race based horror film "Get Out" is a 100% on rotten right now
- Thread starter Xtraz2
- Start date
Coli brehs need to kidnap @stomachlines, tie him to a chair and make him learn the truth about his precious snowbunnies
Naw we need to drop squad that brotha and let him watch the jack Johnson documentary like 50 times in a row.
Don't forget Precious too.
dora_da_destroyer
Master Baker
I still can't tell where this movie is going, but it definitely looks different in an intriguing way
Lord_Chief_Rocka
Superstar
MooseMouthMthafuga
Veteran
The fukk they trying to say with that title?
NobodyReally
Superstar
Jordan Peele on a Truly Terrifying Monster: Racism
Jordan Peele on a Truly Terrifying Monster: Racism
The sketch comedian takes on racial politics and the “liberal elite” in his debut feature, the horror movie “Get Out.” Here, he talks about his life and work.
By JASON ZINOMAN
FEBRUARY 16, 2017
No serious fan of the sketch comedy show “Key & Peele” will be surprised that Jordan Peele (the shorter half of its starring duo) is making his directorial debut with a horror film. Their acclaimed Comedy Central series may have been best known for President Obama’s “anger translator,” but it often lampooned scary movies with a specificity that could come only from a connoisseur of things that go bump in the night. (No one has made a funnier parody of “The Shining.”)
In his new movie, “Get Out,” he plays the scares straight, writing and directing the rare horror movie that tackles racial politics head on. In a scenario that has been described as “The Stepford Wives” meets “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner,” Chris (Daniel Kaluuya), an African-American photographer, is about to meet his white girlfriend’s parents for the first time when he’s rattled to learn that she has not told them he is black. His anxiety increases when her father goes out of his way to tell him that he would have voted for Mr. Obama for a third term and when the forced smiles of the parents’ exclusively black servants start seeming a little uncanny. Racial micro-aggressions and ominous signs (bad dreams, dead animals) mount, as this fish-out-of-water story takes a foreboding turn.
“Get Out” is not the first horror film to confront race. In 1968, right after the assassination of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., “Night of the Living Dead” resonated with audiences and some critics by presenting a black man’s torment by a mob of white zombies before he is killed by law enforcement. Other horror movies like “Candyman” and “Ganja & Hess” have explored miscegenation and assimilation, but Mr. Peele said he set out to make a movie that exposed “the lie” of a post-racial America, one that grew after the election of Mr. Obama.
In an interview at a hotel bar near Columbus Circle, Mr. Peele, who turns 38 this month, recalled the time his white girlfriend took him to meet her parents, discussed why he wanted to make a horror movie for black audiences and explained why the movie takes aim at, in his words, the “liberal elite.” Here are edited excerpts from the conversation.
What do horror and comedy have in common?
The best comedy and horror feel like they take place in reality. You have a rule or two you are bending or heightening, but the world around it is real. I felt like everything I learned in comedy I could apply to this movie.
When a rule bends, how do you keep horror from becoming comedy?
In horror, the second you have people doing something you know they wouldn’t do, you lose the audience. With “Get Out,” what needed to be believable was the protagonist’s intentions. Why he’s there. I followed the “Rosemary’s Baby”-“Stepford Wives” model of inching into this crazy situation and alongside, justifying how the character is rationalizing staying.
Ira Levin, who wrote the books those two movies are adapted from, made the audience question if the protagonist was paranoid.
I use that exact same device. This movie is also about how we deal with race. As a black man, sometimes you can’t tell if what you’re seeing has underlying bigotry, or it’s a normal conversation and you’re being paranoid. That dynamic in itself is unsettling. I admit sometimes I see race and racism when its not there. It’s very disorienting to be aware of certain dynamics.
You grew up on the Upper West Side and then worked in improv comedy, both largely white worlds. “Get Out” is about being black in a white world. Coincidence?
Keegan-Michael Key, left, and Mr. Peele on their show, “Key & Peele.”
Not at all. Black people who want to do comedy go into standup, where our heroes opened a lot of doors. Improv doesn’t have a ton of heroes that you can look to. Chris’s experience is very close to mine.
Did you draw on personal experience meeting a girlfriend’s parents?
I had a Caucasian girlfriend a while ago. [He’s now married to Chelsea Peretti.] I remember specifically asking if the parents knew I was black. She said no. That scared me. It turned out to be totally fine, but I didn’t want to even see an adjustment on someone’s face when they realized it’s not what they thought.
The most painful memory for Chris is watching television as a kid when he thought he should have been with Mother at a critical moment in her life. Did you intend to make watching television a source of guilt?
