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By, Jacob Krueger
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GET OUT
This week we’ll be talking about Get Out, written and directed by Jordan Peele.
Over the past couple of podcasts, we’ve been talking a lot about the idea of using Hollywood genre movies as a catalyst for change— not by fighting against the “popcorn” elements that mass audiences love, but by building those elements around socio-political themes, that affect the expectations and belief systems of our audiences.
You can see this principle at play from the very first scene of Get Out. It’s a classic horror opening— an attractive young person alone in a scary place that’s just a little too quiet— and a creepy score that warns us from the very first chord that things are going to get real ugly, real fast.
Except rather than using the traditional “horror movie” location— the kind of creepy place where we all feel a little scared: a secluded beach, a dark forest, a creaky old house— we’re in a perfectly manicured, upper class, liberal suburban neighborhood.
And what makes the scene terrifying (aside from the terrific score and top notch directing) is the fact that the attractive young man we’re watching is an African American in a white neighborhood.
Jordan Peele has spoken about the conception of this scene as a way to pull a mainstream American audience first hand into the experience of an African American man-- to put them in the shoes of anyone who has ever been pulled over for “driving while black”, stopped and frisked, watched nervous eyes regarding them as a threat, or seen a young family cross to the other side of the street as they approached.
It captures the feeling that this place that feels so safe for so many people, for a young black man can feel incredibly dangerous and unwelcoming.
And then, as any good writer would do, Jordan Peele lets his character’s very worst internal fears manifest externally in the universe.
A white sports car starts following him. He turns and walks the opposite direction, trying to get away from trouble… and the next thing you know, he’s being beaten by a white guy in a mask and stuffed into the trunk.
The safe place that suddenly becomes dangerous idea is nothing new. We’ve seen it in Jaws, Friday the 13th, Tucker and Dale vs Evil and countless other horror movies of every possible genre.
The suburbs as an ironically terrifying location is nothing new-- we’ve seen it in movies ranging from Scream! to The Stepford Wives.
And the idea of the “wrong guy” in the “wrong place” isn’t new-- we’ve seen the reverse version of it in a million movies-- every time a white guy or gal finds himself or herself on the crime-ridden “wrong side of the tracks” only to be instantly mugged, attacked or harassed by people who look different from them.
But the idea of taking the everyday anxieties of an African American man about to meet his white girlfriend’s potentially racist parents for the first time-- and blowing those fears up into a horror movie that looks on the outside like that character feels on the inside-- that’s new. And that’s exciting.
Horror movies are obviously about fear. But the best horror movies are not just about scaring the audience. They’re about scaring yourself. About scaring your characters.
They’re about reaching into those unexplored corners of yourself left over from childhood traumas, bad life experiences, emotional and physical wounds, paranoias and nightmares that you know you should be over emotionally-- but somehow just aren’t.
They’re about taking the childlike fears -- the nonsensical monsters under the bed-- we “know” we should dis...