The first film of Peele, Get Out was released in 2017 and received a huge response and numerous favourable comments. It “takes a horrifying yet playful look at some sociohistorical themes that have plagued Black-White interracial interactions”. (Austin, 2017) As a black comedy that ingeniously integrates racial issues and horror elements, the setting and expression of the movie have its unique aspects. Get Out is classified in the genre of horror movies, and can be further subdivided into the category of body horror. In this horrible atmosphere, the film reveals and discusses the social phenomena of that blacks encounter in a white-dominated society. This essay will discuss the interpretation of horror elements in the movie Get Out and how it extends the discussion of race issues on the basis of horror inequality movies.Get Out uses the traditional combination of vision and hearing to shape seemingly normal and actual strange scenes and use this to set off the horror atmosphere. At the beginning of the film, Get Out “opens with a familiar horror-movie trope” (Hoberman, 2017), it uses a scene that black man was kidnapped to lay the foundation of the horror and announce the fact that it is a horror movie. The first act of the film takes place in a gloomy and quiet suburban residential area, with no life except for a black man walking on the street and a car following him. Before the kidnapping was carried out, there might be a trace of luck in audiences' minds, but then the soundtrack "Run Rabbit Run" came from the car, suggesting that the person in the car and the walking person are the relationship between the hunter and the prey. Therefore,the plot of the subsequent kidnapping is self-evident. Although the movie returned peaceful afterwards, the seeds of horror movies have been planted. In the latter development of the film, Peele deepens the impression of horror step by step by continuously superimposing the wired scenes and plots, and at the climax of the movie, the horror emotions accumulated all the way lead to the the other climax of audiences. On the way Chris and his girlfriend Rose drove to meet her parents, Get Out paves the way for the storyline by hitting and killing a deer, which hinted that Chris would be on an uneasy and even dangerous family visit. The film then continued to accumulate horror emotions through the portrayals of two black servants and the party held by white people.Peele led the audience to observe the characters in the movie from the perspective of Chris, mainly using close-ups of the characters' faces, especially the eyes combine with a long lens to show the characters' unusual looks and behaviours. For example, Georgina's unsmiling eyes and happy corners of her mouth, as well as her later classic pictures, a happy look with tears, crying and laughing at the same time. Afterwards, the director would often switch to close-ups of Chris's face immediately, not only as a comparison, but using Chris's frightened eyes, “which are wide and wet and red and give the unmistakable impression of a person frozen in pure, cold fear” (Cruz, 2017) combined with the performance of "it feels wrong but I don' t know where to start"to constantly indicates at the huge conspiracy that will be revealed next. Besides, part of the strange plots in the movie are often accompanied by orchestral music that changes from deep to harsh, slowly to rapid to highlight and deepen the horror atmosphere. In the middle and later stages of the film, the party which is actually an exhibition and auction. Chris didn't realise that he was the protagonist of the party. He was like a deer or a prey in a trap, surrounded by friendly and kind-looking hunters who actually wanted to seize his body. Although the audiences will not understand this truth until the latter part of the film, these buried horror factors will make the audience feel a chill running down spine while learning the truth.Such strong staying power and delayed effect are what makes Get Out unique and successful as a horror film. The film completes the reversal and answers the causes of the previous weird scenes in the latter of the movie, it is mainly due to the malicious operations of brain-transplantation caused by the evil trades. As a body horror type movie, Get Out "intentionally showcases graphic or psychologically disturbing violations of the human body" (Allen & Cruz, 2012) through the damage of the flesh and the occupation of black's consciousnesses . Therefore, on the one hand, it is physical damage, on the other hand, it is psychological damage. Both of these go against the wills of the victims and cause sufferings to them. The former one is reflected in the kidnapping at the beginning , the transplant operation in the later stage,and the bloody fight that occurred when Chris escaped. In these scenes, the injurers violently assaulted the victims without their permissions. This fully demonstrates "unnatural or violent distortions of the human body." (Williams, 1991) Such as the damaged brain reflected in Dean's glasses on the operating table, Chris pierced Dean's abdomen with a deer head specimen, and Missy pierced Chris' palm with a folk. Through close-up shots of these scenes, Peele makes the audience imagine the pain and engender fear emotion. However, Get Out doesn't stop there. The process of letting people slowly feel the loss of body control is another kind of psychological allergy. The transplanted person in the film no longer has the control of the body, only the ability to observe.They can feel their bodies as a third party but are unable to make any changes, in this way “horror tropes to viscerally evoke the loss of identity and enforced powerlessness” (Hoberman, 2017) To a certain extent, this is a long-term torture of people's will and psychology, which is even more frightening and desperate than death. The director grasped this sense of powerlessness and despair, and presented it to the audience in a simple and intuitive way. “Just as the sense of touch is often evoked to discuss compassion or empathy, vision is closely linked to a person's unique way of knowing the world.” (Cruz, 