It’s a metaphor for his inaction, and a feeling of guilt where he neglected his family. The fact that the entertainment industry is not necessarily inclusive of the African-American experience is a similar form of neglect and is a symptom of a deeper problem. I wanted to make a film that acknowledges neglect and inaction in the face of the real race monster. In the process, I wanted to give a horror movie to everyone, but really to black audiences, who are loyal horror fans. We watch movies, screaming, “Get out!” in dark rooms at this screen that we cannot affect. It’s a symbol for that, which stops us from action.
Jordan Peele in Los Angeles.
Why are there so many more horror movies that explore issues of gender than race? Is it because of a lack of representation?
That’s a big piece, but it can’t only be representation, because women have been similarly underrepresented. It’s such a touchy subject. The way we talk about race seems broken.
“Night of the Living Dead” is one of the few classic horror films about race, but its director, George Romero, said he didn’t intend it to be.
I partially believe Romero, but even if that’s true, the way that movie handles race is so essential to what makes it great. All social norms break down when this event happens and a black man is caged up in a house with a white woman who is terrified. But you’re not sure how much she’s terrified at the monsters on the outside or this man on the inside who is now the hero. Also, the end of the movie, that’s nothing if it’s a white dude.
A scene from “Night of the Living Dead” (1968).
How would you compare that 1968 film hero to Chris?
Theoretically, their racial perspective is the very skill that helps them. You could write an interesting essay about how the lead in “Night of the Living Dead” is a man living in fear every day, so this is a challenge he is more equipped to take on than the white women living in the house. Chris, in his racial paranoia, is onto something that he wouldn’t be if he was a white guy and there was a similar thing going on.
Did Black Lives Matter (and videos of police shootings), which opened the eyes of many white people to fears held by black men, inform this movie?
It did. I was making the movie in that period when Trayvon [Martin] was [killed]. What originally started as a movie to combat the lie that America had become post-racial became a movie where the cat is out of bag, and now we’re having this conversation. I realized I had to shift it a little bit. It became less about trying to create wokeness and more about trying to offer us a hero out of this turmoil, to offer escape and joy.
Do you think different things scare black and white audiences?
We did one test for this film, and I noticed a striking similarity with the way people experienced it. That brings me a lot of joy. I wanted to make something that has a perspective that you don’t often see, but I also wanted it to be an inclusive movie. That’s the power of story and genre. You can ask a white person to see the world through the eyes of a black person for an hour and a half.
Mr. Peele on the set of “Get Out.”
What was the first movie that really scared you?
“A Nightmare on Elm Street.”
There are two schools of thought on that franchise — some fans enjoyed that Freddy increasingly made funny quips, and others thought it hurt the movies. Where do you fall?
As a child, the funnier that Freddy got, the more scared I was. That was an interesting era for horror. The big characters were the monsters. It was more about the audience relating to the killer. We were given the knife as the audience. So when Freddy became funnier and funnier, it was disturbing to me. There was this expectation that I was supposed to identify with him and love it when he killed somebody. As a kid, I was not there.
You’ve said your target in this movie is the “liberal elite.” After the election, was there any part of you that worried “Get Out” speaks to a Hillary era more than a Trump one?
Yes. At the same time, I feel the movie is more relevant. The liberal elite who communicates that we’re not racist in any way is as much of the problem as anything else. This movie is about the lack of acknowledgment that racism exists. In the Trump era, it’s way more obvious extreme racism exists. But there are still a lot of people who think: We don’t have a racist bone in our bodies. We have to face the racism in ourselves.
Comedians can get nervous if minutes go by without a laugh. Do you feel that way about scares?
A really good horror movie has like three good scares these days. I started off with 20. The first thing I did was make a list of my favorite types of scares in movies, and I said, if I can get 20, I’ll have a classic.
What’s on your favorite scares list?
I think the greatest scare in horror is turning the corner in “The Shining” and finding the girls at the end of the hallway. It’s the same scare as when you first meet Hannibal Lecter. You come down the hallway, and he’s just waiting for you. It’s the protagonist in motion and something waiting for him, patiently and calmly. Those are so chilling to me. The plane in “North by Northwest” [chasing Cary Grant’s character]. One of the great things you can do in movies is fool someone into seeing depth. When you see the plane far away, and it gets closer and closer, it changes your breathing.
In “Key & Peele,” Keegan-Michael Key once asked you what scared you most. You made a joke. What’s the real answer?
