Jordan Peele’s Get Out:
The Black Mind and Body as Intertwined Delicacy
Author’s Note:
Burnout is the impetus for my complete transition into writing about horror full-time or at minimum incorporating horror elements into my analyses of pop culture, history, video games, etc. After completing a number of degrees at the undergraduate and graduate level in 2016, I was exhausted physically and emotionally — my insomnia and carpal tunnel are testaments to that. Finally! I thought. The freedom to write what I want, when I want, however, I want. Alas, the jubilation bubble I had reveled in was swiftly punctured by real-life horror(s) that were careening into my daily life on a frequent basis on social media — with innumerable hashtags of murdered Black people — and I severely needed an outlet to process everything that I was seeing and feeling…about Blackness and otherness. Writing about horror and its complex intersections years ago as a form of self-care and cathartic release snowballed into the now wherein various media outlets, universities, etcetera reach out to me about my work and perspectives on the genre.
My first piece back in 2018 entitled Invasion of the Body Snatchers: Race, Horror, and Science Fiction, ironically or perhaps prophetically addressed some of the themes of this current piece you will read today. Therein, I explored the through-line of the alien or human ‘body snatcher’ whose desire always curiously veered toward the occupation of White bodies and presumed affluence they carried for world domination. The entire Invasion of the Body Snatchers filmic franchise and each iteration of The Thing all explored the alien trying to cloak itself in the body of a White individual — while Black people were usually discarded or conspicuously absent. Conversely, The Skeleton Key (2005) is a recent film that dealt with the body swap in a unique, historically pointed, and subversive way; The story involved Black enslaved voodoo practitioners who moved their souls into that of their White masters’ children (whom met a grisly fate in their stead) and how they have been keeping their souls alive throughout the centuries by swapping into the bodies of the young.
Exploring the dynamics of White and Black fears in that initial piece — with brief attention also paid to Get Out (2017)— laid the groundwork for a larger composition in 2020, entitled: The Quagmire of Race and Horror in Cinema. The thread of White policing/supremacy, Black identity, body horror, and racism are all components interwoven in the cinematic narrative of Get Out; the main-text or subtextual underpinnings of class and gentrification will also receive further scrutiny.
Lastly, my work always challenges or grapples with the machinations of empire, violence against the marginalized, wading through the morass to find healthy media (representation), and proudly stating I’m a Black queer horror fan. By revisiting the literal and metaphorical horrors of our past (well my past really) I contend with the indelible mark they’ve left on me. I like my horror honest these days. Thus, media-influenced superstitions or misunderstandings about ghosts, the undead, ‘things that go bump in the night’, and the boogeyman ceased frightening me long ago. If anything, they intrigue me because there’s a rich history lurking under the surface of every myth and urban legend. So without further ado let’s expand my Black horror ponderings into the present with a thorough examination of…
By blurring the science-fiction and horror genres, Jordan Peele adeptly explored the grotesqueness of ‘body-snatching’ and the psychological component of infiltrating and commandeering the Black mind. This practice of subtly breaking down the mind and body’s fight-flight response to become a vacant vessel to be infiltrated hearkens back to celluloid’s past in ghost or demon possession narratives, but most vividly has connections to the Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956 — ) original film and its many remakes. The primary difference being the majority of the populace under attack is White in those films and the threat is from an alien species; whereas, Get Out’s threat is shown from a terrifyingly human and racist design.
The film also explores the frightening aspect of consumption and consumerism of the Black body via imagery that hearkens back to chattel slavery. With a lustful eye, a groping hand, or infantilizing words the main character Chris (Daniel Kaluuya) is there to be appraised like a painting (or an animal), and we can surmise the other Black characters enslaved at the Armitage estate received a similar dehumanizing treatment. The pseudo-housekeeper Georgina (Betty Gabriel) and groundskeeper Walter (Marcus Henderson) being reduced to servile, single-named characters further alludes to this power imbalance and exclusion from self-determination. The initial removal of agency being deployed by White women — daughter and mother respectively — is also jarring if one is not familiar with the sordid history of White women’s dominion over the enslaved in the domestic space.
Historian, Stephanie Jones-Rogers explores in her text, They Were Her Property: White Women as Slave Owners in the American South (2019) the horrid conditions and conditioning of White girls and women to be the sole arbiters of control and punishment, when other access points of power in larger society were unavailable to them, but economic power was. Note the through-line of grooming, training, and complicity in the entire system of human bondage — with frightening parallels to the familial structural narrative of Get Out — in this excerpt from an interview with the author in Vox, “So I start the book by talking about how White slave-holding parents trained their daughters how to be slaveowners. They give them lessons in slave discipline and slave management. Some even allow for their daughters to mete out physical punishments. Slave-holding parents and slave-holding family members gave girls enslaved people as gifts — for Christmas sometimes, when they turned 16 or when they turned 21. There are even accounts of slave-holding parents and family members giving White female infants enslaved people as their own. There is one particular instance of a case, in a court record, where a woman talks about how her grandfather gave her an enslaved person as her own when she was 9 months old.” (Anna North, Vox)
The parents Missy Armitage (Catherine Keener), Dean Armitage (Bradley Whitford) and the Grandparents that now reside in the bodies of Georgina and Walter ensured that their daughter was best destined to mete out the vile dictates of infiltration and subterfuge necessary to bring so many Black persons under their thrall; the box teeming with photographic evidence of previous conquests act as grim souveneirs. Whereas, their son Jeremy (Caleb Landry Jones) is a brute and not adept at the tactile psychological work that she’s been trained for. Through body language and direct action, the parents tolerate their son’s behavior as a physical asset but do not entrust him with the Mother or Father’s training in the sciences. Their daughter Rose (Allison Williams) is a terrifying ‘Jack of all trades’ whose learned proficiency in mental and physical warfare made her an apex predator within the household — wielding her Mother’s disarming psychoanalytic smile as a cudgel — and accuracy with a shotgun like her Father’s scalpel.
