We unpack the symbolism and deeper messages in Get Out, and look at how it updates classic social horror films Stepford Wives and Rosemary’s Baby.
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Transcript provided by Youtube:
00:17
Jordan Peele’s “Get Out” is more than a horror movie
00:21
The story of a black man’s visit to his white girlfriend’s parents
00:24
gone horribly wrong is also a biting, absurdist satire
00:27
that captures something in the zeitgeist
00:29
For that reason
00:31
“Get Out” is the spiritual descendant
00:32
of two other more-than-horror classics
00:35
1968’s “Rosemary’s Baby”
00:36
and especially 1975’s “Stepford Wives”
00:39
both adapted from the writings of Ira Levin.
00:42
I would describe this movie as a classic horror film
00:45
in the vain of The Stepford Wives or Rosemary’s Baby
00:47
But whereas those films
00:49
used frightening analogies to dramatize women’s issues
00:52
“Get Out” cleverly addresses today’s climate concerning race
00:55
This was a movie that reflects real
00:59
fears of mine and real issues that
01:03
I’ve dealt with before
01:05
Let’s talk about some of the film’s key elements
01:08
and how it draws from Stepford and Rosemary
01:10
Watch out – there will be SPOILERS
01:11
“Get Out” is loaded with symbols and imagery
01:14
that remind us of the history of slavery and the Old South
01:17
Starting with the plantation-like Armitage Estate
01:19
and some older-looking costumes
01:21
The echoes visually remind us that our society’s past
01:24
is ever interwoven into our present
01:27
The first sign of something wrong occurs
01:29
when the deer runs into the car
01:31
The gentle deer is linked to our protagonist
01:34
The accident is an omen of what’s to come
01:36
The innocent creature’s sacrifice
01:38
The omen is later fulfilled when
01:40
after he’s tied up by Rosa’s family
01:41
Chris sees the head of a deer mounted to the wall
01:43
the dead trophy that Rosa’s family
01:46
would like to make of him as well
01:48
come and sit with me please
01:51
When Rose’s mother Missy hypnotizes Chris
01:55
she uses a teacup as her weapon
01:57
The dainty cup and stirrer are symbols
01:59
of civility revealed to be hostile and aggressive
02:02
Drinking tea strikes us as a refined, harmless activity
02:06
but global conflicts and colonial dynamics
02:08
have long been projected onto the trade
02:10
and consumption of tea
02:11
The Boston Tea Party helped launch the American Revolutionary War
02:14
The hypnosis gives Chris the feeling of falling
02:17
The imagery suggests the family’s ulterior motive
02:20
to push him down and suppress his will
02:22
Sure, you won’t be gone
02:25
I’m completely a sliver of you
02:27
will still be in there somewhere
02:29
limited consciousness
02:31
You’ll live in a sunken place
02:34
Within, the plot the sunken place
02:36
is a visceral state of dimmed consciousness
02:38
but it’s also evocative of pushing back against forward progress
02:41
Closing his eyes here symbolizes
02:44
removing his consciousness and it makes us think
02:46
of the historical withholding of education
02:48
to disenfranchise black people
02:54
I’m happy
02:57
The family’s housekeeper Georgina
03:01
is the image of a Stepford Wife
03:04
vacant, inhuman and strained
03:06
The Armitages are so good to us
03:11
Then we meet the equally robotic Walter
03:13
With these characters, Peele is explicitly updating Stepford Wives
03:16
Instead of robotic homemakers
03:19
They’re robotic servants
03:20
Instead of evoking dolls
03:22
They evoke slaves
03:25
Rose’s father Dean holds an auction with Chris’s photo
03:27
which is disturbingly reminiscent of a slave auction
03:30
The reveal that these white people
03:32
are taking over black bodies stands in for
03:34
white people using black people as slaves
03:36
to use them for physical labor while retaining all power
03:40
despite their own physical ailments
03:41
after he’s briefed on how his body
03:44
will be surgically taken over by the man
03:46
who purchased him in the auction
03:47
Chris looks at the cotton coming out of the chair
03:49
It’s a visual reference to the Old South primary slave labor – picking cotton
03:54
Chris uses the cotton to plug his ears and resist the hypnosis
03:58
so the symbol of slavery is inverted
04:00
to become his tool of escape
04:02
Not unlike the deer antlers
04:04
The movie also starts to introduce imagery
04:06
concerning movie-going and audiences
04:08
The surgery prep shows bright lights staring into camera
04:11
like on a movie set
04:12
You know what?