Human beings. What people can do in conjunction with other people is exponentially worse than what they can do alone. Society is the scariest monster.
Jordan Peele on a Truly Terrifying Monster: Racism
The sketch comedian takes on racial politics and the “liberal elite” in his debut feature, the horror movie “Get Out.” Here, he talks about his life and work.
By JASON ZINOMAN
FEBRUARY 16, 2017
No serious fan of the sketch comedy show “Key & Peele” will be surprised that Jordan Peele (the shorter half of its starring duo) is making his directorial debut with a horror film. Their acclaimed Comedy Central series may have been best known for President Obama’s “anger translator,” but it often lampooned scary movies with a specificity that could come only from a connoisseur of things that go bump in the night. (No one has made a funnier parody of “The Shining.”)
In his new movie, “Get Out,” he plays the scares straight, writing and directing the rare horror movie that tackles racial politics head on. In a scenario that has been described as “The Stepford Wives” meets “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner,” Chris (Daniel Kaluuya), an African-American photographer, is about to meet his white girlfriend’s parents for the first time when he’s rattled to learn that she has not told them he is black. His anxiety increases when her father goes out of his way to tell him that he would have voted for Mr. Obama for a third term and when the forced smiles of the parents’ exclusively black servants start seeming a little uncanny. Racial micro-aggressions and ominous signs (bad dreams, dead animals) mount, as this fish-out-of-water story takes a foreboding turn.
“Get Out” is not the first horror film to confront race. In 1968, right after the assassination of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., “Night of the Living Dead” resonated with audiences and some critics by presenting a black man’s torment by a mob of white zombies before he is killed by law enforcement. Other horror movies like “Candyman” and “Ganja & Hess” have explored miscegenation and assimilation, but Mr. Peele said he set out to make a movie that exposed “the lie” of a post-racial America, one that grew after the election of Mr. Obama.
In an interview at a hotel bar near Columbus Circle, Mr. Peele, who turns 38 this month, recalled the time his white girlfriend took him to meet her parents, discussed why he wanted to make a horror movie for black audiences and explained why the movie takes aim at, in his words, the “liberal elite.” Here are edited excerpts from the conversation.
What do horror and comedy have in common?
The best comedy and horror feel like they take place in reality. You have a rule or two you are bending or heightening, but the world around it is real. I felt like everything I learned in comedy I could apply to this movie.
When a rule bends, how do you keep horror from becoming comedy?
In horror, the second you have people doing something you know they wouldn’t do, you lose the audience. With “Get Out,” what needed to be believable was the protagonist’s intentions. Why he’s there. I followed the “Rosemary’s Baby”-“Stepford Wives” model of inching into this crazy situation and alongside, justifying how the character is rationalizing staying.
Ira Levin, who wrote the books those two movies are adapted from, made the audience question if the protagonist was paranoid.
I use that exact same device. This movie is also about how we deal with race. As a black man, sometimes you can’t tell if what you’re seeing has underlying bigotry, or it’s a normal conversation and you’re being paranoid. That dynamic in itself is unsettling. I admit sometimes I see race and racism when its not there. It’s very disorienting to be aware of certain dynamics.
You grew up on the Upper West Side and then worked in improv comedy, both largely white worlds. “Get Out” is about being black in a white world. Coincidence?
Keegan-Michael Key, left, and Mr. Peele on their show, “Key & Peele.”
Not at all. Black people who want to do comedy go into standup, where our heroes opened a lot of doors. Improv doesn’t have a ton of heroes that you can look to. Chris’s experience is very close to mine.
Did you draw on personal experience meeting a girlfriend’s parents?
I had a Caucasian girlfriend a while ago. [He’s now married to Chelsea Peretti.] I remember specifically asking if the parents knew I was black. She said no. That scared me. It turned out to be totally fine, but I didn’t want to even see an adjustment on someone’s face when they realized it’s not what they thought.
The most painful memory for Chris is watching television as a kid when he thought he should have been with Mother at a critical moment in her life. Did you intend to make watching television a source of guilt?
It’s a metaphor for his inaction, and a feeling of guilt where he neglected his family. The fact that the entertainment industry is not necessarily inclusive of the African-American experience is a similar form of neglect and is a symptom of a deeper problem. I wanted to make a film that acknowledges neglect and inaction in the face of the real race monster. In the process, I wanted to give a horror movie to everyone, but really to black audiences, who are loyal horror fans. We watch movies, screaming, “Get out!” in dark rooms at this screen that we cannot affect. It’s a symbol for that, which stops us from action.
Jordan Peele in Los Angeles.
