He is eager to establish his authority the minute he steps into the classroom. Garvey a spice of ‘haggardness’” to reflect his exhausting work experience at inner-city schools. In an interview with The Week, Key and Peele said they wanted to “give Mr. Garvey embodies the stereotype of a substitute teacher from an inner-city school: a middle-aged man with a receding hairline and a neat mustache who dresses like a low-level salesperson. By subverting our expectations of common white name pronunciations, “Substitute Teacher” flips these cultural dynamics and highlights the existence of cultural perspectives often hidden from mainstream America. However, names that some might consider “weird” or “foreign” are perfectly normal and even common in other cultures. White people often have a hard time pronouncing the names of people of color, and students of color know the drill, from those long pauses during roll call to the offhand “Sorry if I mispronounced your name” after a botched, halfhearted attempt. Rather, it would reflect a prevalent and subtle form of racism that persists in our culture.
If the situation were reversed and a white teacher expressed skepticism about the pronunciation of a black student’s name, it wouldn’t be comic. “Chloe,” “Isaac,” “Michael,” “Phoebe”), the classroom roll call provides a perfect set-up to illustrate cultural relativity: why can’t Aaron be pronounced as A-A-Ron, as Mr. Given that English is not a consistently phonetic language and has many arbitrary pronunciation rules, especially around names (e.g. It expertly dramatizes this concept by focusing on name pronunciations in English. “Substitute Teacher” flips cultural stereotypes about white and black names by centering around a black man who considers traditionally white names to be “silly-ass names.” The sketch draws out the relativity and subjectivity of cultural norms - how the designation of something as “normal” or “abnormal” depends entirely on culturally inflected perspectives and, often, on cultural power. Garvey’s cluelessness, we might also ask ourselves: why should a style of “classroom management” in one high school be so ludicrously inappropriate in another?
“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 youtube 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 youtube 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.
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