race and caste in America. So, it was an especially surprising time for Key & Peele to announce that this would be their last year of partnering.

It was also a good excuse to look back at their work, in deference to Crosby and Huggy Bear. My first (or, rather my second) foray into the world of Key & Peele offered up their most recent skit called, "The A Capella Club". It was pretty devastating. They each portray a black college student competing with the other to be the token black member of an all-white music group. It was funny, but, it was also a window on minority - any minority - culture and what it is like to be alone, or virtually so, in the middle of the so-called majority. Substitute two gay guys for the two black guys and it could almost be the story of Huggy Bear and me at St. Michael's.http://johnwesley73.livejournal.com/481228.html

Next, I went back to the substitute teacher series and discovered the first, and presumably introductory clip (I have no idea whether this conforms to when and how they first appeared as segments on Comedy Central - only how Youtube has subsequently packaged them) and discovered that it had a savagely funny premise: That Keegan-Michael Key's sub is so much more attuned to the rhythms and syllables of inner-city youth that when he is suddenly assigned to a white suburban school he cannot believe that quite ordinary names like Diane and Aaron aren't given quasi-African pronunciations. He thinks the kids are putting him on. In the next segment we learn that in order to avoid further tension the white kids now answer the roll by pronouncing their names like "DEE-ah-nay" for Diane and "AY-ah-ron" for Aaron.

I think those routines are much more representative of Key & Peele's appeal. Their black comedic chops are authentic enough to clue black audiences into the fact that they know whereof they speak while also appealing to young, white audiences who, at this point in history, have their own catalog of run-ins experiences with black people of every variety http://johnwesley73.livejournal.com/449836.html, probably beginning in college. Each have been waiting for someone to tell their stories and it should not be surprising that both Mr. Key and Mr. Peele describe themselves as "bi-racial".

Come to think about it, there's probably a Key & Peele routine about that, too.

youtube, reviews, crosby, huggy bear

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