Why are there so many more horror movies that explore issues of gender than race? Is it because of a lack of representation?
That’s a big piece, but it can’t only be representation, because women have been similarly underrepresented. It’s such a touchy subject. The way we talk about race seems broken.
“Night of the Living Dead” is one of the few classic horror films about race, but its director, George Romero, said he didn’t intend it to be.
I partially believe Romero, but even if that’s true, the way that movie handles race is so essential to what makes it great. All social norms break down when this event happens and a black man is caged up in a house with a white woman who is terrified. But you’re not sure how much she’s terrified at the monsters on the outside or this man on the inside who is now the hero. Also, the end of the movie, that’s nothing if it’s a white dude.
A scene from “Night of the Living Dead” (1968).
How would you compare that 1968 film hero to Chris?
Theoretically, their racial perspective is the very skill that helps them. You could write an interesting essay about how the lead in “Night of the Living Dead” is a man living in fear every day, so this is a challenge he is more equipped to take on than the white women living in the house. Chris, in his racial paranoia, is onto something that he wouldn’t be if he was a white guy and there was a similar thing going on.
Did Black Lives Matter (and videos of police shootings), which opened the eyes of many white people to fears held by black men, inform this movie?
It did. I was making the movie in that period when Trayvon [Martin] was [killed]. What originally started as a movie to combat the lie that America had become post-racial became a movie where the cat is out of bag, and now we’re having this conversation. I realized I had to shift it a little bit. It became less about trying to create wokeness and more about trying to offer us a hero out of this turmoil, to offer escape and joy.
Do you think different things scare black and white audiences?
We did one test for this film, and I noticed a striking similarity with the way people experienced it. That brings me a lot of joy. I wanted to make something that has a perspective that you don’t often see, but I also wanted it to be an inclusive movie. That’s the power of story and genre. You can ask a white person to see the world through the eyes of a black person for an hour and a half.
Mr. Peele on the set of “Get Out.”
What was the first movie that really scared you?
“A Nightmare on Elm Street.”
There are two schools of thought on that franchise — some fans enjoyed that Freddy increasingly made funny quips, and others thought it hurt the movies. Where do you fall?
As a child, the funnier that Freddy got, the more scared I was. That was an interesting era for horror. The big characters were the monsters. It was more about the audience relating to the killer. We were given the knife as the audience. So when Freddy became funnier and funnier, it was disturbing to me. There was this expectation that I was supposed to identify with him and love it when he killed somebody. As a kid, I was not there.
You’ve said your target in this movie is the “liberal elite.” After the election, was there any part of you that worried “Get Out” speaks to a Hillary era more than a Trump one?
Yes. At the same time, I feel the movie is more relevant. The liberal elite who communicates that we’re not racist in any way is as much of the problem as anything else. This movie is about the lack of acknowledgment that racism exists. In the Trump era, it’s way more obvious extreme racism exists. But there are still a lot of people who think: We don’t have a racist bone in our bodies. We have to face the racism in ourselves.
Comedians can get nervous if minutes go by without a laugh. Do you feel that way about scares?
A really good horror movie has like three good scares these days. I started off with 20. The first thing I did was make a list of my favorite types of scares in movies, and I said, if I can get 20, I’ll have a classic.
What’s on your favorite scares list?
I think the greatest scare in horror is turning the corner in “The Shining” and finding the girls at the end of the hallway. It’s the same scare as when you first meet Hannibal Lecter. You come down the hallway, and he’s just waiting for you. It’s the protagonist in motion and something waiting for him, patiently and calmly. Those are so chilling to me. The plane in “North by Northwest” [chasing Cary Grant’s character]. One of the great things you can do in movies is fool someone into seeing depth. When you see the plane far away, and it gets closer and closer, it changes your breathing.
In “Key & Peele,” Keegan-Michael Key once asked you what scared you most. You made a joke. What’s the real answer?
Human beings. What people can do in conjunction with other people is exponentially worse than what they can do alone. Society is the scariest monster.
Bobby Lashleys eyebrows
Superstar
Xtraz2
Superstar
still at 100% 
StraxStrax
I'm selling these fine leather jackets
It's pretty clear this will be really good, and must watch, I'd say the ending and falling action will be the weakest part, and the too revealing trailer, which I wish I hadn't seen, but that's the flaw with almost all horror movies. The set up outshines the execution.
Piff Perkins
Veteran
But black reviewers gave all those movies good reviews (except maybe Driving Miss Daisy) lmao. Surprise: "feel good" movies that are average or bad often get good reviews.