Capital was a secondary byproduct, if not tertiary to those who bid on Chris. Each person indeed wished to have a piece of him, as a servant, sexual conquest, or as the final winner stated, his eye(s). The short-term expenditure was only necessitated by the long-term goal and pleasure of mastery over another. Their humanity was forfeited the moment those at ‘the bidding barbecue’ set foot on the premises with the intent to participate in such an abominable practice. The lust for different aspects of the Black body or their individual talents, such as Chris’s photography skills or Walter’s running prowess, shows the sliding scale of desirability politics coupled with the erasure and expendability of ‘the other’. Power and powerlessness fuel othering as a concept to keep the ire or desire constantly buttressed against the marginalized. Throughout the film, this relationship is always shown as predator-prey and highlights the consequences of a racialized hierarchical Black-and-White world.
Get Out also explores a pseudo-fountain of youth allegory wherein Black bodies are used as vehicles by White people to live healthier, longer, and stronger lives. However, if one is familiar with the internal physical weathering of Black bodies due to stress, elevated heart rates, and a plethora of other medical conditions due to a mixture of epigenetics and racism…well, White people wouldn’t be piloting these bodies for long. I don’t believe it’s a coincidence that the Black bodies we do see in the film are above the age of 40. Moreover, how tenable is the mind-transfer process? As seen throughout the film, the original person is always trying to pierce through the shell in which they’ve been cocooned which adds even more fallibility to this sustained practice of predation. The individual is still in there, passenger or no, they can potentially take the wheel at any time. Additionally, the never-ending void that is ‘the sunken place’ is one of the most chilling examples of Black fear(s) made tangible about life and death that I’ve ever seen — that we are not fit to exist unless in subservience to others. Interpretations of ‘the sunken place’ may vary, but they all encompass the anxieties of mortality in a White supremacist world.
Art and gentrification are expressed even through the establishing shots of Get Out as the audience is given a glimpse into Chris’s living space. His upscale ‘modern’ dwelling is solely for those of a certain class strata, as shown by the sweeping shots of the large square footage and pristine furnishings. Additionally, access to Whiteness or White spaces through your art, talent, or skills can oftentimes clash with your race or ethnicity by showing what is left behind or given up. Or, an equally cogent theorem for this removal is the emotional abuse he’s undergone through Rose’s psychological manipulation. For all of the opulence that Chris has situated himself in, the feeling of the space feels sterile and controlled. Perhaps, this is meant to depict a character trait that alludes to his past trauma and issues surrounding everyone and everything in his life being rigid and distanced.
This austere, ‘safe’, gentrified environment is ideal for an individual that wished to be in the pilot seat of Chris’s life and success. Jim Hudson (Stephen Root) who desires his eyes is demonstrative of a particularly malicious dehumanizing aspect of photography. “I want your eye, man. I want those things you see through.” (Get Out, 2017) Hudson’s laissez-faire comments to Chris prior to his lobotomy are indicative of the superiority complex of Whiteness, that Blackness, or the identity therein is flat and easily transmutable, which completely disregards the cumulative lived experiences of an entire race. The anonymity of the artist is dually the voyeur controlling or framing the image, thus that individual can decide what’s worthy or significant to be documented and recorded for posterity. Like any artistic medium, the creator has all of the control in the final emotional product. Intention is everything. The adage of the eyes being the windows to the soul is also profound by its interconnectedness with racist religiosity that espoused the soullessness of Black people. When concocting this White supremacist project, was there a presumption that Black people didn’t have them so they were empty vessels that White people could easily commandeer? Chilling, but certainly food for thought.
I also discussed the overlapping dichotomy of the zombified Black body being used in life (and death), trapped in perpetual servitude, via Candyman. An additional thread the film explores is that of ‘Black cool’ and how it’s perceived by White and other non-White persons when Chris is being appraised by his potential buyers. This scene if not included in the film would have been a severely missed opportunity for commentary about the desirability of Black aesthetics but not in/on Black people. Like the gentrifying of a place, the colonizing of language and customs can also occur as a result. This consumption without compassion and regurgitation of ‘the hip’ shows the precariousness of Black ownership in art and in body. The Black body is regularly dissected for its most desirable parts; this is most evident in the types of beauty that each purchaser wished to possess. A faster physique. A prettier and shapelier visage. A handsome piece of arm-candy. These are not mere coincidences; the racially targeted aspect of the bodies inhabited required foresight and deliberation. Get Out and its allegorical eugenics exemplifies the slippery slope of White supremacy interspersed with quack medicine, pseudoscience, and the fetishized Black other.
It remains imperative to examine the broader world in which our horror films reside, especially its framing. Regularly, White filmgoers have the luxury of distance between characters and settings that are nightmarish; in comparison, Black people have the grim reminders of reality to keep them awake at night. Thus, horror films like Get Out don’t have the underpinnings of escapism or the fantastical like your average horror film because there is an ongoing history of White medical science pulling the operating strings on Black bodies. See Harriet A. Washington’s: Medical Apartheid (2006) for further history and context on how the lives and deaths of Black people were frequently experimented upon by the vivisecting and torturous hands of White medical practitioners in life and in death by that of ‘resurrection-men’. The Armitages represent these archaic practices in the modern context by their acumen; the mother and child(ren) prepare the body in life for the Father who crafts a new rarified zombie in death. Once the procedure is complete, they all played a part in keeping the body presentable-preserved-profitable: with the clink of a domestic teacup and the gloved hands of a Frankenstein.
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