I was underwhelmed by this as well, but I just wanted to pop in and say that the title of this thread actually spoiled the movie. I would have enjoyed watching it unfold more if I hadn’t known all along that it was a Stepford wives situation. :(
-Tom
Will there be a podcast on this?
Also, can I assume you did not see the trailer before you saw the movie?
I don’t think there will be a podcast, since it won’t open in Germany until May, at which point we’ll be hip deep in summer movies.
And, no, I absolutely did not see the trailer. I never see trailers before movies. So being told it was a “racist Stepford” pretty much sapped any surprise from the movie. Although, as you noted, the specifics were unnecessary and nonsensical. This feels like Jordan Peele wrote a sketch and was egged on into pitching it as a feature length film, and Blumhouse fell for it. I’d put this in roughly the same category as Desierto: a horror film that should be Important but is too ham-handed to pull it off.
-Tom
I think this is fair. Key and Peele always used humor to create an ease to broach uncomfortable questions of race. It’s probably a safe bet that if you weren’t receptive to Peele’s comedic sensibilities on his show, then this will fall flat as well . You can’t really argue with what someone finds funny.
But the thing is I think it was funny until the dopey reveal, which either undermines the satire or demonstrates that Peele has no idea how to follow through with satire. The only reason this family hijacks black men is because, uh, that’s what the script says for them to do. The shrug about “black is the new cool”, genetic make-up, or whatever feels so forced. Like there was a bit in the script that said [insert point here] and they forgot to write that part because they were busy gleefully giggling at their horror movie payback scenes. “And then the dude totally runs him through with the antlers!” That stuff felt like pandering. It certainly worked for my Friday night audience. They cheered wildly every time a member of the family was dispatched.
I wouldn’t really care – I think Hidden Figures is also leaden pandering, but at least it follows through nicely with what it’s trying to do – if I didn’t think the movie should have been better. But there are brilliant bits in here. The unfolding tension. The silent auction (spoiled egregiously in the trailer!). The Bing search for “top NCAA prospects”. Especially the bits that make a horror movie out of the idea of being black in a benevolent but ignorant all-white setting. That stuff is great. That’s where Peele is on solid footing and that’s the movie Get Out really should have been. But it all gets scuttled by being too simple (see also, Desierto). Peele undermines all this by missing any semblance of a point, jamming in silly schtick with Lilrel Howley, and thinking the payback should be the point.
As for Peele’s humor, I have enjoyed some of the Key and Peele I’ve seen. Their election season bit with Peele as Obama was great for its sense of controlled outrage. But other stuff I’ve seen is just broad and heavy-handed and even smacks – probably intentionally, to their credit – of minstrel shows. Black people think Liam Neeson is cool? Uhhh…okay? I just don’t find that sort of stuff funny.
Great cast, though. Betty Gabriel. Whoa. She was fun! Caleb Landry Jones doing what Caleb Landry Jones does. And I love Daniel Kaluuya (he kicked ass in Sicario and he’s a great protagonist here). I guess I was also underwhelmed because this stupid thread title stripped out the suspense I would have normally appreciated. So I’m waiting for the payoff, and when Peele opts out with headstomps, antler kills, and TSA jokes, well, so much for that moviegoing experience. :(
-Tom
Actually, those two valet’s think Neeson is cool, not all black people. I think it’s pretty funny, and Get Out’s TSA jokes and antler stabs were hilarious. Pandering…? Sure!
Of course, I loved They Came Together as well. Allowing comedy to simply be silly is intrinsic to the art form.
Having a consciousness stuck in a body that doesn’t allow you to exercise your own free will, and black being the new cool are twin pillars of the African American experience, so the reveal doesn’t remotely seem out of left field to me.
I think Peele wanted to allow you to have a good time howling w the rest of your Friday night audience, he’s stated as much, and just maybe gain some insight into ‘post-racial’ America along the way.
I like that read, and it would work for me if this was a movie about slavery, which is almost literally the act of hijacking someone’s body. But I don’t understand how a pillar of the contemporary black experience is having your free will subverted. That feels forced in a social satire. But what do I know? Here we are, whitesplaining Get Out to each other. :)
Regardless, it makes no sense in the context of the movie. So this weird family discovers how to transfer consciousness into another body, and they decide they’ll only use black people as their subjects? That’s what I mean about the script not making any point. Once it tips its hand – here’s what’s really going on! – it seems to lose interest in following through on the subject it had previously addressed: namely that benevolent racism (post-racial racism!) is still uncomfortable.
Dude, I’m the guy who would totally watch a weekly episode of Ow, My Balls! You don’t have to tell me that.
-Tom
I thought that the context was a further extension of Bradley Whitford’s character’s wanting to vote for Obama for a 3rd term. I think it is an extension and unnatural evolution of the co-option of black culture as a whole. And they all of the casual racism that exists having some deeper, more terrible meaning. The “with your genetics, you could be an amazing UFC fighter” from the brother, (he wishes he had a black body). Or the guests who think “I want to be cool! Black people are so cool!”. And rather than the movie just being about all of these casual racist phrases, it is saying that there is something deeper out in suburbia. In a straight drama film, the depth might be, the casual racism is covering up some actual hatred and ignorance. In this film, that casual racism is a symptom of a cult of body-snatchers. Which is funny.
While, I think maybe that the in-movie reasoning is a bit flimsy, I think I get what Jordan Peele is trying to do with this. Like, white people co-opt black culture all the time. Now, it is time for white people to co-opt black bodies. It is only natural! White people know so much more about how to be black than black people do. (Is the twisted reasoning) The twin brother thinks that Chris is wasting his genetic gifts. So, that is why black people.
