A Sociological, Visual, and Cultural Analysis of Jordan Peele’s “Get Out”
“Look, What I’m about to tell you is going to sound crazy. You ready?”
Jordan Peele’s directorial debut with Get Out (2017) may appear on the surface a story of fear and entrapment. However, when applying various theoretical lenses and perspectives, Get Out portrays more than fear. In its numerous themes, motifs, storytelling tools, and social and cultural context, we present a synthesis of Get Out and the reality of blackness in America.
A Sociological Dissection
Eduardo Bonilla-Silva argues that liberals today are dangerous because many liberals honestly believe that as a society we have reached true equality of the races and racism no longer exists. The United States is culturally very individualistic and strongly believes in hard work and “pulling yourself up by your bootstraps.” This makes it very easy for white folks to assume that the reason black people are disproportionately living in poverty is because they did not put in the hard work and dedication to become successful and financially stable. “Another tenet of liberalism is the idea of “the cream rises to the top,”…whites seem to forget that the color of the ‘cream’ that usually ‘rises’ is white” (Bonilla-Silva, 2018, p. 60). An ideology Bonilla-Silva focuses heavily on throughout this chapter is abstract liberalism. Bonilla-Silva asserts:
“The frame of abstract liberalism involves using ideas associated with political liberalism…and economic liberalism…in an abstract manner to explain racial matters. By framing race-related issues in the language of liberalism, whites can appear ‘reasonable’ and even ‘moral,’ while opposing almost all practical approaches to deal with de facto inequality…the principle of equal opportunity…is invoked by whites today to oppose affirmative-action policies because they supposedly represent the ‘preferential treatment’ of certain groups. This claim necessitates ignoring the fact that people of color are severely underrepresented in most good jobs, schools and universities and, hence it is an abstract utilization of the idea of equal opportunity.” (Bonilla-Silva, 2018, p. 56)
Racial inequality on a political frame has repeated itself historically in my opinion, I see a parallel to Martin Luther King’s letter he wrote in Birmingham jail, he calls out the white liberals of his time for being worse than the conservative explicitly racist because at least they are taking action in what they believe in rather than standing by and watching African Americans suffer but claim they are not racists. Today, the suffering of African Americans is seen as “the idea of individual choice is used to defend whites’ right to live and associate primarily with whites (segregation)…and behind the idea of people having the right of making their own ‘choices’ lays the fallacy of racial pluralism-false assumption that all racial groups have the same power in the American polity.” (Bonilla-Silva, 2018, p. 63)
The Armitage family regularly makes attempts to prove to Chris that they are not racist by trying to show they are unnoticing of skin color; a term Bonilla-Silva refers to as “color-blind” regarding race. For example, when Chris asks if Rose’s family knows he’s black, Rose assures him that his race is not a problem and says, “my dad would legit vote for Obama a third time” as a way of proving that her family is not racist. From a white person’s perspective, being color-blind is a way of proving that they are not racist because they do not see a difference between themselves and people of color. However, from a black person’s perspective, it is a way for whites to ignore the fact that racial inequality still exists. Dr. Armitage repeatedly saying he would vote for Obama a third time if he could, is his way of trying to prove that he is not racist. By using Obama as an example, Dr. Armitage essentially saying that by being black and being president, Obama has proven that America is no longer racist, it is simply color-blind. Thus, since he would vote for Obama a third time, he must not be racist, he too, is color-blind. However, according to Bonilla-Silva, being color-blind is a form of racism itself; where color-blind racism is a way for whites to remove themselves from the reality of racial inequality.
When Chris first notices that the housekeeper, Georgina, and the gardener, Walter, are both black, he becomes uneasy. Dr. Armitage uses what Bonilla-Silva refers to as “The Past Is the Past” storyline to justify keeping Georgina and Walter as servants for the family. Dr. Armitage claims that Georgina and Walter have become like family, and he could not stand to let them go, even though he is aware of and hates the way it looks for a well-off white family to have black servants. In this case, Dr. Armitage is acknowledging the negative parallels between Georgina and Walter and slavery, but by saying they are like family, he is also trying to say that he has moved on from considering them servants. According to Bonilla-Silva’s “The Past Is the Past” storyline, Dr. Armitage is claiming that he has left slavery in the past, and others should also. For the Armitage family, they see nothing wrong with keeping Georgina and Walter in their positions of servitude, because they do not see or treat them as servants. This concept of leaving the past in the past is further supported by Georgina assuring Chris that “They [the Armitage family] treat us like family.”
