Jordan Peele is deeply committed to detail. Watching his films, it's soon apparent that every centimetre of the screen is precisely considered, every triviality deliberate, every inconsequential decision very consequential indeed.
There are probably very few videos like this one, for instance, in which Peele responds to fan theories regarding Get Out. Many directors would laugh off claims that every car in the film was chosen in a specific colour, or that a fleeting mention of "black mould" in the basement could turn out to be riddled with deeper references. Not Peele, who happily concedes that these theories are correct and seems quietly thrilled that people have managed to follow his cinematic trail of breadcrumbs.
Peele has every right to be pleased; that is, after all, precisely the purpose of his films – to make audiences think. He admitted the goal for his most recent film, Us, was to "make a movie full of Easter eggs." But these miniscule details also converge into much broader brush strokes, because Peele isn't only committed to triviality. In fact, his films tackle some of the biggest issues out there – but he wraps these up in such absorbing plots, such fascinating characters, and such unique imagery, that sometimes it's not always clear until the film is over.
Both Get Out and Us are so densely packed with these remarkable details that it would be impossible to unravel them all, but here are a few cultural legacies that Peele seems to draw on in his work. It is by no means a definitive list of references, though, so be sure to have another watch and see what else you can pick out next time. There are, of course, major spoilers for both films ahead.
Get Out (2017): The Sunken Place
When Chris (Daniel Kaluuya) meets the family of his new white girlfriend, he finds himself in what could be described as a unique situation.
In short, he is hypnotised. As his girlfriend's mother begins stirring her tea in a suspiciously rhythmic manner, a horrified Chris suddenly realises that he is able to detect the outlines of his own eye sockets. He has fallen inside his own head, and has entered the Sunken Place: a harrowing creation of Peele’s in which a person is left to float interminably within the darkness of their own skull.
Chris is still able to observe everything that is happening outside his body, but his mind has become completely detached from his actions. He is both powerless to move, and powerless to "get out" again.
The imagery of the Sunken Place is razor-sharp in its freshness, and this scene in particular is enough to leave anyone watching Peele’s film rigidly sitting up. It is not, however, a completely new invention, and Chris's experience is not as unfamiliar as it might at first seem.
In fact, Peele seems to be quite deliberately interacting with the work of W. E. B. Du Bois. Often considered the father of modern sociology, Du Bois focused on the experiences of racism, framing within a context of social theory and seeking both to explain and communicate the lives of black Americans, and to help to improve them.
One of Du Bois's key theories was the idea of "double consciousness", the awareness that the view you hold of yourself does not align with the view that others hold of you. These warring points of view are impossible to reconcile, which places an immeasurable strain upon anyone who finds themselves subject to them, especially if the contrast is caused by race. Du Bois theorised that such strain might then lead a person to subconsciously split themselves in two: one half aligning with the stereotype on the outside, the other – a genuine self – kept hidden. It was a keen illustration of the damaging effects of racial stereotyping.
It is this aspect of double consciousness that Peele picks up on in his illustration of the Sunken Place, and it's not hard to see the similarities between the two concepts: the Sunken Place is simply a physical manifestation of double consciousness, trapping Chris within a state in which he is acutely aware of his own reflection in the "eyes of others," and leaving him with the sense that he cannot fully inhabit his own identity because of the impositions placed upon him.
Further parallels between Get Out and double consciousness abound as the film draws to its horrifying conclusion. As it turns out, Chris’s new girlfriend has lured Chris back to her white town so that he can be lobotomised. He will have the mind of a white person implanted into his body, whilst he is relegated to the Sunken Place forever.
These harrowing lobotomies are driven by sick fantasies soaked in racial stereotyping. A white photographer in the town has chosen Chris as his new bodily "host" because he thinks that, as a black man, Chris has a more creative and artistic eye than his own (Chris is a successful photographer). Rose’s grandfather Roman was an Olympic runner, beaten in the 1936 Olympics by none other than Jesse Owens. He is apparently so disturbed by this fact that he implants his mind into the body of "Walter", another black man, and spends the rest of his life frantically exercising in the hopes of redeeming himself from this thwarted victory.
It is taken to the extreme – this is a horror film, of course – but with this idea of "white minds" and "black bodies", Peele shines a bright, burning light on the dangers – and absurdities – of racial stereotyping.
Us (2019): The Tethered
Us is not a sequel to Get Out per se, but Peele has admitted that they fall under the same umbrella, and will ultimately become half of a quartet of films. While discussing the differences between the two films, Peele said on a press run in 2019: “I have a plan. I’m someone who operates somewhere between best-laid plans and complete ability to shift and pivot.”