Again, that is my whitesplanation.
I thought that was the best twist of the movie: You have an entire dinner party where people are making the most casual-racist, ignorant, insensitive statements…but when you watch it again, you realize that all of their comments make perfect sense in the context of the story.
“I thought this guy was really racist, but it turns out that he just wants to hijack my persona! Whew, that’s a relief!”
And yeah, I think it’s a perfect analogy to the world today, where black people are embraced by white executives who thing, “Hey, this whole black thing is really popular! I bet we can make a ton of money off of this!”
(Edit: also white.)
I was talking w/ a friend about the movie and we noticed a couple of small touches in the film.
Chris’ salvation, preventing him from being put back under hypnosis, was via picking cotton (to stuff in his ears). Also, Rose was eating dry Fruit Loops and drinking milk on the side. She didn’t want to mix the colors with the whites.
I saw that cereal/not mixing colors and whites “analysis” somewhere else and I don’t get it. My gut reaction is that’s just reading something into the scene that isn’t there, but even if I’m wrong, then it’s just another instance of a very confused presentation of this society’s view on race. This little secret society fetishizing becoming black people doesn’t jibe with segregation.
Oh, I think it’s there. It’d be quite a non-sequitur otherwise, but I agree… It’s probably something Peele thought was a cool idea and shoehorned it in regardless of the fit.
Maybe the problem is that Allison Williams plays Marnie on Girls and Rose in Get Out exactly the same, other than, you know, the Get Out specific stuff. And what jumps out in the scene with the cereal isn’t that she’s eating the Froot Loops separate from the milk, but that she’s making more than one bite out of a single froot loop. Which is exactly the kind of thing I can see Marnie doing, so it’s hard for me to see if there’s any intentional subtext to that scene beyond that.
Yeah, I don’t believe for a second that black people were intended to be represented by Fruit Loops. I’m even skeptical that furniture stuffing was an intended to reference picking cotton. But I do believe that authorial intent has zero place in a discussion of movies, so I appreciate mono and his friend coming up with two pretty cool interpretations. :)
-Tom
Now that looks like authorial intent! :)
-Tom
Saw this with the family this past weekend. Two weeks after release and the theater was packed - it was actually tough for us to find a show Saturday night that wasn’t sold-out here in the DC area. My lily-white wife and daughter thought it was a spectacular film.
For my part, I went in with sky-high expectations and I think that kind of hurt my viewing experience. Like everyone here, I entered the theater knowing there was some kind of “Stepford” vibe, but the 100% Rotten Tomatoes rating convinced me that there was going to be some kind of… I dunno… a “counter twist” or something. When such a thing was not to be found, I guess I was sort of let down a bit.
I will say that it was an excellently constructed, shot and acted movie. It really felt a lot shorter than its running time of 1:44, and I can’t think of a single scene or prop that went unused, from the opening scene with Chris’ pictures to his scratching fingers in his flashback, to the Jesse Owens reference – it all came together very nicely.
I also appreciated Peele’s decision to make his protagonist halfway “horror-smart”. Chris really doesn’t make too many dumb decisions in the film; correctly identifying the “bad vibes” of the place alongside the audience and trying to get out (heh) just about where any other reasonable person would have pulled up stakes. His one dumb move was acknowledged as such, but we as the audience knew why he had to make that foolish decision – it was fully “earned”.
I thought that whole thing was slyly done and works on a number of different levels.
First, there’s the reasons that the villains give: Black is cool, black is sexy, black is strong. As some folks pointed out above, it’s a decent analogy to whites appropriating black culture for their own.
Next, there’s the logistical notion: Andre (the guy that attacks Chris at the party) went missing and few people cared. Chris was chosen at least in part because he’s a quasi-orphan. His mother’s dead, his father’s “not in the picture” and so his disappearance won’t cause too many ripples. Even the black cops more-or-less shrug off the disappearance of a 20-something black male when Chris’ TSA buddy tries to get them to help. The implication is that at least one reason that the Armatiges are choosing African Americans is because it’s easier than kidnapping white folks.
And then there’s the idea that the Armitages and their customers are choosing black bodies because it validates (in their minds) that they’re not racist. There’s the whole “I’d vote for Obama a third time” line, but also the statement by Andre/Andrew when he’s asked about his experience as a black man: “I’d say that my experience as an African American has been very positive…”
Sure it has – he’s a rich white guy whose only experience as “a black” has been to bang his wife for three solid months; he’s never had to endure discrimination or the economic hardship that is part-and-parcel of being a minority. So he’s assuring his old friends that being black is fine: it’s only a skin color! No racism here!
Even Stephen Root’s character doesn’t quite get it: “I don’t care what color you are, I just want your eye…” He’s thinking that Chris’ photographic talents are somehow inborn and not informed at all by his experience growing up as a black man with a dead mother and an absent father.
Great movie. Best movie I’ve seen in a LONG time. It’s funny, scary and really is relevant today. And Peele knows his shit, his direction was tight. And there are so many subtle horror and tv references without being blatant. I’m more surprised at how well the production was for such a low budget. It’s like they squeezed out every ounce of dollar worth into the production.
I absolutely didn’t think of that idea, but it fits perfectly. I think that a line could have been thrown in for clueless people like me that didn’t make that connection. Could be something that is a lot clearer to the black community than my middle class white community.
I think the movie probably spent just a few minutes too little on the whole explanation and machinations of the villainy of that family.
Saw this today and really enjoyed it. For me it really lived up to the outstanding reviews it’s been getting. I knew the general ‘stepford’ thing going on, but still didn’t predict how it would all play out. I feel dumb for not noticing the girlfriend was in on it.
