Nope: I Will Make Thee a Spectacle
A good miracle.
Warning: This piece contains spoilers for the entire film Nope.
Nope is the third project in a sequence of Jordan Peele’s written-directed films that weaves the fantastical uncanny valleys of science fiction and the white-knuckled hackle-raising tensions of horror. Moreover, this is the second film starring Peele’s ingenue Daniel Kaluuya and what magic they make together as a team, especially with tv, cinema, and music veteran Keke Palmer co-starring. Lest we forget, Keke is younger than many of her co-stars but has been working in the industry since 2004. That’s almost twenty years in the business that only a well-rounded magnetic performer could cultivate and baby this is Keke Palmer(’s movie). Additionally, I’m giving a special nod to newcomer Brandon Perea who is charismatic and nails every single scene of horror with aplomb. Oh, and Steven Yeun, my goodness he could charm the water out of a cactus; it’s lovely to see him in another Jordan Peele project outside of The Twilight Zone (2019–2020).
This film also most certainly sets a precedent, with a ‘final girl’ and ‘two final boys’, and joins an illustrious pantheon that writes people of color with agency and interiority. Peele’s only on-screen visceral murder occurs to Keith David’s character and the scene doesn’t feel exploitative or revel in the violence, if anything the tone is sombre and macabre as the audience and the characters are unmoored searching for answers and justice. There’s a fine line in horror-science fiction where Black and other non-white people are written to exist because the genre has been so merciless to us in the past. It’s an abysmal state of affairs when all we ask for is a character arc but Peele has achieved the ‘seemingly unwritable or uncastable’ by making two films back-to-back that highlight the nuances of Black families and the particularities of Black siblinghood.
For as many Black characters have existed across decades of horror, they are frequently underwritten with no familial connections and undercut by no friend circles. In my previous reflections on Peele’s work, I never made mention of the deliberate (some might even say radical) choice to cast dark-skinned people as the protagonists and what that truly means in an industry that is still colorist, anti-Black, and doesn’t make space for the interiority of certain people or visual aesthetics. With each progressive film in his catalogue, there is a concerted effort to light and film each Black person with all the richness that our varying shades of melanin demand — and this last one is a doozy — but he celebrates Black natural hair and never shies away from its textures or kinkiness. There are still unwelcoming, unsafe, and unkind tv and film studios out there that are not doing the work to hire Black hair stylists, makeup artists, or sensitivity readers that may address problematic elements within the media they are producing for mass audiences.
There are a plethora of on-set stories where Black people have expressed that there was an inadequacy of care or conscious/unconscious neglect towards them, especially regarding beauty and how they would appear on film. *Don’t even get me started on the horrendous wigs they ask Black people to don because there is no on-set stylist!* These industries have been around for a very long time but these are the hoops that Black talent still has to circumnavigate and its a breath of fresh rarified air that Peele’s films and even his co-written and produced film Candyman (2021) from last year are showcasing a font of Black beauty even amidst Black horror.
Speaking of horror, Jordan Peele has embraced a cataclysmic apocalyptic allegorical methodology of storytelling that I really dig because the Bible contains some absolutely terrifying stories and warnings about hubris. The wraparound verse which appeared like a doomsday clock in Us (2019) was Jeremiah 11:11 which proclaimed, “I will bring evil upon them, which they shall not be able to escape; and though they shall cry unto me, I will not hearken unto them.” The same sense of foreboding also appears at the very start of Nope with Nahum 3:6 which states, “And I will cast abominable filth on thee, and make thee vile, and will set you as a spectacle.” The biblical reference connotes the consequences of the Ninevites whose luxuries and dynasties were destroyed because they did not adhere to the word of God; their plight and the overarching parable spoke of public shame, stripping of title-dignity-community, and receiving no more recognition than a dunghill.
Us contained a physical representation of the 11:11 signposting but Nope instead utilizes its biblical verse as a thread that is interwoven into a modernized parable about those who are given chances and an opportunity to make better choices regarding nature and their fellow man. The extraterrestrial shape-shifting centrepiece of the film engendered angelic allusions to beings whose countenance you could not directly gaze upon lest you be blinded or consumed. Seeing the various manifestations that the ‘creature’ assumes: a cloud, an invisible miasma, the giant underside of a cowboy hat, or an incomprehensible jellyfish kaiju highlights how the human mind attempts to quantify the unquantifiable or make sense of (bad) miracles.
Keke Palmer’s recent befuddlement about who Scully and Mulder are may have become an additional ‘sorry to this man’ meme but at one time on television, there were a plethora of television programs about the paranormal, extraterrestrial, and the wellspring of so many tinfoil hats Unsolved Mysteries (which received the reboot treatment via Netflix) or the Jonathan Frakes helmed 90s cult classic Fact or Fiction. The love Jordan Peele has for this cheesy but regularly terrifying subgenre of nostalgia also spills over into how many easter eggs of real-life horror history are sprinkled throughout the film. The very first example involves a set piece where a children’s show has a cuddly chimpanzee animal actor named Gordy that hearkens back to a uniquely specific time when animals were the face of franchises in tv shows and films, e.g., Dunston Checks In (1996). Whether it was the advancing age of the chimpanzee, the studio audience, or the startling pop of on-set balloons Gordy’s violence highlights why Hollywood frequently doesn’t like to work with volatile animals. It should also be noted that despite the best efforts of Humane Associations animals still frequently receive the brunt of mistreatment, abuse, and cruelty.