04:14
Your eye, man
04:18
I want those things you see through
04:20
Hudson wants to take Chris’s eyes
04:22
which symbolized through his taking pictures
04:24
are a key part of his identity
04:25
as an actively looking individual
04:27
It’s significant, too, that Hudson is an art dealer
04:30
This is a person who sells his artistic tastes
04:32
without really being able to see art
04:34
He’ll now be making commercial profit off
04:37
of appropriating Chris’s artistic insight
04:39
The surgery will make Chris a backseat driver
04:41
or passive audience
04:43
Your existence will be as a passenger
04:47
Peele is suggesting that consuming entertainment
04:49
can be passive or hypnotic
04:51
if we allow our minds to be controlled
04:52
by whatever images we’re fed
04:54
But the flash of the camera wakes us up
04:56
like the hypnotized Logan whose real name is Andre
04:59
and later Walter who’s long been taken over by Rose’s grandfather
05:02
Peele intends his movie to be like this flash
05:04
not hypnotic entertainment that lulls us
05:06
into submission but a jolt that wakes us up to reality
05:10
While the plot eventually escalates into a full-out race war
05:14
“Get Out”‘s satire isn’t really targeted
05:16
at overt or obvious racism in our society
05:19
Many have interpreted the movie as a commentary
05:21
on a certain kind of smug white liberal mindset
05:24
Rose’s family appear at the start to be nice people
05:27
who believe they’re forward-thinking
05:29
By the way, I would have voted for Obama for a third term if I could
05:33
Best president in my lifetime hands down
05:35
Yet they’re nervous tolerance is strained
05:38
Their outlook can be oblivious and self-congratulatory
05:41
and ultimately they’re uninterested in any deep understanding of inequality
05:45
or any meaningful action
05:47
All of us might have like little racist things
05:50
in us and really that’s what the movie is
05:52
kind of whether they’re conscious or
05:54
unconscious and that’s what the movie
05:55
really brings to light
05:56
Early on we get a few dropped hints of what’s to come
05:59
in small, off comments
06:01
it was up there with
06:02
always perfect Aryan race bullshit black
06:06
dude comes along proves him wrong from the entire world
06:09
Dean mentions black mold down in the basement
06:11
which will later take on a double meaning
06:13
of a mold for black people
06:14
Jeremy associated with his white signifier the lacrosse stick
06:17
brings his hate out into the open
06:19
launching quickly into discussions of genetic makeup
06:22
If you really push your body
06:26
If you really train yeah and no pussyfooting around
06:28
you’d be a fucking beast
06:31
Later the racist obsession with black people’s physical strength
06:33
and equating them with animals becomes even more explicit
06:40
The movie also hints at the way that black culture
06:42
can come in and out of trend and be co-opted by white society
06:45
When Chris asks “Why black people”
06:47
People want to change
06:49
some people want to be stronger, faster, cooler
06:54
And through characters like the hypnotized Andre
06:57
It’s also touching on the pressure on middle-to-upper-class black society
07:00
to assimilate into white culture
07:04
The literal plot of Rose’s family attempting to sell Chris’s body
07:07
symbolizes a more subtle reality
07:09
A world in which white people are still happy to benefit from their privilege
07:13
And their liberal ideals are limited by their attachment
07:16
to a status quo that makes them the dominant class
07:19
Both Stepford and Rosemary can likewise be read figuratively
07:23
as commentaries on how society traps women
07:25
In real-life, suburban wives aren’t really turned into robots
07:29
and urban women aren’t impregnated by Satan
07:31
But in Stepford the community pushes women to put their family’s needs first
07:35
transforming them into perfectly servile homemakers
07:38
And in Rosemary, a woman’s husband is also willing to use her
07:41
to get ahead in a hyper-competitive twisted society
07:45
And Get Out beautifully updates Ira Levin’s tradition
07:48
The movie follows from Black Lives Matter
07:51
in the same way that Stepford Wives embodied the slogan
07:53
Sisterhood is Powerful
07:55
How long have you known that guy
07:58
Like today, why?
08:03
This is gonna sound weird but
08:06
when you came at me it felt like a new one
08:11
Get Out’s Chris Washington is in many ways
08:14
an update to Stepford Wives’ protagonist Joanna Eberhart
08:17
Both are sympathetic, educated characters who are aware
08:20
of the social issues at hand
08:22
Doesn’t it ever bother you
08:23
that the most important organization in Stepford
08:26
is sexually archaic?
08:27
Chris admits his discomfort about whether Rose’s parents
08:30
will accept their interracial relationship
08:33
Do they know I’m black?
08:36
No. Should they?