Throughout Chris’s stay at the Armitages’ home, he has endured several remarks indicating the families attempt to show him they are ‘colorblind.’ However, during the first dinner scene at the Armitage house, he begins to understand how they actually understand race and its implications. The conversation takes a turn towards sports and Rose’s brother, Jeremy, asks Chris if he is an MMA fan. He then proceeds to say, “with your frame and your genetic make-up, if you really pushed your body, and I mean really trained…you’d be a f*cking beast.” This comment points to the perpetuation of the myth that black people are biologically and genetically different, and that this is the reason for the many differences we may see between black and white people. This is, of course, untrue, as there are no biological differences and no black gene that differentiates blacks from whites. However, this myth is dangerous because it is used to push unfounded stereotypes and to explain economic, social, and political inequality. This comment also foreshadows later explanations within the film Get Out that are used to justify the reasoning behind the transplantation operation; the reasoning being that black people have superior physical qualities that are desired by those in the white community, and therefore it is okay to exploit those black identities and the physical qualities that come along with them.
After being immersed in the Sunken Place, Chris emerges again to find himself strapped to a leather chair in the Armitage’s basement. In front of him is a television set and it turns on to show Jim Hudson, the art dealer that Chris met at the Armitage’s party. He appears to be in an operating room and he starts to talk to Chris, who can speak to him through a telecom. At one point, Chris asks Jim, “why us? Why black people?” meaning why are they performing this transplantation on black people and Jim responds with “you know I could give a shit what color you are.” He says this to assure Chris that he does not see the color of his skin. He further justifies what is about to happen when he says “I want your eyes, man. I want those things you see through.” Jim claims he does not see race, that he is colorblind, but in reality, he is exploiting the unfounded differences in the African American race to get what he wants.
Throughout this exchange, we see a connection to well-meaning white liberals who believe we live in a post-racial America. Jim scoffs at Chris’s suggestion that it is because he is black that he wants control over his body and his eyes. Although this exchange represents white liberals’ appearance of being “non-racial,” it proves to be problematic because it actually upholds systematic racial inequality and oppresses whole groups of marginalized people. The whole operation of transplantation is, in fact, all about seeing race. Jim wants the eyes of Chris, who is a very talented photographer, believing it will allow him to see the world in a new and better way. He wants to acquire Chris’s perceived superior physical qualities but discards the actual challenges and experiences of being black, all at the expense of suppressing Chris’s control of his own life and sending him to the Sunken Place. On the surface, the Armitages seem to be awkward but well-meaning. They appeared to be non-racial and believe in racial equality, but looking beyond the surface, to the auctioning operation they were running, their actions are still exploiting the bodies and identities of an entire group of marginalized people: blacks.
Exposure of Cultural Trends
Get Out also immerses and educates audiences through important cultural connotations and narratives. Some main culturally relevant elements seen in this film are through the utilization of humor in its characters, subtlety and misdirection in addressing racist ideology and behaviors, and changes in combat tactics against racist ideology between the 1960’s and now.
Get Out has a general narrative structure borrowing from predecessors of horror, mystery, and psychological thrillers. In its exposing of racial tensions, the film has been referred to as “an example of ‘horror vérité’, because it uses the mechanics of the horror genre to expose actually existing racism, to render newly visible the very real, but often masked, racial landscape of a professedly liberal post-racial America.” (Landsburg, 2018, para. 1). Watchers receive the mystery of the hypnosis, but also the leery music of the scariness. Mind-blowing is the feel that watchers receive while watching this intense mystical movie. Audiences are consistently figuring out what is going on and what will happen next. In 2018, Get Out received an award for “Empire Award for Best Horror”. The plot was well written because of the audiences’ anticipation and wanting more of what was to come.
The addressing of race and racism in America has been a contentious issue for decades. The issue has been less and less talked about over the present years despite the issue still being relevant and rampant. Race and racism are talked about very discreetly. The social value of this society is shaped around media. Get Out convinces Chris that “They treat us like family” (shown in the image above). The movie shows great aspects that make us feel that they are an accepting white family that has put race and racism behind them. But in reality, they still accept and benefit from racist behaviors and supremacist ideology.
