Satire In Get Out

With the closing of the “post-racial” America of the Obama years and the inauguration of the Trump presidency the untreated wounds of American society have attained new levels of visibility. The “dog-whistle” racism which forms the base of the New Jim Crow is rapidly crumbling, exposing a virulent white supremacy no longer able to legitimize itself behind the fiction of racial “colorblindness.” In such periods of social unrest the power of racial representation is critical. Beyond providing a snapshot of the prevailing attitudes and morality of the artistic culture, in their most subversive form such representations challenge dominant sectors of society to interrogate the myths they have constructed to oppress despised populations.

Jordan Peele’s new horror film Get Out stands out as a production explicitly made to spark an interrogation of this kind. Mixing the incisive social commentary of satire and with the mind-bending paranoia of a psychological thriller Peele’s use of setting,
Along with its trenchant critique of the forces that induce black powerlessness, Get Out is more than edifying in its celebration of the spiritual ingenuity and intelligence that enables Black liberation. At no point does Chris surrender to the designs of the Armitage family. After freeing himself from the physical restraints holding him hostage, Chris proceeds to kill each family member one-by-one. The mere thought of a young Black man killing a white family on screen would have been unthinkable in the era of Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner. For all of Sidney Poitiers’ pathbreaking work in the service of civil and human rights off-screen his onscreen persona was often mitigated by an unshakeable calm, an ability to keep lethal rage at bay in presence of white opposition. Chris’ escape from the Armitage house jettisons these cinematic conventions entirely providing one of the most cathartic scenes in recent movie