Gordy and the only surviving woman of the attack are an almost copy-paste reference to Travis the chimpanzee and the woman he mutilated Charla Nash. The story is a grim and graphic one so read or Google search the attached story at your own risk. For many years she wore a veil because the extent of her injuries was so devastating and seeing a similar hat and veil worn by the character in the film immediately made me lean forward and gasp about the uncanny similarity. Now, Charla Nash has received a facial transplant and utilizes prosthetic limbs and mercifully she does not recall the events or details of the attack. Peele even inserts a solitary traumatized witness, a young boy named Ricky (Steven Yeun) as a stand-in for Charla Nash’s friends who owned the chimpanzee — Jerome and Sandra Herold. If you have the stomach for reading the story without images, there is an added layer to the horror narrative that Peele crafts where horror can exist in the ordinary, everyday, and the mundane.
Further easter eggs, such as the blood raining from the sky and the physical injury of exposure to the entity and its regurgitated projectiles hearken back to The Great Kentucky Meat Shower of 1876 which lasted for an hour and was speculated to be the vomit of vultures passing overhead but has never been confirmed; plus, the Cash-Landrum Incident of 1980 wherein two Texas women (Betty Cash + Vickie Landrum) and a child (Colby Landrum) saw a bright diamond-shaped object fly over their vehicle and when they attempted to investigate they experienced incredibly intense heat from the object which was eventually surrounded by military helicopters as they left the scene. In the days after, the women and child all experienced similar symptoms of nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, physical weakness, and a burning sensation of the eyes. Betty also received painful blisters to her skin with dual symptoms of skin and hair loss and later on breast cancer and her friend Vickie suffered severe cataracts. The classified incident was said to be the byproduct of aerosol contamination or ionizing radiation with infrared components. The full extent of what happened that night is still a mystery and the federal government has never revealed what the object was.
I love these horror asides that Jordan Peele has injected into his film(s) because it not only informs character’s behavior and childhood trauma responses but its an additional opportunity for the audience to put their sleuth skills to work throughout each cinematic experience to unpack the real-life horror and geographic history…or it’s just for nerds like me that are always looking for the origin of everything, but I digress…
Speaking of origins, the initial historical draw for me regarding Nope’s premise was the story of ‘Haywood’s Hollywood Horses’ crafted for the film intercut with the first bits of film-stock ever preserved entitled, The Horse In Motion, from 1878. Like most things regarding Black historical contributions, the details of the center of the event have been lost to time or were never documented — except for the white photographer and wealthy benefactor — thus the person atop the horse is unknown and relegated to the annals of folklore. Nope akin to its predecessor Get Out is working towards visualizing Black history, not only as horrifying and racist but populated with real human beings whose stories contained vast multitudes.
Truly, Jordan Peele has not only crafted a sci-fi creature feature masterpiece but has added another film to the ‘western epic’ category. With spacious vistas, intrinsic knowledge of the Black cowboy, Black rodeos, Black jockeys who were once the face of horse racing, and the legacy of the Black farmer Peele has added layers to the ‘western’ and placed Black history front-and-center. Horses as self-care and self-sufficiency are interwoven with the history of Africans and simultaneously that of African Americans by proxy of knowledge retained amidst the horror of the Transatlantic Slave Trade and techniques shared between the Indigenous and Latin peoples of the Americas. Stunning images of that legacy are witnessing the epic profile of Keith David (on a *Dolby cinematic or IMAX screen) atop a stunning white horse or leaning against the doors of a horse barn — hat tilted just so for form and fashion.
*Note: I’ve only seen the film in Dolby and I was blown away by the sound, clarity, and size of the images. If/when I see the film again I may see it in IMAX just for comparison but the Dolby cinematic experience was worth every penny, plus I saw a behind-the-scenes special that highlighted how the film was shot with IMAX cameras (and from now on I probably won’t want my films any other way because a wow doesn’t even begin to cover how you felt the film optically and sonically in your very bones).
Nope is interestingly broken into chapters with animals’ names as the title card: Ghost, Clover, Gordy, Lucky, and Jean Jacket. Each name is that of a horse except for Gordy the chimpanzee and it’s this centering of animals once again that highlights two features of Jordan Peele’s films that we’ve all come to notice and appreciate as a particular horror staple of his. The close-up and the animal as uncanny-horror. Nope reverses the cinematic journey of looking and seeing that Jordan Peele has explored with Get Out and Us where the close-up is the focal point of seeing the characters in terror. This style shifts entirely in Nope where the entity must be evaded by sight, where eye contact with the camera and the eldritch must be avoided for survival. If eye contact is made, death swiftly follows. In Dolby and IMAX format, the eye of the viewer is constantly moving with the characters at first to track and locate the danger. Afterward, once the danger is established the camera pulls focus backwards to have the object completely engulf the screen. The closeup, however, is also utilized with great frequency for the animals spread across the Peelosphere. The eyes of a deer, rabbit, and horse are framed with the unblinking gaze often sported by animals, and their inhuman methodology of conveying emotions or what humans transpose onto them frequently receives a slow pushed zoom into their eyes, with a clarity of the soul and higher intelligence being easily read.
