Film Analysis Essay on Get Out

Get out is a horror film written and directed by Jordan Peele. The movie starts with a refrain, stay woke, which is a direct message to the protagonist of the film; Chris, a black man whose visit to her girlfriends home, abruptly turns into a nightmare of uptown racism. In truth, Chris stays woke and non-ignorant to what is happening around him. In the film, Peele skillfully utilizes familiar horror expressions to reveal the truth about evil racism in the US. In the movie, the white community is a determined purveyor of malevolent. And as such, Chris must stay alert to its kind racism to survive.

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Microaggressions are seemingly minor instances of subtle bias that are easily dismissed as no big deal when pointed out to the person doing it (Ikuenobe, 2011). However, when they occur daily, they stack over time. Peele in the film does a great job of demonstrating how microaggressions work. More crucially, how these actions can be scary and frustrating as over hostility to the victim even when the intentions are ostensibly good. For instance, when Chris and Rose hit a deer and calls the police when traveling to her parents' house. The cop asks for Chris's identity card, apparently for no reason. Besides, there should not be any reason for the police officer to need his ID as Chris was a passenger in the accident. As such, Rose calls the officer out on the incident, and the officer is frustrated when he understands Rose's insinuation that he is racist.

Likewise, when they reached roses parents' home, the level of friendliness meted to Chris is as unsettling as his encounter with the cop (Jarvis, 2018). For instance, Rose's dad speaks things that make him seem friendly to black people; he even calls Chris "my man" and insists that he would have voted for Obama for a third time. On the other hand, Rose's mom treats Chris as a juvenile and suspect alternatively while her brother compliments Chris noting his physical fitness due to race. Similarly, during the garden party with most of Armitage family friends. Chris is bombarded with well wishes and compliments; however, every comment mainly serves as a reminder that he is black. As such, Chris's blackness is made a topic of discussion, and it is a ploy always to remind him that he is an outsider. In essence, these actions and statements are made to permit the clueless conduct while concealing greater forms of racism. The white people are clueless and try to be cool in the presence of Chris, whom they believe is cool due to his race. Therefore Peele employs this little, day to day incidents of making someone intentionally or accidentally being aware of being an outsider to create an increased feeling of hostility.

Get out film address a more subtle type of racism, a kind of racism that is so covert and not so obvious. Often, this type of racism is hidden by or beneath affiliation, norms of association, group identity, and membership (Coates, 2011). Thus, it is easily confused with the mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion, rejection and acceptance, ceremony, and ritual. Subtle racism is demonstrated in the film whose principal reason is to ensure and uphold the social gap between the privileged whites and Chris. These types of boundaries mechanisms are subconsciously or unconsciously part of the privileged racial group socialization processes, operant in the society.

At the core of subtle racism, there is an intentional policy of omission, denial, and confusion of the black people (Coates, 2011). As such, in the film, this subtle racism is represented by a pseudo color blind affluent white suburb toward black people. As such, as race declines insignificance, anything becomes a clarion call to justify this difference. Furthermore, the Armitage family and their friends masquerade as racial liberalists. By misdirecting attention to the symbols of racism but avoiding the structures of such. For instance, they let their daughter date a black man, but it is a larger plan to breed racism, as such, racial intent and actions have consequences to the victim. Peele's film draws slow-burn terror from disregard for autonomy, constant reminders of the outsider status, and casual belittlement. As each, a new type of indignity is met out on Chris, he is obliged to ignore it even as they stack up becoming overwhelming. Chris is treated as unhinged or unreasonable because of reacting normally to these treatments. Besides, everyone from Rose's parents to family's black servants to whites neighbors and friends are acting strangely, increasing Chris's fear and suspicion.

Peele inventively uncovers the attitudes white liberals have towards people of African descent. In an attempt to demonstrate the race associations in a contemporary time, whereby white liberals convince themselves that they have moved beyond racism. In the film, Peele demonstrates this by showcasing the fascination of the white, liberal Armitage family with the black culture through the interactions with Chris. In truth, this is before Chris realization of their twisted motives of acquiring favorable black characteristics. As such, it exposes the glorification of blackness by the whites as an object to be accumulated rather than a social membership or identity to be understood (Blauner, 2019). As such, the movie portrays the psychological struggles of black people trying to steer a complex racial dynamic, where the white man's perception demonizes or idolizes black people, thereby deciding the black identity in the process. The movie also draws thought-provoking similarities between elements of a horror movie and the real-life experiences of the black people to reemphasize these ideas.

In the film, the color blindness is illustrated by Jim Hudson. In the movie, he sits alone when the rest of the whites have finished assessing and admiring Chris's blackness. Hudson's apparent separation from the party and the comment about the white ignorance to Chris distinguishes his whiteness from theirs. Thus, Jim is color blind and is put off by others' obsession with it. Therefore Chris finds solace in Jim, but later, we learn that his sentiments are untrue. Again Rose exhibits color blindness when she was asked why she did not tell her family that her boyfriend was black. She responded that it would have made a bigger deal than it already was. This manifests that we are all part of the human race, which white people use to disprove racism accusations (Vargas, 2014).

In the film, multiple signs illustrate racism and the prevalence of historical race relations in the current time. All the well wishes and comments directed to Chris during the garden party's primary purpose is to evaluating Chris as a physical specimen, evaluating the quality of his physical features and spiritual attributes. He endures them in good faith despite not being efforts to sincerely interact with him but are buyer inquiries inspecting new merchandise. Eventually, Chris falls victim to a society that had a full plot to abduct black men and women. As a result, fusing their brains with those of older white men and women in horrendous eugenic experimentations (Vargas, 2014). Specifically, over racism is demonstrated in two scenes, Chris picking cotton and the bingo game. The scenes refer to imagery from the epoch of slavery as they are identical to racial practices of that period. The climax of the film, that is, the bingo scene, is a revelation that the audience is an auction for Chris's body. Thus, it reveals the Armitage family's dark motives, whose literary want to inhabit the body of the black people. Peele does not use a usual monster as the horror, but it's the white people and their racism (Nurhadi, 2019). As such, the claims of white liberals that they are not racist are not credible as Peele demonstrate that they hold admiration for specific black features. For example, Chris and Jim Hudson dialogue, which reveals that Jim does not care about Chris's color but is only concerned with the eyes-what he wants. This is due to Chris photography talent, which was commodified as artistic eyes. As such, the film emphasizes the systematic racism.

In conclusion, Peele shows people how racism can be intentional as well as sinister. The film uses horror to convey the core truths of racism. Thus, the movie speaks to the people who have experienced racism at its core and those who do not realize they perpetrate it.

References

Coates, R. D. (2011). Covert racism: Theory, types, and examples. In Covert Racism (pp. 121-139). BRILL.

Ikuenobe, P. (2011). Conceptualizing racism and its subtle forms. Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour, 41(2), 161-181.

Jarvis, M. (2018). Anger translator: Jordan peele's get out. Science Fiction Film & Television, 11(1), 97-109.

Nurhadi, D. S. (2019). Racism and stereotype in get out movie script by Jordan Peele (Doctoral dissertation, UIN Sunan Gunung Djati Bandung).

Blauner, N. (2019). Commodification of Blackness in Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing and Jordan Peele's Get Out.

Vargas, N. (2014). Off white: Colour-blind ideology at the margins of whiteness. Ethnic and racial studies, 37(13), 2281-2302.