GET OUT! The Black Comedy
Sunday. Matinee. Jordan Peele’s Get Out receives %100 on Rotten Tomatoes. Call up the crew. My home girls slide thru. The downtown theater is sold out, Cherry creek has plenty of seats. No surprise there. Get Popcorn. Get Cozy. Get Scared. Get Out!
A whole can of black and white worms was opened up in Jordan Peele’s soon to be cult classic film Get Out. A psychological thriller that leaves one hinged horrifically balanced in what is suppose to be a suspension of reality but rather is an actual heightened extension of it. Don't worry I won't be spoiling much for you in this post, merely giving you my emotional reaction to such a ride...
We are thrown onto a cathartic balance beam bereft by a post traumatic state of reliving horrors from life on the silver screen. We make our way through the witty and blunt humor and cringe when we come to those perilous bridges constructed by race and ignorance that are all too familiar; but this is suppose to be funny right, ha ha haaaa.
A black man in his early twenties, sporting a head wrap and army jacket sits in front of me and my peanut gallery of queens with his blonded white girl. I nudge my girlfriend and we both begin to crack up at what might be their last date.
Discomfort shifts back and forth in the seats as we merge into the muddy waters of Anywhere, America, a suburb that might host a mall with a theater like the one we are sitting in, as couples of all shades grasp and laugh, and are silent, we are methodically lowered into a 'sunken place' where all is happening to us and we can do nothing but watch.
The elegance or Jordan Peele’s writing allows us to pirouette through racism that wears the mask of success and our psychological ties to an oppressor. Our protagonist, Daniel Kaluuya, plays Chris Washington, A young African American photographer who reminds me of many friends who bridge race and class divides with the success of their skill; bringing them deeper into a culture that is far set from their own, and the certain types of women and men that lurk there.
As Chris finds out when he goes on a weekend trip to see the parents of his fresh 5 month relationship with Rose Armitage, played by Allison Williams, who also starred in the show Girls. Balancing us yet again on this crux of black men and white women.
This film get's out the unique fears one might feel growing up in this country as an African-American and thrown into a supposed integrated world that is far from it. The pitfalls and jabs that one feels when all alone and facing the unfiltered wave of ignorant ass supremacy.
I think now on the many laughs me and my friends have about what we feel to be far fetched fears but come to life in this film! For example the true notion that as a black man I still get uncomfortable around too many white folks, no matter the nation, age or class, especially when alcohol is involved, cuz’ we all know that when the liquor starts flowing they mouthes open and just say the darnedest things to you,
“Oh I love your hair can I touch?”
"Oh Bro what sports you play?”
“Mmmm I heard about black men, is it true what they say?”
"How is it being black?"
“Wow look at this one, your smile, your teeth are so white?”
“Wow you speak so well and would never have thought!”
or my favorite:
"Hey man is just a joke, it's funny right?"
And I'm sure some will say most of those sound like complements and genuine politeness of a person trying to empathize with another. No. It is prattle and mockingly insulting. It stems from a place that attempts to gloss over the cacophony of horrid screams from the bloody mud of this land 'tis of thee. It reeks of appropriation, and genocide. It's an unaccepting ignorance that still wants to devour its dark, mysterious, prey.
You see, the old shrills of uncles and grandfathers speaking of dragging and lynchings from a brother who went a little too far into the white world always left my superstitious eye on the exit signs of any downtown bar, frat house, or suburban house party, that is flooded with white people. All should be taught such cautions as well, for accurate history in this country is hard to...get out.
The film gives great one liners, and double entendre that will bury themselves deep into our context as Americans in dealing with the racial divide, one in particular had me weak throughout the film for its undoubted usage to try and mask one's prejudice tendencies:
"I would have voted for Obama for a third term if I could." says the neurosurgeon father when first meeting his daughter’s black boyfriend. I've heard many well off, liberal, white men in power, use this as a way to diffuse a remarkably racist comment that preceded it or would come shortly after.
