In the psychological thriller, Us, there are doppelgangers of each human that live underground, and they are called tethers. Tethers can represent various things, such as the devil on our shoulder or the inner demons that each person faces. Still, I want to explore the idea that this movie uses the tethers to create the concept of manifest destiny in a parallel world.
Before we go any further, manifest destiny was the idea that God had destined the Europeans to expand their dominion and spread across North America. This eventually led to the oppression of Native Americans, Non- Europeans, and to an increase in slavery.
To me, the tethered symbolize the Europeans in the sense that they both were groups who left where they were from to pursue a place they believed was theirs for the taking. Furthermore, both groups also went as far as killing to obtain what they wanted. Just as the Europeans slaughtered many Native Americans and took over their land, the tethered killed the “originals” to take their place above ground. Lastly, in the scene towards the end where Red, Adelaide’s tether, explains the night she and Adelaide crossed paths, she says that God had brought them together that night. This is another example of how both events were believed to be predestined by God.
Although both the tethered and Europeans have the same basic principles in their manifest destiny, there is one noticeable difference between them. In Us, we are able to feel sympathy towards the tethers, although they are villains when, on the contrary, we feel no sympathy for the Europeans that killed and enslaved many Native Americans. That is not to say that we should feel pity towards either but instead focus on how the portrayal of the tethers may have affected some of our feeling towards their actions.
I believe we sympathize with the tethers because the movie wanted us to think that in this parallel world, the people who believed in manifest destiny did deserve to live a better life. It also opened discussion on other historical events such as the underground railroads. We are also able to connect the tethered to slaves and their escape from the underground railroad, thus creating ties between the events. This is a powerful concept because we all know the history of slavery and how it came to be, so we sympathize more with the tethers’ oppression.
In this film, we are put back in time, but history is different, and instead, we see it from the perspective of the world from a mirror effect. We are able to imagine what if history had occurred differently. Where the oppressed can overcome and finally have their time in the sun. By doing that, the audience is also able to see themselves in the tethered and root for them. It allows us into the tethers world and makes us feel pity for them to some extent because of the life that was forced upon them.
The scene I chose to help further this theory is when Red, Adelaide’s tether, is speaking to Adelaide and her family about how she lived her life underground. This scene the first time both families are face to face. Red gets the chance to talk to them, and instead of saying going to kill them and take their place, she shifts and instead talks about the hardships shes had to endure while they were living the life she couldn’t have. Although at this point, it was not yet revealed that Adelaide was the real tether, I already felt that maybe Red was entitled to live her life above ground and be happy.
I conclude that Us gives its audience an interesting view by showing the tethered as people who were forced to live underground, to then becoming the ones who would kill people to take their place above ground where they believed they deserved to be. I think this was an intentional decision to show that sometimes deciding who is good and evil is not all black and white, there are grey areas as well. Despite the tethers’ connections to the Europeans and manifest destiny as I was watching Us, I struggled because I felt sympathy for the tethered. They were supposed to be the bad guys. Still, as the movie went on, especially the scenes where Red was describing her experience underground and shows that she is genuinely Adelaide and got her life stolen from her, I felt that they should have had an alternate ending where the tethered were all victorious.
