Ramone Wagner
01/20/22
AfAm112A
Blog #2
Within this second blog post, I choose to reflect on the overview and thematic comparisons of the two great movies Get Out and Us by Jordan Peele. These movies, we can see, guide us into the meat of course as they have heralded our first looks at the process of surgically analyzing film work and denoting thematic messaging across the two movies, as we shall do with other works. Thus, in the firstly examined Get Out film, we get to highlight Peele’s emphasis on, of course white supremacy, racial motivated horror, but furthermore his depiction of racial isolation as well as assimilation being in a secluded white estate by his lonesome referring to Chris the protagonist, appropriation and/or coveting of black bodies like the father Dean Armitage and how he couldn’t get over his competitive shortcomings to that of Jesse Owens and thus being obsessed with taking control of blackbodies for his benefit, the idea of analogous representation that is physical and mental slavery and mass incarceration being metaphorically alluded towards with the idea of the sunken place, microaggressions throughout the film that Chris has to navigate through much like in our reality navigating white spaces, and many others that can be interpreted. Now the black horror that is “Us”, compared to its predecessor, alludes to a plethora of non-literal, kind of beyond the surface thematic elements, within a dream-world like effect or impact as opposed to literal and physical. “Us” is understood to be abstract to the point where how one comprehends the ideals of the movie is predicated upon that person's specific interpretation, thus it varying. The movie quite generally can be understood to take a big tug at the ill intentions and/or demon of human nature or humans in general, referring to the inhumane impulses and energies that lie within us. Furthermore, the audience gets to witness intentionality of blackness representation such as the purposeful casting of Lupita Nyong'o as lead role (darkskin representation) and Gabe the father in his Howard university shirt. There is an ultimate theme of alluding to the duality that is the privilege of Americans or of a regular life to live from adolescence up, vs. Those less fortunate and unprivileged that have to struggle in life from early age, even despite doing all the right things (at random/unfair circumstances/ “down below”). There are plenty of other interpretations that can be drawn, like a similarly alluding to isolation in these white spaces like Get Out, but the finalizing depiction of the conjoined hands of the tethered was described a direct jab of the1980’s performative activist movement that was the Hands Across America movement as it was described to have been an effort to build funds for the houseless and such and so the movement was to be seen as the country could solve hunger if people all just held hands. In spinning this historical moment, Peele alludes to a thematic element that is the mockery of institutions that only pretend to care for their the less fortunate populace. Powerful!
