Response to Ryan's Blog

Key & Peele is quite the popular show and has been for many years now. The attraction that the show has gotten ranges from generations too, as in my high school, some teachers would show us videos of them just for the amusement. I believe that the “Substitute Teacher” video is very well known to most people as it is funny in the simplest ways. The teacher keeps pronouncing the simplest names wrong such as Aaron as “a - aron” and Blake as “Balakey”. The teacher becomes very frustrated as the kids keeps correcting him throughout the video, that he is pushed to the point of breaking his own clipboard. I agree that in these skits superiority plays a role here. This theory is portrayed by the audience being able to laugh at this misfortunate session, which in this case is the whole mess of the roll call in class. I also believe that another theory is at play here, and that is incongruity theory. Incongruity theory is presented in these skits because of the idea that in role call, we, in the audience, do not know what to expect in terms of how the teacher will butcher the most common names. The unexpected pronunciation of the names being called adds on the absurdity of the whole situations, which in turn, represent the incongruity theory.

The other video of the fraternity brother botching up the branding process was also amusing. Of course the idea of branding someone in the first place is absurd itself, but the constant butchering of the symbol was the key point which makes the whole scene humorous. The idea of messing up a permanent mark like that so many times is seen as funny to the audience because of superiority theory, in which we can laugh at this very very misfortune turn of events.