The Armitage family showcases Chris to all the older white couples to advertise and commodify him during their annual garden party. Everyone talks about various characteristics of Chris about his “big arms, height, color” etc. those showcasing all being stereotypes of being Black. In the especially eerie bingo scene, the powerful white couples bid to see who will be the lucky winner/new owner of Chris’s body. Get Out gives audiences this impression that Rose’s family and friends are accepting but they really are not. This is a movie that shapes itself around racism and oppression, and the consumer must be resourceful enough to read between the lines. Nothing is said directly to audiences anymore, everything is behind metaphor, mannerisms, and dramatic interpretations which must be taken out of the picture.
The quote above is very striking to today’s society. Race and racism are being talked about and shown in different ways of communication. Get Out received MTV’s “Movie Award for Best Comedic Performance” in 2017. Jordan Peele had a unique way of expressing the ways of people being racist. The way this film was shaped was through some light verbiage and humor.
Each scene throughout the movie had a little bit of humor that hid the fact of the movie having this serious topic of racism. Ron, who is Chris’s best friend, is the key comedian throughout this film. His scenes have a way of lightening the mood and softening the intensity of the issues presented. This film is truly an authentic and original method of portraying the issue of racism. That there is racism out there still and people are not able to see it clearly. The crux of the issue, racial rhetoric in post-racist America, is hidden with humor to make the confrontation easier to handle. Getting the message out into the public is easier having it be lightened rather than thrown and displayed in full view. If this movie did not utilize the humor it had, viewers would have been more inclined to discount the importance of the film’s theme, narrative, and cultural relevance.
Some of the other major cultural conversations prompted by the release of Get Out lie in its stark differences to its cinematic predecessor, the 1967 drama Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner. The premise of both Get Out and Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner involve young interracial couples consisting of a black man and white, upper-middle-class white woman. The man is to meet his girlfriend’s parents for the first time, which induces a lot of dialogue surrounding the man’s anxiety and anticipation that the parents will not like him because of his race. Both girlfriends in their respective films (Joanna in Guess Who and Rose in Get Out) try to placate and soothe their partners by claiming their parents are all-accepting liberal progressives.
The narrative similarities between these two films begin to diverge when the couple and parents must confront their own racist attitudes front and center. The biggest change noticed between the two films is how at the end of Guess Who Joanna’s father, Matt Drayton, makes a moving speech to all of the dinner guests about how “there’ll be a hundred million people right here in this country, who’ll be shocked and offended, and appalled at the two of you,” but that the couple will need to “cling tight to each other… and say screw all those people!” Joanna’s father is blessing their relationship and desires to get married, chalking up their future obstacles to a “pigmentation problem.” Prior to this grand monologue, Matt and his wife are forced to reanalyze their rhetoric of progressive, inclusion-based ideology and truly put it into practice by accepting Sidney into the family.
Rose’s family in Get Out have no intention of truly welcoming Chris into the family. In contrast to the liberal family in Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, the Armitage family is fully aware of their benefit from exploiting and oppressing black people. They hide under the same guise of liberal progressive ideology to make Chris feel safe, only to sell his existence, his physical body, to the highest bidder. In Get Out, there’s no debate or grand speech of being inclusive of Chris and his existence as a black man. They manipulate (ie. Hypnotize) Chris to exploit him and remove his agency. His girlfriend is the most heartbreaking in her betrayal of Chris’s trust — Chris realizes she’s the most violent abuser and exploiter as we see in her methods of baiting black men and women and bringing them to the house before rendering them powerless by refusing to give them the keys to freedom.
In a mind and body revoked of its agency, Chris merely becomes the passenger in his own existence. Missy Armitage’s hypnosis makes sure to render Chris incapacitated through her words: “Now, sink.”
Chris must regain his agency forcefully and violently in order to survive the horrors the Armitage family has in store for him. The climax of the film is a direct cultural connotation that black agency can only be regained forcefully. It implies that some of the worst oppressors may be Obama-loving white, middle-class liberals. Most obtrusive and visceral of images in the climax of Get Out is Chris overpowering his girlfriend and choking she’s shot in the stomach with a shotgun by another black prisoner.
Someone who was once considered Chris’s lover became the most dangerous person in his life and his only chance of survival was by destroying her and her family.