There is also a moment our protagonist must use 'cotton' in a way to try and overcome his captors. As well as a chokehold that is slowly counted out "1 mississippi, 2 mississppi..." Small relics, symbols, and adages that are doors into our poignant history. Perhaps my favorite of these is when another black man, played by Lakeith Stanfield, who also played in ATLANTA, is taken hostage by this strange town and explains what he feels about the black man's condition,
"In this county the black man has had a overall good time, and is born with great advantages, but hey I don't know much, I haven't wanted to leave the 'house' for quite some time." Oh how this rings of old Malcolm X speeches and uncle tom's cabin remakes, leaving a stark but humorous reminder of the house nigga who loves his master, and in fact wishes to be his master...
These little gems and many more bedazzle you in a film that uses the juxtaposition of imagery and satire to unravel the unspoken myths of American culture.
Perhaps what can't be glossed over is the true evil in the film appeared to some as a utter reflection of themselves. As I noticed in the young white girlfriend sitting in front of me who kept having to ask her black boyfriend what was so funny? Or embarrassingly apologizing since she had done some of those exact things.
While with something like the Texas Chainsaw Massacre or any other serial killer film the evil is an anomaly here it is the norm. This leaves the comments section of Get Out peppered by feelings of racism against Caucasians. Yet this is like every Hollywood film that portrays stereotypes of all other cultures in a menacing light. Not to mention as one home girl put it:
"So what about the micro aggression in suicide squad? The croc was clearly black watched bet ate Friday chicken wore velour suits with gold chain and listened to rap? I saw no white people complaining...Or when they make themselves the hero or savior of every film, last samurai, avatar, this Great Wall film that just came out; all under the guise the story won't be told/ watched if there isn't a white person in a lead role 🙄"
Oh how the kettle calls the pot! Well look, Here's an opinion of you outside of your own. good luck getting out of it!
A deep metaphor that runs through the core of this film is held in its appropriate title. Our protagonist must get out of a deep hole buried with in his subconscious, which is housed in the suburban outskirts, in a white picket fence mansion, in the heart of the white American dream. Can we escape our master's house, can we escape our master's women, can we escape our master's desires, can we escape our master? Must we escape from ourselves?
My palms were wet with sweat, gripping the theater chair arm rest as the film crescendos, and that feeling comes across you buried deep in your nerves from centuries of being hunted: Go! Go! Run! Get Out! As we have a hope that just maybe we will have a hero who runs off the psychological plantation into freedom! Away from the monstrous killer that was imbedded deep with in your own fears. Jordan Peele carried us to that deep seeded fear of the black man and white woman, that fear that underlies the belly of it all, of rape and murder and true horror.
Back into the woods and dark trees, where we hope our protagonist will not sink to that level that he is always portrayed, of beast, of burden, of object like they think he is, that he will not be caught, that he can find himself and get out alive with no regrets. And as the scene perches us all gripping each other, still, silent. Our protagonist becomes a hero under flashing lights.
To wash all of this down Jordan Peele naturally uses humor as the film’s saving grace. Unlike some race films like Birth of a Nation (the first one and the Nat Turner epic) Get Out doesn't leave one emotionally hateful and unstable, instead the ability to laugh at the portrayal of certain prejudices that we all have about each other allows us to experience the trauma with our serotonin popping; and with the aide of satire we can communicate why something is funny, and why something might be true.
It leaves us closer together rather than dividing us as I'm sure many will say. Embraced in a terror that lurks even here in the hazy February theater of a mall in Anywhere, America.
This film get’s out the scariest nightmare, the one buried deep, the one you think is real. It get's out the stupidity of labels and walls that we put up because we are still ignorant of another's customs and stories and feelings. Well here we are, pressed tight together, from sea to shining sea, and from the repressed pits of a place, where we felt helpless, where we couldn't do anything, but sit there and watch TV, while our mothers and brothers, fathers and sisters, bled out in the streets and then were hung up like a deer's head in the den of your great grandfathers plantation mansion.
Here is a beautiful reflection of true horror, a real monster, dripped in gore, and fear, and honesty, as the deer’s head pierces your cornea and out oozes the greatest monster ever... a mirror. Can you get out of this image I present to you? Can you get out of your head? Can you get out of me?! But hey, it's only a joke, this is funny right?
Written by: Négré Micheaux
for F!!!RE Magazine issue #1