Unveiling Cinematic Mastery: Memory and Trauma in Jordan Peele's 'Get Out' - Paper Example

This film is about trauma scenes that are characterized by paralysis and entrapment sense and experience incomprehensibility that is captured in the idea that a human being’s body can be inhabited and invaded by another alien being. Trauma can be felt when someone’s body is intruded on and inhabited by a very disturbing and uncontrollable being followed by relentless thoughts as if someone is out of their own mind's control. The opening of the ''Get Out horror ''movie initiates an anxious anticipation mood and emotional urgency that is displayed throughout the movie. A bad omen is seen when a deer out of nowhere hits Chris and Rose’s car followed by a wounded animal groaning (Jeffries 139-149). Walter is the ghastly presence of a groundkeeper after entering the frame from offscreen with a slow dolly out means and later in the night from the surrounding woods at a high speed followed by a jarring string score.

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Georgina Armitage’s’ housekeeper is serving Chris some iced tea while staring into the offscreen space which leads to the drink spilling all over the place and later on appearing on the other darkened corridor side producing an empathic clang sound. That menace in ''Get Out Through'' becomes palpable a few minutes after the auction scene which is realized aesthetically by the point of view means cutting followed by a suspenseful score from Michael Abel, mingled by a banjo atonal plucking from Jeremy's brother to Rose.

We all witness the return of Chris and Rose to the Armitage house followed by a welcome of silent greetings that openly go to triumphant (Georgina, Walter, and Dean) coming from contemptuous Jeremey and Missy. Chris finds photographs of Rose inside the house with several black men including Walter and one woman, Georgina. This scene of Chris going through the photos does not only represent a narrative that fires light on the following events but also a traumatized event, a memory where the past repeats itself in the present in the form of hidden memories and events.

In this scene, the cabinet doors that contain the bright red show box where these photographs are kept stay open as if waiting for Chris to see them, while a sinister type of music in the form of a soundtrack starts. An aura of a hunted past is displayed by these photos, with a ghost in the form of persons in the past making demands to be found and resurfaced in the present as it were before. In Chris's attempt to escape, he is prevented and surrounded on all his sides by the family, while a strange monologue is busted by Dean (Landsberg 629-642). In a later scene composition of the wide-angle image and music that centralizes the setting of Dean, in the operating room, suggest that he finds and sees himself as a god-like figure with the power to give the members of his cult called “Behold the Coagula” eternal youth.

As stated by Stephen King, we indeed make horror movies so as the help us cope with real-life ones. Making and creating horror movies has been an effective outlet for entertainment and they have also been an ideal genre where the cultural and social fears affecting and roaming in our societies can be explored. One of the successful examples that have recently been created is Get Out which is directed by Jordan Peele. In this story, we are going to explore the manners in which cinematic form (the uses of camera shots and angles, lighting, special effects, sound, and music, conveys memory and trauma in Jordan Peele’s Get Out (2017). Understanding how and when to reveal any type of information provides the viewer with the chance to concentrate on the important details of the narrative and builds suspense.

For example, let us concentrate on a moment in the Get Out scene where Chris gets into Missy's office first before proceeding to the sunken place. In this situation, there is a Missy close-up that shows and displays her power. Chris is also cut off from his surroundings’ broader context. It is so unfortunate for Chris to follow the teacup tapping and Missy’s steady tone in her voice which cannot be escaped and avoided. Missy’s confidence is bolstered by the pacing and closeup and at the moment the only thing that Chris can do is stay helplessly until she says “Now, sink into the floor. “All of a sudden, Peele switches from the sunken place inside to the perspective and then transitions to a very wide-angle show, slowing the scene speed down to around two hundred frames per second.

All the objects in the background appear to be so small and the near foreground objects appear extremely larger as you keep transitioning to a wide-angle shot. The perspective of the scene is hence facilitated by displaying quality in the form of three dimensions to a flatter surface. In this scene situation, the paralyzed body of Chris is seen to be drifting towards the viewer as the living room and Missy Armitage gets farther and farther away from them (Lauer 81). The wide-angle makes use of two important and powerful horror movies' elements in this case which are the fear of the unusual and the dark. These both are so present in the shot where they are displayed as Chris leaves the reality of his family’s security and safety and goes into an unknown abyss instead. Apart from increasing the rate of the frame to 200fps, Jordan Peele also works on the wide-angle shot by expanding it.

When the frame rate is increased, this results in slow motion. Unlike where Missy's control is revealed by the close-up, the distance provided by the wide angels' shows and displays the desperation that Chris has. He may be interested in trashing about but this world does not allow him to lead so which leads to the increase of terror that he is experiencing. Peel however does not give up in this scene but puts more stress on Chris' situation that is troubling him by moving to an extremely wide perspective. We might have assumed and concluded that the situation that Chris was in was a bot worrying before, but now it comes out as completely dire. He drifts like a debris piece that is stuck in his space, caught in a type of web that is not visible.

Darkness in this movie connects to one of our existence's cornerstones which is the fear of death. Chris along with the audience is not sure if darkness is a safe place to escape to but luckily this darkness does not take long because he awakens back to his bed so soon with his heart beating so fast against his chest reflecting on the experience that he went through. The shot selected by Jordan Peel was motivated and deliberate. Some of the other hallmarks of the best horror movies are the hair-raising locations and the wide-angle extreme, displaying the cold void environment that facilitates the factors of being scared (Nierenberg 500-500). However, Peele does not want the viewer to be isolated by the distance from the scenes hence alternates between the side angle and close-up. This storyline's horror movie strategy allows us to have both the environment's horrifying nature and the utter confusion and fear that Chris experiences.

Works Cited

Jeffries, Judson L. "Jordan Peele (Dir.), GET OUT [Motion Picture] Blumhouse Productions, 2017. Running Time, 1 h 44 min." (2018): 139-149.

Landsberg, Alison. "Horror vérité: politics and history in Jordan Peele’s Get Out (2017)." Continuum 32.5 (2018): 629-642.

Lauer, Samantha. "Get Out: Peele's First Film Exposes and Teaches." Cinematic Codes Review 2.2 (2017): 81. http://culturalmemory.wp.st-andrews.ac.uk/files/2019/10/Landsberg-Horror-v-rit-politics-and-history-in-Jordan-Peele-s-Get-Out-2017.pdf

Nierenberg, Andrew A. "Get Out." Psychiatric Annals 48.11 (2018): 500-500. https://www.healio.com/psychiatry/journals/psycann/2018-11-48-11/%7B333cd006-415e-49f9-ad4b-25c6274bba2b%7D/get-out.pdf