Scopophobia is the fear of being stared at which is often associated with other social anxieties that may result in a racing heart, sweating, or shaking. When one attempts to describe fear itself — how very interesting — that these are the most commonplace side effects. By tapping into this primal duality of the eye being a source of dread and animals having a myriad of unnerving qualities, especially regarding eye contact, each film from the Peele catalogue (including Candyman directed by Nia DaCosta) all contains various scenes where the characters or the animals are staring toward the camera triggering the intrinsic fear of being watched. How this appears in the film Nope also informs the main characters’ personalities vis-a-vis Emerald and OJ Haywood (Keke Palmer and Daniel Kaluuya); she is the outgoing extrovert who regularly maintains eye contact with others and the viewing audience and he instead is shown as the quiet introvert who regularly averts his eyes from the intimacy of looking.
There’s a possibility that OJ is supposed to be read as autistic or having severe social anxiety due to his inability to maintain eye contact, difficulties with communication, and animals as a source of communicative refuge. I’d love to hear the director or actor’s thoughts on this theory because this aspect of his character deserves the reading. Subtly, there’s even a difference in gait for Emerald’s light-footed smooth snappy movements when contrasted to OJ’s plodding almost equine bowed head and shoulders. We only see a photograph of their mother (or who the audience infers as such) and something most certainly happened to the family dynamic when she passed (or was swallowed up by the creature years before). Otis Haywood Sr. (Keith David) certainly raised his two children the best that he could but there is most assuredly unaddressed trauma beneath the surface; note the scene where Emerald has a momentary crack in her usual chipper facade where she reminisces that her horse Jean Jacket was taken from her and trained to be OJ’s establishing his foothold with horse training in the movie business. Emotional trauma like that has echoes into the adults we become.
Oh, speaking of traumatized adults and that thread from the start about the ramifications of testing nature, Ricky (Steven Yeun) is the owner of a tourist attraction entitled Jupiter’s Claim — a valley’s distance from the Haywood’s ranch. Their proximity in ages and location is important because where the Haywoods are equitably trying to maintain their legacy and manifest healing after the death of their father, Ricky is stuck in the past of the chimpanzee attack and his once former glory as a childhood tv star. Wife and children aside, there’s still a piece of him that drifts back to the horror and stunted trajectory of his career but he knows about a certain UFO disguising itself as a cloud that can turn his fortunes around. After Emerald takes a dummy horse from his establishment, he enlists his children to take one of their horses to use as bait to lure the entity out of hiding. Not only does it make its presence known after the horse dinner-bell plan fails but it devours him and the entire audience that has come to gawk at its magnificence. Ironic that the establishment’s name invokes Jupiter, the god of the sky, and that the punishment for the mortals in this morality tale was similarly being struck down, claimed, and made into a celestial spectacle.
Employing the technical expertise of Angel Torres (Brandon Perea) for camera rigging and Antlers Holst (Michael Wincott) to document the creature within the innocuous cloud, the Haywoods and their makeshift team will try to film the impossible. Electrical interference is a staple of the creature revealing itself as it passes overhead, thus their window of opportunity requires strategic planning and coordination. Seeing the film put this ragtag band together evoked horror nostalgia like Insidious (2010) and Poltergeist (1982) and was cheeky in the best way and highlighted each character’s endearing traits. Sadly, Holst sacrifices himself to get the perfect footage, leaving the young folk to lasso this bronco on their own. Remembering the monster’s aversion to inorganic material, the siblings come up with a plan to lure it back to Jupiter’s Claim and treat it to the buffet of the millennium, aka a giant inflatable balloon. Just as it says mmm, this one has a little sweetness to it — POP! I almost guffawed in the theater, Keke Palmer’s memes are the gifts that keep on giving.
The boomerang of ancestral history — the jockey — to present with the galloping image of OJ tearing it across the landscape — with Keke Palmer on the ‘modern horse’ equivalent of a motorcycle with an Akira bike slide homage — luring the creature into a celluloid-balloon trap in the final act of the film was awe-inspiring. Seeing the old crank flashbulb immortalizing their discovery for all time was just the cherry on top of a film jam-packed with incredible nods to the history of motion pictures and how the genres of science fiction and horror have been cantering alongside it every innovative step of the way. As the film came to a close and we reveled in the character’s success, one thought came to mind, what if there are more unassuming clouds dotted across the globe, or what if they are cloaking themselves as something else entirely? Chilling…and perhaps an easter egg for another Jordan Peele film. Nope was truly a treat from start to finish and made visual the query: what if Black people tapped into a ‘western’ mystique where they were finally in the saddle dispensing justice? Well, partner, they’d bring their wit and their grit, cause they’ve always had skin in the game. Yes, siree!
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