Get Out follows Chris (Daniel Kaluuya) and his girlfriend, Rose (Allison Williams) as they travel to upstate New York to meet her parents Missy (Catherine Keener) and Dean (Bradley Whitford). The movie serves as an examination of racism in the United States, using the horror/thriller genre as a vehicle. Comedian Jordan Peele, making his directorial debut, served his story well by examining subtle racism from seemingly well meaning coastal liberals rather than the overt, crass, in your face hatred from cartoonish southerners that we see most often in our media. In doing so, I felt as if Peele made the film more challenging and thought provoking for the intended audience. Peele has stated publicly that he intended this to be an examination of the racism in liberals. While not as confrontational as other forms, the condescension in the form of not speaking to a black person as you would anyone else and instead focusing on topics and subjects that you think a black person would be interested in and using vernacular that you think black people use represents a more subtle form of racism that black people are more likely to encounter on a day to day basis and that a lot of “well-meaning” white people are likely to exhibit without realizing. In one scene during the large party Chris and Rose have traveled to her parents’ to attend, Chris goes upstairs and the mostly white party goes completely silent and the mood instantly changes. Within the context of the movie, we know why that is. But as a sociological examination of our society, it was a clever nod to the veneer that a lot of majority spaces feel that must put up when a minority face has entered that space and how they can behave when that face leaves.
The film is packed with symbolism from beginning to end. The films title itself can be taken in many different ways. Get Out refers not just to the perilous home in which Chris finds himself, but also as a response to the habitation of these enslaved black bodies from the white consciousnesses that paid for the privilege of having these new hosts. A third interpretation of the title fits in with the film’s allegory; that the tension and paranoia that black people can feel as a minority in a society that hostile in both aggressive and passive ways “get out” of their heads and subconsciousness. The film is riddled with examples of this. For instance, when Dean is repeatedly saying “my man” to Chris or extolling the greatness of the Obama presidency, is that racist or is he just trying too hard to be nice? And are those two things even mutually exclusive? The instrument of Chris’ escape from his fate of playing host for the consciousness of blind art dealer Jim Hudson (the brilliant and criminally underrated and underutilized Stephen Root) being cotton was another example of symbolic imagery, despite it’s obviousness (black man freed by picking cotton).
Image: Universal Pictures
