Get Out is a movie about obsession. It is an obsession with “the other” and particularly white obsession with the black experience. Peele’s thesis is that white people secretly want to be black, or want to at least try it and this premise plays out in a fascinating way. It’s a brilliant insight into the vague nature of racism.
We’re presented with an interracial couple of about five months who are on a road trip home so that the black boyfriend can meet the parents of the white girlfriend. It kind of plays out the way one would expect. The boyfriend is met with racism during the roadtrip home, over eager parents trying to prove that race isn’t at all an issue to them, and friends of the family attempting to make polite conversation but coming off as ignorant. The girlfriend is perennially supportive and we see them as two heroes against an oblivious, unenlightened world.
Next is a series of events where we, as viewers, get an intriguing look at an instinct gone awry. Whether it’s bias, resentment or obsession, there is an inescapable desire to transcend oneself and live as what one fears. Whether it is to understand it or to destroy it, or make love to it. It’s the obsession, the focal point that makes one insane and desire escape into dominance. It is a desire to make submissive, to own, to objectify. We meet people in this film who have been put face to face with their own demise, their own slavery. Or we see oppressors fighting to save their own at whatever cost, even if it means enslaving another human to do so.
The acting from beginning to end is utterly stunning. It is perfectly cast with performances which are disturbing to the core and frighteningly real.
The movie is incredible and Peele’s movie is virtuosic. I can’t wait to see what he comes up with next.
Thoughts and Life 