Satire In Get Out

With the closing of the “post-racial” America of the Obama years and the inauguration of the Trump presidency the untreated wounds of American society have attained new levels of visibility. The “dog-whistle” racism which forms the base of the New Jim Crow is rapidly crumbling, exposing a virulent white supremacy no longer able to legitimize itself behind the fiction of racial “colorblindness.” In such periods of social unrest the power of racial representation is critical. Beyond providing a snapshot of the prevailing attitudes and morality of the artistic culture, in their most subversive form such representations challenge dominant sectors of society to interrogate the myths they have constructed to oppress despised populations.

Jordan Peele’s new horror film Get Out stands out as a production explicitly made to spark an interrogation of this kind. Mixing the incisive social commentary of satire and with the mind-bending paranoia of a psychological thriller Peele’s use of setting,
dialogue, imagery, and metaphor give form to the formless void of Black existential anxiety in a deeply racist society. The psychic trauma of the Black predicament comes through early in the film as Andre (Keith Stanfield) is mysteriously trailed by a white car and kidnapped on a darkly lit road. Before we know anything about this character—his name, his personality or why he is in this neighborhood—he is immediately cast as a suspect, someone who doesn’t belong. One can liken it to the situation of Josef K. in Franz Kafka’s novel The Trial who is arrested for a crime but is never given an answer for what law he has broken. Contemporary comparisons to the murder of Trayvon Martin—someone who also was “in the wrong part of town”—come to mind as well. This haunting arbitrariness of white suspicion, fascination, and terror in the presence of black bodies permeates the cinematic universe of Get Out, a theme articulated powerfully through the enveloping wilderness in which the film is set.

From here we are introduced to the film’s protagonist, Chris, an accomplished Black photographer with a white girlfriend named Rose Armitage (Allison Williams). Not only do we discover that Chris is someone who takes the power of images seriously but we find out that he is acutely aware of the white anxieties he may arouse upon meeting his girlfriend’s parents for the first time. In addition to setting the stage for the deep feelings of alienation that he experiences as a guest in the Armitage residence this acknowledgement of his own blackness is crucial because it shows that he is not captive to the “colorblind” mythology that posits the existence of loving interracial relationships as a refutation of the social demons of racism. Rose’s affection, no matter how seemingly genuine, does not blind him to the institutional and historical realities of race in America.
In choosing the phenomenon of interracial relationships as a vehicle to examine the broader state of race relations in America, Peele brilliantly illustrates how proximity in the civic public space, essentially racial integration, does not necessarily yield deeper connections in the psychological private space. In other words, Peele challenges viewers to seek out ways in which embedded prejudices among even “liberal” white people reinscribe and extend racist attitudes that block any form meaningful agency by black people. Ultimately, Get Out exposes just how and vast and enduring the dimensions of separation are within this culture of “liberal togetherness.”
Nowhere is this sense of separation felt more viscerally than in The Sunken Place. Here Chris is condemned by Missy Armitage (Rose’s mother) to a terrifying abyss in which he floats powerlessly as a spectator to a life that belongs to him but is tragically beyond his control. Through the lens of The Sunken Place black life is represented exclusively through a disembodied television screen (arguably a critique of the distorting effects of mass media). Chris, a professional photographer eminently qualified to represent himself and the world he inhabits, is robbed not only of his motor functions but his ability to transcend stereotypes. The Sunken Place is place is a psychic hell precisely because it forecloses the site of Black creation which is simultaneously the source of Black salvation, namely that part of the mind that motivates action. Indeed, resistance is impossible in The Sunken Place.
Fortunately, the film doesn’t conclude on this bleak note.
Along with its trenchant critique of the forces that induce black powerlessness, Get Out is more than edifying in its celebration of the spiritual ingenuity and intelligence that enables Black liberation. At no point does Chris surrender to the designs of the Armitage family. After freeing himself from the physical restraints holding him hostage, Chris proceeds to kill each family member one-by-one. The mere thought of a young Black man killing a white family on screen would have been unthinkable in the era of Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner. For all of Sidney Poitiers’ pathbreaking work in the service of civil and human rights off-screen his onscreen persona was often mitigated by an unshakeable calm, an ability to keep lethal rage at bay in presence of white opposition. Chris’ escape from the Armitage house jettisons these cinematic conventions entirely providing one of the most cathartic scenes in recent movie
history.
Moving forward one hopes that Peele’s film acts as a creative catalyst for other Black filmmakers to explore some of the under-discussed social ills of 21st century America. Building visionary alternatives to the status quo requires not only material but intellectual resources to defend ourselves against the social stigma wrought by the “color line” and a series of other divisions which impede collective progress. Get Out can be counted as a long overdue contribution to that defense.