Key and Peele - "Proud Thug"

Key and Peele is one of the best examples of satire currently on television. Every episode Keagan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele put together short, comical skits that focus on a wide variety of subjects; some outlandish and some that hit very close to home. While the show is known for its many skits about black issues, I would like to discuss a skit that focuses on another ethnic group. In "Proud Thug" many components of Latino culture are exaggerated to a comical degree to bring them into the spotlight.

In the very beginning of the skit, a gang enters an empty warehouse to have a meeting about business and later the leader says, "We gotta sell more drugs and we gotta make more crimes happen". This is clearly an oversimplification of the inner workings of a gang and makes the ideas of gangs seem ridiculous. 

The real plot begins when they realize there aren't enough chairs so one of the gang members has to stand. Even when someone else fetches a chair Carlito, the standing gang member, refuses to sit down and even says, "I ain't never sit in no chair esse" while leaning on a table. The table Carlito is sitting on then breaks and leaves him sprawled across the ground, where he still refuses to get up and sit in a chair. It is discovered that Carlito was stabbed by a sliver of wood and proceeds to die. The skit ends with Carlito refusing to go back into his body and then refusing to go to heaven saying, "Heaven is for pussies". 

This skit really exhibits the extreme amount of pride present in latino culture as well as in gangs. In many places asking for any sort of assistance is seen as weak or looked down upon. Key and Peele took this characteristic and blew it out of proportion to show us how crazy it is to refuse simple things based on pride.