“Us” against “Them”
So you’ve watched the film — here’s what I think it means…
WARNING: This essay contains major spoilers!
In Us, Adelaide Wilson, her husband, Abraham, and children, Zorah and Jason, live the American Dream. They have a beach house, vacation in Santa Cruz, and are free to do and live as they please. They behave like you and me, and seem what most viewers would consider to be “normal.” They’re us, the people within our circle whom we love, befriend, and maintain a similar culture and values.
In an NPR interview, director Jordan Peele stated that the word “us” presumes a “them,” which is unlike us. In this film, “they” are the tethers, the underground doubles of “us.” Their lives are a distorted reflection of their above ground counterparts. Part of an abandoned experiment, their movements reflect those above ground. When the non-tethers walk freely down the sidewalk, their tethered counterparts walk into walls within their underground institutional-looking prison. When young Adelaide performs graceful ballet moves, the body of her double, Red, distorts in painful spasmodic lurches. Jason’s tether has facial burns, presumably due to his double’s persistent toying with a lighter. The tethered live marginalized, painful, and sad lives. Their ability to love, move freely, and sense of individuality and free will are oppressively denied. The tethered live a warped version of the American Dream, enslaved to those above.
This disenfranchisement is highlighted by a commercial for Hands Across America, an 80s campaign in which people held hands across the United States to bring awareness to poverty and homelessness. It appears early in the film and is later re-enacted by the tethered at the end. The tethered represent society’s most vulnerable — the poor, disabled, and marginalized. Imprisoned underground, they are separated from society. Unable to speak, they have literally no voice. The system is rigged against them as their pain goes unheard and unacknowledged.
This oppression forms a core theme of the film. However, those above ground are not intentionally cruel to the tethered. Displayed here is the more pernicious form of institutional oppression — a system of rules and customs that disenfranchises a group of people. They are oppressed by a system that devalues them. Those above ground cause pain due to their privileged position and those below suffer due to their tethered state. And they are oblivious to the pain they cause and feel because of their segregation from one another. Their suffering and privilege are both systematically ingrained and hidden from one another.
Not only are those above unconscious of this oppressive system, but so too are the tethered themselves. Prior to their revolt, these subterranean dwellers are unaware that their lives could be better due to their lack of exposure to the upper world. Oblivious to their enslavement due to their ignorance, the tethered do not question their painful status quo. The enslaved seem even unaware of each other’s sufferings. As a child, Adelaide is even diagnosed with PTSD, which suggests that the tethered suffer from a collective PTSD. This would explain why they seem soulless and emotionally detached from one another. They have no relationship to the outside world, and their relationships to each other seems haphazard at best. Their sense of community seems to be stifled, which indicates a decayed social fabric, and they suffer in isolation. Unable to communicate and end their pain, their ability to express emotion along with their sense of social cohesion is limited.
Their abilities are also severely limited as exemplified by the tether, Dahlia’s, inability to scream. Another tether, Abraham, only grunts. When Adelaide is revealed to have been once a tether, we realize that they do not speak because they cannot, but because they do not know they can. Their oppression is not only physical — it also extends to their ignorance. They are subjugated partly by this implicit denial of their value and capacity for freedom. When Abraham puts on Gabe’s glasses, he realizes for the first time that his vision was blurry. When Dahlia puts on lip gloss and preens into her tether’s mirror during the revolt, she realizes for the first time that she is beautiful. Her daughter does cartwheels because she is free to do so after un-tethereing herself. Their revolution is not only one of action, but also one of thought.
Their newfound awareness of their shared pain and anger unites them while their awareness of their potential incites their hunger for change. Red serves as the leader of their revolution. As an agent of change, she organizes the tethered, who terrify “us.” Their unusual customs and behaviors seem indecipherable and frightening to those above. One reporter even describes their attack as havoc and mayhem. But to Red and her tethers, their attack is a highly organized uprising, coordinated in minute detail.
As established by her background in ballet, Red has an interest in performance art. So her attack resembles an elaborate and terrifying performance art piece as Gabe even acknowledges in a wisecrack. The primary instruments of this performance are scissors. Their meaning is vividly depicted by Red cutting apart two paper figures before her own deadly un-tethering from Adelaide. The tethered’s prison-style costumes reflect their mass incarceration. The blood red color of those costumes suggest anger and violence. Holding hands across America (in reference to the commercial) is their performance. And even caged rabbits, food for the tethered, play a role when they are freed from their cages. Red’s performance art piece brings equality to those for whom it has been denied.
Rife with symbolism, Red’s campaign also holds religious meaning. She uses Biblical language at times and seems to see herself as a prophet. Early in the film, a homeless man holds a sign reading, “Jeremiah 11:11,” in which God threatens the Israelites for not upholding their end of their covenant. Additional reading of Jeremiah chapter 11 reveals this to be the Mosaic covenant made after God sent Moses to rescue the Israelites from slavery in Egypt. Like Moses, Red leads her people from slavery to above ground, their promised land. Like Moses, who was raised by Pharoah’s daughter, Red led a privileged life as a non-tether before becoming one. Like Moses, who leaves a space of power before serving his people, Red does the same. And like Moses, who is forbidden entry to the Holy Land, she too dies before reaching the promised land. Even the image of the empowered tethered on the mountaintop evokes Moses’ view of the forbidden promised land from Mount Nebo.
And like Moses, Red can also see beyond her limitations. Because she’s experienced freedom as a child, she understands her and her fellow tethered’s potential. She has left her literally and figuratively higher place in the world to live as a lowly tether and set them free. Like Moses, she is less strongly restrained by the unfair status quo than her enslaved cohorts because she has experienced liberty. This gives her the confidence and freedom to challenge the system and lead others in rejecting their bondage. Her former privilege allows her to elevate her circumstances and those around her.
Adelaide also benefits from the privilege of understanding both the free and tethered worlds. A shot during the opening credits of a single black bunny amid a sea of mostly white ones represents her uniqueness from others above ground. One can argue that she makes so many idiosyncratic choices, such as leaving the car to watch Umbrae die, retrieving car keys alone, or smiling while killing Red because she holds a different set of behavioral norms from her family. She is less fearful than her family because she understands the tetherd’s rules. She also shares their rage, which allows her to defend herself and her family with blood curdling ruthlessness. Adelaide knows how to survive above and below ground because she’s adapted to both.
This duality says a lot about class. A childhood flashback reveals that Red took Adelaide’s place at a beach funhouse, highlighting how the American Dream comes at a price. And that price is paid by others. Privilege is exclusive, which by definition requires exclusion and marginalization. Rising in the social ladder involves supporting an unequal status quo. When Adelaide is afraid to go back to the beach, we think that she’s afraid of something she has seen. But she is actually afraid to face the consequences of her oppressive and disenfranchising history. She remembers what she’s done; knows that Red is angry; and would rather be blind to injustice than risk her privileged life. This is the story of an American Dream, but also the story of America’s broader history of opportunity and injustice. As quoted by composer Michael Abels, they are no different from us; “they’re just mistreated and angry.” And that’s the true horror of this story.
