“Get Out,” film by Jordan Peele, 2017
This is the modern version of the film, “Guess Whose
Coming to Dinner,” except now, 50 years later, black people are no longer sure
they want to be invited. This is how
‘race relations’ are progressing many years later – going nowhere or worse. Of course, there are no such thing as different human
races, but we reference the vernacular used by unscientific journalists,
liberals and conservatives.
 |
| Nice White People |
An upper-middle class and clueless young white woman
romances a young black photographer, Chris, and invites him to meet her parents
at their upstate, upscale New York home. This
event would be fraught, even if both partners were white. She doesn’t tell the parents he’s black and he’s
bothered by this omission. But ‘it’s all
good’ he says a number of times – a phrase that is perhaps too optimistic for
the circumstances.
From a romance to a comedy to a horror show, this
film progresses into the predictable depths.
The parents are odd – a neuro-surgeon that can’t quit with over-familiar
comments; a psychologist mother that practices hypnotism related to
cigarette-smoking; a nasty drunk brother that physically challenges Chris. Oddest of all are two black servants that
work for the parents – a cook and a gardener, who both seem like hypnotized
robots. Yeah, you know what is coming.
Mary Shelley’s socialist parable “Frankenstein” was
about a human monster composed of body parts from other people. As detailed in the book, “Monster of the
Market,” working class relatives of hung or dead people during Shelley’s time
had to fight the hospitals and the state for their husbands’ or brothers’
bodies. Doctors were using the bodies
for various purposes, including dissection in medical colleges. Present African parables describe kidnapped
children abducted by the rich for their body parts. Current vampire tales borrow the same
psychology. In many parts of the modern
world like India,
body parts from exploited populations like the Dalits are part of a brisk
trade. Kidneys for sale! Vulnerable working-class
bodies have been turned into commodities by capitalism - they are not merely
flesh machines worn-out during the production process, but useful beyond that as parts resupply.
Partial Spoiler Alert
This film brings that story home to the U.S. The mother meets Chris as he wanders around
late at night for a smoke, and hypnotizes him with a clinking tea cup. He is
shaken by this, but tries to discount it.
Chris observes one black man who is a companion to a much older white
woman during a suspiciously unsuspected lawn party full of creepy white
suburbanites. The black man seems oddly familiar, but he’s also robotic. Chris takes a flash picture of him and the
flash of the camera seems to shake the man out of a stupor. The man physically attacks Chris in what
might be a warning, yelling “Get Out.”
Chris sends the picture to his buddy Lil Rel, who
works for TSA, and his buddy recognizes the man as a guy from the old
neighborhood in the Bronx who
disappeared. Over the phone, Lil Rel
conjectures that the white folks are kidnapping black people and turning them
into sex slaves or some other kind of slaves.
Chris doesn’t buy this absurd story.
Lit Rel brings this story to the police after Chris won’t answer his
phone. The cops laugh at him too. I won’t tell you the rest.
What is striking about this film is that liberal
white Obama supporters have been turned into their opposite. They are not Klansman or Republicans or any
of the other stock racists. And only the
most cynical black attitude actually reflects reality. Even cute, monied white girls come in for
suspicion – as they should. The film
reflects black distrust writ large, through a funhouse horror mirror. It was written by a black comedian. Is it a comedy? Not quite.
“Monsters of the Market,” reviewed below.
Red Frog
July 7, 2017
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