Or: What Do We Talk About When We Talk About Racism?
The only way to really begin a dialogue regarding Jordan Peele's Get Out - a surrealistic and searing Buñuel horror show - is to observe its final image and ponder the implications. Composed of flashing police lights dissipating into a tunnel of darkness while a woman is bleeding fast towards the finality of death, its basic informational grammar, taken without context, visualizes defiant (or oblivious) law enforcement in the face of a serious, life-or-death situation. If you were to take this image and present it to various individuals, the reaction would be a uniform one: "why is the police car driving away from an active crime scene? Isn't someone in need of assistance?"
Taken with context, with all necessary background knowledge witnessed, the real question is: "why didn't Chris kill Rose?"
It's a scene laced with thorns. When the police car first arrives, what did I think? "Oh, how is he going to explain this to the police officer?!" I figured Peele was yanking the fantasy right out of our guts, forcing an audience to realize violence's inherent grimness even when surrounded by devious racists and a sinister aura of appropriation, but the truth was like being prodded by a cow iron. Seeing Rod - played to perfection by LilRel Howery - step out of the driver's seat was equal in sight to an angel in the nighttime; a scene so unearthly that previous visions of a hypnotic limbo feel gravitated to reality. My mostly white audience breathed a collective sigh of relief, but the switcheroo on Peele's part is of greater agency than a thrill (although it undoubtedly succeeds). It provides an empathetic meeting place where common ground can be felt across a silver screen and a packed genre crowd; in this moment, Get Out teaches.
And it doesn't only teach about the idea of what we perceive and how such a notion may be constructed due to staggering systemic racial divisions in 2017's America, but that the thought is *shared*. We continue to live in a society where the combination of a police car and a black citizen inherently alludes to confrontation, violence, arrest, oppression, and yet, the real, and sad, truth is found in how Peele can grasp a situational example of ethnic tension and multipurpose it into a thrill which anyone can comprehend. Starting with this moment, a culmination of dubious cogency, feels like the only logical way to write about such a waking nightmare of a film - feverish, witty, sharp as a deer's antlers - because it both begins and ends with us, the public, the American people.
It begins with us as detached; constructing a premise where the 'white liberal' racist tendencies and lingering, stuffy quirks are subtle in their conversational awareness. You've probably heard age-old generational stories showcasing long-term familial connection with other ethnicities or persisting political issues which only seem to be mentioned for a nod by the receiving party. Maybe you've even been on the suffering end, maybe you've even said such things, but the specificity ends there. Get Out is here to probe these memories - whether personal or collective or cultural - out of you and say: look, it's all around you, and it's in Everywhere, USA, no less.
Jason Sanders
best movie of the year
Gabriel Ross
get out was in 2017? I feel like I watched it 2 years ago.
Chase Roberts
But it ends with us having experienced something divided in a divided time yet the audience has been sharing an examination of the Black Experience. Everyone, in every theater in every city and town, is on the same page, witnessing commodification based around racial Myth and devious, harrowing ignorance found under the living rooms of the rich only to fester in the hearts of communities. Get Out is not a film which ends with America metaphorically holding hands, but it is representative of the divide which still casts a shadow across this land and how whiteness continues to own the prospects and attributes of the black body. Rose being left for dead by Chris, deciding not to kill her - an ingenious, unspoken visual image of black command - isn't the only aspect that sets a volatile message aflame. It's that Chris did nothing wrong.
All for now. Probably more after a rewatch. Formally, structurally, conceptually; a masterpiece of American horror.
Alexander Long
It was better
Dominic Turner
>Buñuel Are you fucking serious? This movie was a 6/10 AT BEST, and that’s being generous.
Hudson Nguyen
Most overrated movie of the year that got really high ratings because movie reviewers always eat up movies that focus on race. It's a 10 minute youtube short idea stretched out and poorly made to extend it into a feature length movie. Boring, average and forgettable.
Joseph Jones
This
Alexander Carter
nice (you)-ing yourself
Oliver Watson
cringe acting
Sebastian Diaz
Nah, it's a good movie. But I do agree that it's the most overrated movie of the year and why.
Joseph Bell
do you realize that using the c-word makes you look like a complete walnut?
Tyler Nguyen
youtube.com/watch?v=SAp4gJwhNI0 I thought the film was ok but I dunno what it is about this scene that I find so creepy/memorable. Every time I'm walking through the park by my neighborhood at night I imagine someone doing this to me or me doing it to someone else and their reaction.
Aaron Allen
>how to get a 90% reviews >be american >make movie focused on nogs
Cooper Sanders
the absolute state of DC fans
shitting on a superior film
Carson Sullivan
reddit: the movie
Noah Cruz
>stepford dindus >a surrealistic and searing Buñuel horror show
Camden Howard
Stay mad.
Noah Flores
It is overrated but it was good
Asher Jenkins
>Boring, average and forgettable Call it overrated if you like, but movie is none of these.
Logan Phillips
>Racism exists because white people are obviously envious of our superior black bodies Suuuuuure we are Jordan