08:40
So our first impression is that both are savvy, informed, not seemingly naive
08:45
Yet the absurdly sinister and corrupt situations both eventually fall in to
08:49
prove that neither’s liberal urban outlook
08:52
is actually paranoid enough
08:53
Both are city dwellers transplanted to the suburbs
08:56
a place that makes them instinctually uncomfortable
08:59
and they’re both photographers
09:00
story-wise the camera symbolizes an original perspective, a free mind
09:04
watching them look through the camera
09:06
puts us in their point of view
09:08
so we feel attacked ourselves
09:10
Rosemary’s Baby’s protagonist does strike us
09:13
as more naive and childlike
09:15
but she follows the same journey too
09:17
of discovering too late the horrifying betrayal around her
09:22
Here like in Stepford or Rosemary
09:24
the plot is masterminded by a white male patriarch villain
09:28
Coincidentally Get Out’s Roman Armitage even shares the first name
09:31
of Rosemary’s Baby’s Roman Castevet
09:36
A key difference though is that
09:37
in those previous films the white women were victims
09:41
Here they’re villains
09:42
Fans of Rosemary and Stepord who spotted the similarities as they’re watching
09:46
will likely anticipate one of the film’s major twist
09:49
as we start to suspect that Rose is Chris’s betrayer
09:53
She seems to have escaped her family’s issues
09:55
The rose who stands out from the thorns
09:57
But she simply understands very well how to
09:59
convincingly play the progressive young liberal
10:02
He wasn’t driving
10:03
I didn’t ask who was driving
10:04
I asked to see his ID
10:06
Yeah, why? That doesn’t make any sense
10:09
Here. No, fuck that
10:10
You don’t have to give him your ID if you
10:12
haven’t done anything wrong
10:13
Rose, like the husbands in the other two movies
10:15
feels the most pernicious villainfor her cold duplicity
10:18
This gets at how political dynamics really play out on the intimate level
10:23
In Stepford and Rosemary the betrayer crucially manages
10:26
to stall the protagonists’ escape
10:28
Rose does the same when Chris is first captured
10:41
And at the end, even after he’s killed the rest of her family
10:45
She chases after him and continued to manipulate him
10:55
In Stepford Wives Joanna believes
10:57
she’s in a loving marriage with a man who respects her
10:59
and it seems to us that she is
11:01
but when her husband gets fed up with
11:03
having to care for the children
11:05
I played Monopoly with him I didn’t pass goal I
11:07
didn’t collect I played backgammon
11:09
I played Scrabble with the goddamn kids
11:11
they’re in the kitchen now
11:12
what do you want me to do
11:14
And annoyed by Joanna’s interest in photography
11:16
he decides he really wants an obedient housekeeper
11:19
over an independent-minded wife
11:21
The scary implication is that even well-intentioned individuals
11:25
can’t resist the rewards of an unequal society that favors them
11:29
Rose’s true allegiance is to her class
11:32
And the privilege she’s happy to enjoy
11:34
Even the eerie music reminds us of Stepford
11:41
Drawing out our fear of society’s hidden monsters
11:44
Horror is an inherently potent genre
11:47
for dramatizing social issues of the day
11:49
Scary movies can build our intangible fears
11:49
into physical exaggerated monsters
11:52
Comedy likewise can exercise our demons
11:55
by talking about what’s taboo in society
11:59
Horror and comedy are very similar
12:03
In one you’re trying to get a laugh
12:06
and the other you’re trying to get a scare
12:07
Get Out doesn’t just draw from both genres
12:10
but also effectively interweaves them
12:12
Even its horror aspects have darkly comic absurdist inflections
12:16
The far-fetched plot of a girl who attracts black men
12:19
so her family can surgically turn them into robotic slaves
12:22
takes a cue from Levin’s blend of sinister absurdity
12:25
Stepford also used unbelievable methods of advanced surgery
12:28
to heighten the satire
12:30
The robotics and plastic surgery are flippantly unrealistic
12:33
The over-the-top absurdity acts like a Trojan horse
12:36
that sneaks in the incisive political critique
12:38
In all three stories oppressing the other
12:41
takes the form of invading and controlling their bodies
12:43
In our society this control isn’t typically through kidnapping and surgery
12:48
but via more subtle means
12:49
Such as turning other bodies into objects of desire or contempt
12:53
Much of Get Out’s explicit humor
12:55
comes through Chris’s best friend Rod
12:56
How can I get in trouble for patting down old lady?
13:00
It’s standard procedure
13:01
Terry just think of the elderly bitchin
13:04
elderly she can’t hijack no motherfuckin plane
13:06
He serves as the traditional comic relief
13:08
but he’s also the movie’s heart
13:10
as the only person who believes Chris
13:12
Look what I’m about to tell you don’t sound crazy
13:14
This scene in which the police laugh at his fears
13:16
has a melancholy echo with the reality
13:18
that black missing-person cases
13:20
are statistically far more likely to go unsolved
13:27
Even his funny references to the TSA
13:29
build on a joking assumption that the police
13:32
won’t care about helping Chris
13:33
When Rose cries out for help
13:35
The audience knows what’s about to come next
13:37
if a white police officer steps out of a car
13:39
Exactly what Rose is counting on
13:41
Peele said he originally did intend that bleaker ending
13:44
to remind people who voted for Obama
13:46
that they weren’t living in a post-racial world
13:48
But the director said that outrage over police shootings of black men
13:52
convinced him that the movie needed to counter public anger and pain
13:55
with an ending that “Gives us a hero
13:57
Gives us an escape
13:59
Gives us a positive feeling when we leave this movie
14:02
When Rod comes to Chris’s rescue
14:04
He serves as a comic deus ex machina
14:07
I mean I told you not to go in the house
14:08
Here the comedy and hope saved the story from the defeats
14:12
which concludes Stepford or Rosemary
14:14
Chris’s escape isn’t exactly a happy-ever-after though
14:17
There’s still a threat implied
14:19
Underneath our progress there is under the surface
14:22
that lingering prejudice and antagonism
14:24
After Get Out we might learn to be a little less naive
14:27
a little more cautiously paranoid
14:29
and open our eyes to how potently our history
14:32
still informs our present
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Photo credit: Screenshot from video