Get Out’s Visual Persuasion and Messaging
Furthermore, with Get Out being a visually stunning film, certain images and tableaus are presented purposely to reinforce these themes. At the end of the film, both Chris and the audience are given a sense of uncertainty. As Chris is hunched over Rose’s body, a police car arrives in front of him. Immediately, the theme of Get Out and the relevant issue of racism in the police force leads us to assume that this scene is not going to go well for Chris. On one note, Chris should be relieved to see the authorities arrive to take him away from this hell, but at the same the audience is thinking something along the lines of “Oh no, this should be interesting”. In Practices of Looking, we are given the term “interpellation” which presents that you are called in a way in which you recognize yourself to be. “if you are among the groups of people subject to racial profiling, you may feel interpellated in the sense of being targeted for no other reason that how you look…your response may not be to “buy into” that ideology but rather to resist and recognize you are being subjected to an unjust visual logic-a racialized political ideology of characters” (Sturken & Cartwright, 52). The visual presentation of this police car forces viewers to realize the true reality of assumed racial bias. Get Out’s final scene presents a truthful flaw in our society.
In the scene of Georgina looking outside by the inside of the window of the mansion, the message of character surveillance is portrayed. There have been numerous accounts of characters in movies and tv shows taking a moment to stop and look at someone else or at a place or object. This is a time that allows contemplation for the character and for the viewers. Georgina is overlooking the events occurring in Chris’ time at the mansion, all the while Chris does not see it. Being one of the individuals of color who has been hypnotized to submit to the host family, she is part of a larger surveillance system which has implied power over Chris in the film. Furthermore, the concept of “the other” with the gaze arises from Frantz Fanon, who helped the emergence of postcolonial theory, which analyzes how “western discourses have constituted the human subject of non-Western locations… as lacking agency or voice” (Sturken & Cartwright, p.114). For most of the film, Chris is meant to be given no agency or voice by the deceptive family.
Along with the idea of the power of surveillance and the gaze comes the idea of the spectatorship and the gaze. The image of Chris stuck in a chair unable to move and get free relates specifically to the idea of spectatorship and the gaze. This scene is interesting because Chris is forced to look and watch the video describing what is going to happen to him and why. Chris has a forced gaze as a spectator and is meant to see only one thing. The audience though first sees Chris in this predicament with this image showing Chris unable to move and being stuck kind of how an audience member might want to look away but cannot. Then the movie gets more intense with the idea of gaze because it focuses on the video that Chris is forced to watch making the audience member forced to watch it as well. This shows the power of the gaze because everyone had to watch the disturbing video of what goes on at the family’s house. After watching the video, it shows Chris desperately trying to get free and the audience is stuck watching him struggle, praying that he is able to get out and the audience cannot turn away because they have to see what happens to Chris lost to the power of the gaze.
Along with spectatorship and the gaze aesthetics and taste play an important role in the film. This image show Chris taking photos at the family picnic. Even before this scene though the audience is introduced to the fact that Chris is a photographer. Chris has what people call an eye for taking photos and making art. This skill requires being able to recognize things that are aesthetically pleasing and having what is called good taste. This plays an interesting role because the person who bids on Chris not only is blind and wants to see but he also wants to have Chris’s ability. This furthermore explains how valuable this ability is and how desirable it can be because not everyone is able to do this and do it well. Also, this leads up to the important moment where Chris take a photo of another African American man in a straw hat who sets him free from the sunken place. Though this time Chris uses his phone trying to be discrete and the flash goes off. This also shows how Chris is able to recognize something is wrong and wants to videotape the man in the straw hat talking about the African American experience in a very strange way. Thin in addition show that Chris has the aesthetic and taste ability which provides a deeper meaning into how he is able to pick up that something is very wrong at the house he has been brought to.
In Conclusion, Jordan Peele’s Get Out illustrates that the physical space which black people exist in is not truly accepted, included, or beloved. A sociological and cultural analysis of this film demonstrates that liberal ideology and color-blind rhetoric in addressing racism is at its best perceived as a perpetuation of microaggressions and at its worst destructive, oppressive, and dangerous. The visual representations of surveillance, power, and gaze reinforce the external factors (metaphorically and literally) oppressing Chris and his representation as every black person in current society. Does Get Out present a step-by-step solution to permanently erase racism in the United States? No. However, it does shine a light into the dark abyss of modern racism. It forces the eyes of uncomfortable viewers to gaze at its horror. It suspends its audience in the Sunken Place, leaving them to remember the feeling of powerlessness which Chris and others shared.
