The opinions in this article reflect the opinions of the author and are not affiliated with Her Campus or Her Campus at UC Davis.
** SPOILERS AHEAD **
Since its initial premiere at the Sundance Festival, Jordan’s Peele first movie Get Out has been receiving dozens of praises and insightful reviews. The movie is a social thriller that seamlessly threads aspects of horror and comedy into its narrative.
The director Peele, of the Key and Peele comedic duo, spent years conceiving the idea and acquiring the funding to create the film, and critics are uncovering the nuances within the film that tell an important story of the racial experience of being Black in a seemingly progressive 2017.
The story follows Chris Washington (Daniel Kaluuya) who agrees to spend a weekend with his girlfriend Rose Armitrage (Allison Williams) visiting her parents and attending their annual party. Chris worries that Rose’s parents are uninformed about the fact that he’s African American, and as we later find out, he was right to be worried.
During the drive to their isolated, suburban house, Chris and Rose encounter a cop and at the same time, encounter the first racial micro-aggression in a film packed with a series of micro-aggressive behavior. Later on, the encounter with Rose’s parents is also uncomfortable and their conversations riddled with racist remarks towards Chris.
As the movie progresses, we watch Chris have to sit through painfully racist encounters and face a number of pointed micro-aggressions towards the Black community. By the end of the film, we discover a secret brewing within the Armitrage family that puts Chris’s life in jeopardy and insightfully critiques the insidious racism that hides underneath a curtain of white liberal empathy.
While the movie is brilliantly designed to scare and frighten audiences, what appears to be the most anxiety-causing aspect of the film is the critique Peele carefully constructs about white power and its manifestations in the Black American experience.
Chris is initially faced with that appears to be a solidarity from Rose’s parents or a gesture towards post-racialism, and we see this in the way that Rose’s father suddenly mentions his love and reverence for President Obama.
Throughout Chris’s conversations with the other characters in the movie, he is constantly asked if he’s familiar with famous Black athletes or if he participates in activities that are stereotypically aligned with the Black community. Chris is forced to feel accountable for his entire race, and he reminds the audiences that this feeling isn’t somehow precluded from the experience of a Black man in a post-racial 2017.
The film also brings up ideas of Black fetishism, as the ultimate premise of the film is the white community’s desire for physical aspects of Black men and women such as sight, speed or strength.
These qualities are auctioned off for the white characters to bid on in a game that seems a lot like a game of Bingo. Chris is desired for his ability to capture magnificent photographs, and the man that bids on and wins Chris’s body is a blind photography dealer.
The most important theme within the film, however, is the idea of modern enslavement that brings the Armitrage’s business into existence. Chris notices two Black servants working for the family and finds this discomforting and slightly odd; Rose’s father even acknowledges this feeling.
This literal servitude is later manifested in the way that Chris and other Black victims are enslaved by the white bidder who seeks his or her body. By using hypnosis, Rose’s mother is able to tranquilize and control Chris, preparing him for the surgery that will detach him from his body and his mind.
Peele carefully intertwines the idea of white control into the narrative of the Armitrage’s business, claiming that these relations of oppression haven’t entirely left the 18th and 19th century.
The movie isn’t all anxiety and fear as Peele threads perfectly-timed comedic relief into the film with his character Rod (LilRel Howery), a TSA employee. The movie’s well balanced combination of suspense, horror and comedy make it a film that will give you chills and leave you thinking of what it really means to be post-racial in America during the entire ride back home.
If you haven’t seen it, I highly recommend you *get out* there this spring break and watch it!
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