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“How Dey Goin’ to Kill Othello?!” Key & Peele and Shakespearean Universality

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 December 2019

VANESSA I. CORREDERA
VANESSA I. CORREDERA*
Affiliation:
Department of English, Andrews University. Email: [email protected].
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Abstract

Claims for Shakespearean universality often position Shakespeare's works as resonating with all people across all time. But how far can one take such a claim? A 2013 sketch on Comedy Central's Key & Peele, entitled “Othello Tis My Shite!”, uses satire precisely in order to challenge assertions of Shakespearean universality. I argue that the sketch – which follows two Renaissance Moors, Lashawnio and Martinzion, who attend Shakespeare's Othello – suggests that Shakespeare may find the limits of speaking for “all people” when depicting black masculinity. Yet the sketch's twist ending helpfully proposes the transformative potential in Shakespeare for more effective, authentic representation.

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Forum
Information
Journal of American Studies , Volume 54 , Issue 1 , February 2020 , pp. 27 - 35
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Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press and British Association for American Studies 2019

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References

1 “Episode 130,” The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, Season 1, written by Michael Brumm and Nate Charny, dir. Jim Hoskinson, CBS, 2016.

2 Bloom, Harold, Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human (New York: Riverhead Books, 1998), 16Google Scholar.

3 Ryan, Kiernan, Shakespeare's Universality: Here's Fine Revolution (New York: Bloomsbury Arden Shakespeare, 2015), 7CrossRefGoogle Scholar, original emphasis.

4 Ibid., 4.

5 Ibid., 10, original emphasis.

6 Thompson, Ayanna, Passing Strange: Shakespeare, Race, and Contemporary America (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 42CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 Ibid., 43.

8 Erickson, Peter and Hall, Kim F., “‘A New Scholarly Song’: Rereading Early Modern Race,” Shakespeare Quarterly, 67, 1 (Spring 2016), 1–13, 9, 10CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9 Barack Obama, “Remarks by the President at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner,” the White House, Capital Hilton, Washington, DC, 30 April 2016, opening remarks.

10 “Episode 8,” Key & Peele, Season 3, written by Keegan Michael-Key and Jordan Peele, dir. Peter Atencio, Comedy Central, 2013.

11 I use “black experience” based on the sketch's internal logic, its humor depending on an understanding of a recognizable black experience that can be represented authentically (or not). Cultural critics and scholars alike challenge the idea of black authenticity. Touré, Who's Afraid of Post-blackness? What It Means to Be Black Now (New York: Atria Books, 2012), 5, 12Google Scholar, argues, “There is no dogmatically narrow, authentic Blackness” in a “post-Black era.” Michael Eric Dyson concurs, calling for a “move from exhaustive Blackness to expansive Blackness.” Michael Eric Dyson, “Tour(é)ing Blackness,” in ibid. xiii–xx, xix.

12 Denise Martin, “Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele on 5 Classic Key & Peele Sketches,” Vulture.com, at www.vulture.com/2014/06/origins-of-5-classic-key-peele-sketches-othello-metta-world-peace-gay-health-insurance.html.

13 Gillota positions Key and Peele as post-soul comics who demonstrate “little concern with ideas about ‘authentic’ visions of black culture.” Their Othello sketch would be an exception. See Gillota, David, “Black Nerds: New Directions in African American Humor,” Studies in American Humor, 3, 29 (Spring 2013), 17–30, 19Google Scholar.

14 A comedic exploration of “black” names recurs in Key and Peele's sketches. In one, Mr. Garvey, a former inner-city teacher, substitutes in the suburbs. In a predominantly white classroom, he calls roll, pronouncing common “white” names as if they were “black,” so that Aaron becomes “A-A-Ron. “When corrected, he becomes incensed and threatens the students with discipline. As the sketch closes, he calls on “Tim-O-Thee,” and a young black man responds, “pray-sent.”

15 For further discussion of stereotyping in a modern Othello see Corredera, Vanessa I., “Far More Black than Black: Stereotypes, Masculinity, and Americanization in Tim Blake Nelson's O,” Literature/Film Quarterly, 45, 2 (2017), n.pGoogle Scholar.

16 Martinzion and Lashawnio's response to Shakespeare's Marlovian attribution elicits their most pointed critique of Shakespeare's representational issues: “Thou already tried to use that line of argument when the Jews wanted to kick your ass after The Merchant of Venice.” This potent rebuttal suggests that Shakespeare's problematic characterization of the Other is a pattern rather than an anomaly.

17 Bausch, Katharine, “Superflies into Superkillers: Black Masculinity in Film from Blaxploitation to New Black Realism,” Journal of Popular Culture, 46, 2 (April 2013), 257–76, 258CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

18 Ibid., 259.

19 Ibid.

20 Shaft, performances by Richard Roundtree, Moses Gunn, and Charles Cioffi (dir. Gordon Parks, MGM, 1971).

21 Bates, Benjamin R. and Garner, Thurmon. “Can You Dig It? Audiences, Archetypes, and John Shaft,” Howard Journal of Communications, 12, 3 (Nov. 2010), 137–57, 140Google Scholar.

22 Henry, Matthew, “‘He Is a “Bad Mother*$%@!#’: ‘Shaft’ and Contemporary Black Masculinity,” African American Review, 38, 1 (Spring 2004), 119–26, 126CrossRefGoogle Scholar.