So what connects the films? While there are plenty of thematic similarities between Get Out and Us, the most pointed is the fact that the horror element in both is not alien, but human. “So much of horror is focused on naming the evil as something else. What I love to explore, and what I intend to explore with my future films as well in this series – if you want to put it like that – is the idea that we need to look no further than the mirror to find the darkest monster of all,” Peele told the Guardian.
Perhaps the real horror of both films, though, is not simply a matter of the monster within – but of how much people choose to ignore it. In Get Out, Peele makes a point of undermining "colour-blindness", proving how damaging it can be to claim that racism does not exist when it does, even if often goes unchecked and unacknowledged.
Us embodies this same concept of colour-blindness but takes it one step further, relegating half of its characters to a subterranean maze of tunnels, hidden safely away from the rest of society.
This in itself is a very deliberate nod to several threads of black history, both in the physical sense of the Underground Railroad network – which helped slaves escape to freedom in much the same way as the Tethered – and touching on cultural legacies including Ralph Ellison's 1952 Invisible Man. In this novel, the protagonist falls down a manhole and watches as white policemen pull the cover across, leaving him in darkness – very much like the scene of Chris's hypnosis in Get Out – but further explored here in Us.
Us is asking: what happens to those left in the darkness? In Invisible Man, Ellison's protagonist actually finds solace underground, finally given the chance to acknowledge the complexities and nuances of his own identity. Below ground, he ironically feels less invisible – above ground, he was flattened into various stereotypes:
"I am an invisible man. No, I am not a spook like those who haunted Edgar Allan Poe; nor am I one of your Hollywood-movie ectoplasms. I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and liquids – and I might even be said to possess a mind. I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me. Like the bodiless heads you see sometimes in circus sideshows, it is as though I have been surrounded by mirrors of hard, distorting glass. When they approach me they see only my surroundings, themselves, or figments of their imagination – indeed, everything and anything except me."
Peele uses the Tethered as a way of expressing this same willful blindness: the (aboveground) Wilson family are really only seeing themselves in their doppelgängers – the Tethered are just as human as they are – but they choose to flatten them into monsters or an enemy; they don't see the Tethered, they see figments of their imagination, just as Ellison described. Not only does this mirror the practice of prejudice and racism, but Peele also points fingers at classism, ableism, and discrimination in general.
Peele takes this further with the character of Adelaide/Red. Red is the one member of the Tethered who made it above ground years ago, and has now integrated seamlessly into aboveground society. It is only in the finale of Us that the viewer realises this is the case, as it is finally revealed Adelaide – whose Doppelganger is Red – was left underground as a child, and has been replaced all along. If a viewer didn't recognise her as the imposter, and the family didn't either, how different can she really be?
The point is driven home with Red's voice – or rather, her lack of one. When Adelaide gets lost as a child, she "loses" her voice. In fact, she didn't lose it at all – Red, her replacement, never one in the first place. But her parents assume that she has been traumatised into silence, so seek help for their daughter. They're told to encourage her "to draw, to write, to dance. Anything to help her tell us her story" and, given these opportunities, Red learns to talk. She really is no different to the "real" Adelaide left underground; one of them just happened to be born into luckier circumstances.
Expanding on this theme, Peele often uses the symbol of the chain in conjunction with the Tethered as a way of illustrating the systemic discrimination faced by many black people. Not only are the Tethered linked by name to this idea, but the visual finale of Peele's film also becomes a stark illustration of their oppression.
Inspired by the 1986 Hands Across America campaign, the Tethered create their own revolution by joining hands and standing in a vast human chain. What they don't know is that the real campaign was a relative failure, raising around $34 million but only distributing $15 million of this due to overhead costs. In this sense, Peele fates their revolution before it has even begun.
Also of particular note are the Tethered's red jumpsuits. The jumpsuits themselves are indicative of the US prison system, which theorists such as Michelle Alexander frequently point to as the primary mode of oppression in contemporary society.
The colour of the jumpsuits is also relevant. As the Tethered create their chain, they form a red line over the landscape and Peele reveals a very literal illustration of the illegal practice of redlining, which saw mortgage lenders stop black applicants from applying for home loans by selectively raising house prices. Not only did this force discriminated-against applicants into certain areas geographically, upholding segregation, but it also denied them the chance to accrue wealth from property ownership.
Though long illegal, the wider legacies of this twentieth century practice still shape America today, making it a striking and fitting finale for Peele's film. Us, after all, is not simply about "us" and "them", it is about America – or the US – as a vast and complex whole.
