Jordan Peele's Get Out is a masterpiece both firmly planted in the rich tradition of horror and at the forefront of the growing genre of new Black horror. As auditors of the zeitgeist, we simply had to talk about the splash it made in 2017 and the conversation around its legacy since. In this episode we consider what made the narrative so impactful and we take a closer look at its reception by white audiences and critics who were particularly interested in claiming Peele's work as an example of "Black Excellence." Marcelle and Hannah parse the complexity of the term and pull on Cheryl Thompson's work to understand how "Black Excellence became the veil that shielded people from seeing how our systems and institutions are still rooted in White supremacist notions of ‘success’." To better understand the film itself, Marcelle then draws on “Horrifying Whiteness and Jordan Peele’s Get Out" written by Julia Mollenthiel — an artcile that defines a theoretical lens to help us think about the growing genre of new Black horror: “horrifying whiteness.”
Even if you're a weenie when it comes to horror, this is an episode you don't want to miss! We promise there are no jump scares!
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Material Girls is a show that makes sense of the zeitgeist through materialist critique* and critical theory! Each episode looks at a unique object of study (something popular now or from back in the day) and over the course of three distinct segments, Hannah and Marcelle apply their academic expertise to the topic at hand.
*Materialist Critique is, at its simplest possible level, a form of cultural critique – that is, scholarly engagement with a cultural text of some kind – that is interested in modes of production, moments of reception, and the historical and ideological contexts for both. Materialist critique is interested in the question of why a particular cultural work or practice emerged at a particular moment.
Music Credits:
“Shopping Mall”: by Jay Arner and Jessica Delisle ©2020
Used by permission. All rights reserved. As recorded by Auto Syndicate on the album “Bongo Dance”.
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