“So much of the Black experience in this country has been a horror, so that’s the perfect genre to show my truth, to show the story that I’ve never seen”
Jordan Peele’s Get Out borrows both from the horror and science fiction genres, while adding a dash of comedy as comic relief (see the hot debate on the movie’s classification here). One of its many strengths is that the genre of the film itself can be taken literally or metaphorically, and still read at many levels. The premise of the film rests on the neurological fantasy of transplanting an individual’s brain – and thus consciousness – into another individual’s body. This is not without recalling such pieces of fiction as Frankenstein, The Island of Dr. Moreau, or Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Critics have unearthed the underlying racial subtext at stake in these Victorian era works (see for instance Halberstam’s Skin Shows: Gothic Horror and the Technology of Monsters and DeVere Brody’s Impossible Purities: Blackness, Femininity, and Victorian Culture).
Get Out manages to display very clearly its racial project starting with the opening scenes of the movie, by discussing the implications of inter-racial dating as Chris expresses his anxiety about having to visit his white girlfriend’s family for the first time (the plot recalls the 1967 classic Hollywood Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner). “Do they know… I’m Black?” he asks to an eye-rolling girlfriend who answers: “My dad would have voted for Obama a third time if he could have”. This anxiety is later confirmed for the audience as the script contains multiple examples of micro-aggressions towards its African American main character. The film reels on major cases of casual racism: the girlfriend’s overly protective brother, a father who praises Obama as the best president ever, and even the party guests’ lewd suggestions about Black males’ bodies sexual potency. Chris’ best friend Rod, who provides comic relief throughout the film, nonetheless turns out to be right, and his fears that appear overly exaggerated at first don’t even come close to the terrifying truth.
Morgane Flahault 