2017) There is no need for a scene that is bloody or heavy, but through the display of such consequences, a psychological battle with the audience can be achieved, therefore, reaching the expected effect of body horror .As a widely acclaimed horror movie, Get Out not only allows the audience to truly experience the feelings of the characters in the film, but also to think the story itself, which is inseparable from the material selection of the director. Get Out as a “ horror-thriller and the social satire, to meaningfully reflect a culture's latent fears and anxieties” (Chang, 2017), the racial problem itself shown in the movie is a horrible thing that black people are encountering. Although I have never had the real experience , the movie has given me an opportunity to feel and cogitate. Obviously, when watching the movie, the audience can find that Chris has a lot of anxiety from his insecurity about his skin colour, even if Chris is an excellent photographer with keen and unique observation.His concerns reflect a level of cultural mistrust that Whaley (2001) suggests provides a “useful framework for understanding how many African Americans might approach interracial interactions.” For example, he asked his white girlfriend Rose whether her parents knew he is black, and confessed to others that he was uncomfortable in an all-white environment, “desperate to have someone with whom he can discuss the frightening world in which he has found himself.” (Hoberman, 2017) Through these details, the director vividly shows the position and psychological feelings of black people in a white-dominated society with racial issues, especially the details of Chris's feeling of alienation from his surrounding environment because of his skin colour. Peele showed the true face of capitalists through the portrayal of white characters,and the implicit bias they did not recognise. One interesting thing that happen in the movie is that in the early stage of the film, most of the white images were friendly and hospitable. Dean and Missy said that they were not racists and declared that they would vote for Obama in the third turn if they could. “This well-meaning behaviour subtly insinuates that African Americans are best understood in a monolithic manner and whose interests are solely focused on race-related concerns.” (Austin, 2017) The white people at the party talked "black is in fashion". When Chris asked Jim Hudson "why black people", he said he didn't care about his skin colour and only wanted his eyes and the way he observing the world. Ironically, for Chris, these people later became a threatening group of people.They treat the body of black as an impersonal object for auction and operation, which is similar to the attitude of hunters towards prey. Before the prey was obtained, the Armitage family applied the tactics of deception. However, before the operation, everyone in the family showed their real sides. Such attitudes and behaviours are more terrible and horrible than blatant discrimination, because from the very beginning, black people have never had the right and chance to be treated equally by them, let alone that black people have been treated sincerely before. Their bodies can become private property owned by capitalists, and their wills can be abandoned or replaced. It could be the message that Get Out as a horror movie for black people that “in America, my body does not belong to me.” (Madison,2017) The more worrying thing is that people who have such thoughts and behaviours don't admit it or don't even realise that they have them. At the end of the movie, Chris escapes the death relies on his excellent physical quality, but the psychological trauma caused by this whole incident remains unknown. In Get Out, director Peele applied the form of body horror to convey the fear of blacks' body being dominated by the consciousness of white people and through the form of horror movie to reveal the racial horror issues which closely related to himself. By combining vision with hearing, Peele created a lifelike story, “a thrill that springs from a place of very real, entirely justified anger” (Chang,2017) which makes audience better understand such fears and the damages caused by the similar incident and in this way bring the audience to alert and think. Get Out contains Peele's imagination that “give black men in the audience an allegory that they've craved in horror for decades" (Madison, 2017). Although the story appears in the movie may not happen exactly the same, it only appears in different ways and bringing the same damage in the reality since the physical and mental harm caused by various inequalities due to skin colour will not change in essence. For those blacks who is suffering from this, these events themselves are horrible stories. We have to admit that to a certain extent, implicit bias is a deep-rooted manifestation of racial issues. It subtly affects people's decisions and opinions,and in certain circumstances causes greater psychological harm than blatant contempt. Sometimes we don't even know that we are looking at the world with these coloured eyes. Reference: Austin, Chammie, “They Smile in Your Face: Uncovering the Unpleasant Realities and History Hidden in Black-White Racial Dynamics", American Psychological Association, 2017 Chang, Justin, "Jordan Peele's Clever Horror Satire 'Get Out' is an Overdue Hollywood Response to Our Racial Anxiety", Los Angeles Times, 23 February 2017. Cruz, Lenika , "In Get Out, the Eyes Have It", Atlantic March 3, 2017. Hoberman, J, "A Real American Horror Story", New York Review of Books, 2017. Madison, Ira, "Get Out Understands the Black Body" MTV News. February 24, 2017. Ronald, Allan & Lopez, Cruz,“Mutations and Metamorphoses: Body Horror is Biological Horror”, Journal of Popular Film and Television, August 12, 2012. Whaley, A, “Cultural mistrust: An important psychological construct for diagnosis and treatment of African Americans”, Professional Psychology, 2001. Williams, Linda, “Film Bodies: Gender, Genre, and Excess”, University of California, July 1, 1991.
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