Get Out (2017): America's Gaping Racial Wound

     New York City. The date is October 15th, 2014. Jon Stewart invites conservative pundit and professional talking-head Bill O’Reilly onto The Daily Show, hoping to convince him that white privilege exists, and that the minority experience is significantly more difficult than the white American’s experience. O’Reilly squirms in his seat, citing that back ‘then’ (during slavery and subsequently Jim Crow) whites had greater privileges, but in contemporary America, this isn’t the case. “America is now a place, where if you work hard, get an education, and are an honest person, you will succeed.” While this interview may be four years old, and O’Reilly is certainly a problematic figure, his views are emblematic of a culture of denial rooted in the American psyche that Get Out’s presence in the public sphere threatens to unseat. 

Daniel Kaluuya gives one of the year's best performances as Chris.

Tea with the villains.

     The contents of Get Out has no end to critiques- some explicit, some subtle- of institutional inequality, faux white liberalism (“I would have voted for Obama a third time!”), and America’s systemic exploitation of black bodies. However, the true genius of Get Out lies in the marriage of these realities to horror. Not only are these issues raised within ‘realistic’ contexts (such as when a cop demands to see Chris’s ID at the beginning of the film, and he warily complies), but they’re also represented through horror beats- Get Out contains contains a smorgasbord of horror discourses: body horror, cult activity (the slave auction), and scientific experimentation, oh my!

Director and writer Jordan Peele on set.

     One might think that to merge serious social realities with what are, in many other horror films, outlandish and ‘unrealistic’ horror beats would balloon issues of institutional racism into cartoonish scenarios, but the exact opposite is the case in Get Out. Through Jordan Peele’s masterful script, elements of horror accentuate and bring to the foreground those social realities in a familiar and illuminating fashion. Horror scenarios can even provide new and creative perspectives on "old" issues. For example, the idea of the 'sunken place' has effectively replaced the term ‘Uncle Tom’ as a way of describing black people who are perceived as having betrayed their community. The film asserts that it's all a grand conspiracy, the only reason black people would ever fraternize with those in white society is that they've literally been brainwashed. Get Out doesn’t seek to capitalize or fetishize African American’s oppression, but instead seeks to add to its’ discourse.

A chilling comparison a film professor made during a discussion of Get Out...

     The deer in Get Out is the subject of much online speculation. It's certainly a malleable symbol, something that effectively encompasses many different things, including Chris' mother (killed by a hit and run), and even the historical connotation of "black buck", a post-Reconstruction racial slur, is at play. But the deer also addresses a comparison of black people to prey that is so pertinent today, it hurts. On February 26th, 2012, George Zimmerman followed (stalked) unarmed 17-year-old Trayvon Martin with a gun, before fatally shooting him. Charged on April 11th with second-degree murder, on June 13th, 2013, Zimmerman was found not guilty.

A similar scene appears in Get Out.

     I do recognize and appreciate Get Out as a work of horror, but every time I watch it I’m consistently impressed by how it seems to transcend the constrictions of horror genre conventions. I remember the controversy last year surrounding Get Out’s classification as a Golden Globe’s nominee- it was nominated for Best Comedy, sparking much debate online. On the one hand, I completely understand the knee-jerk reaction to classify it as such- when I saw it in theaters during its opening weekend, the audience was nearly dying with laughter at the exchanges between Chris and Rod, partially because those scenes provide a succinct levity in a film that is otherwise encompassed in profound racial tension. Director Jordan Peele addressed the Golden Globe’s misclassification in a legendary tweet: “Get Out is a documentary.” The entire controversy speaks to its abstractness and elusiveness as a film object. Despite being representative of the difficulties of being black in America through means of horror, it transcends classification and has become a cultural object that to many of its' fans, is much more than just a horror movie.

Rose's duplicity is the worst of all.

     At the end of their discussion, Jon Stewart finally offers to O’Reilly, then-host of The O’Reilly Factor, that in America, your race is a factor- to which O’Reilly hesitantly agrees, and the crowd cheers. Similar to this shaky, public admittance to white privilege, Get Out’s presence as a celebrated film object in the public sphere is incredibly important- the existence of which, I believe, is a significant step forward in assuaging America’s unavoidable racial wound. We have so much further to go. 

-Nick, April 6, 2018, 9:03 pm, from the couch in his apartment.