Main cast: Daniel Kaluuya (Chris Washington), Allison Williams (Rose Armitage), Catherine Keener (Missy Armitage), Bradley Whitford (Dean Armitage), Caleb Landry Jones (Jeremy Armitage), Stephen Root (Jim Hudson), Lakeith Stanfield (Logan King), Lil Rel Howery (Rod Williams), Marcus Henderson (Walter), Betty Gabriel (Georgina), Erika Alexander (Detective Latoya), and Richard Herd (Roman Armitage)
Director: Jordan Peele
The world of the white savior is a fascinating, if also repulsive, thing. One reason I put off watching Jordan Peele’s directorial debut Get Out is because of the white people in the media rushing to outdo themselves in heaping praises on this movie… almost always because it is directed by a black guy. I’m sure we all noticed how, over the last decade, the white people-owned media is scrambling to demonstrate how woke, how progressive they are, often by bashing their own people while holding up anyone with even the slightest hint of melanin in their skin to a pedestal… so long as these people of color abide by the rules these white people set on how the people of color should behave, speak, and think, that is.
I eventually sit down to watch this one and I ended up laughing. As a person of color myself – at least, sometimes; Asians are considered persons of color or white depending on the agenda of the white people on a certain day – I end up seeing certain things that the white people praising this as the best movie ever made: this movie isn’t a woke middle finger to white people as much as it is a defiant middle finger to the very white saviors praising this movie to demonstrate how much better they are than other white people around them.
Let me explain. Chris Washington, our black hero, has been dating Rose Armitage, a white woman from a wealthy family, for about five months now. He finally, if reluctantly, gives in to her request to meet her parents in their wealthy Southern plantation-like enclave. Chris soon learns that there is more than meets the eye here: these white people transplant their brains into the bodies of black people so that they can be black people. Can Chris get out of here with his brain intact?
Now, does it make sense for white people, wealthy upper class ones, to give up their white privilege to be black? This movie doesn’t shy away from how black people are treated differently by cops and what not, so what kind of white people will even want to have so little social power?
White people like the Armitages, of course. These are self-proclaimed woke people, who claim to love Obama to pieces, and who do their best to appear accepting and what not… only to still keep black servants like it’s a Gone with the Wind thing only with the Democrats winning at the end of the day, and will pull out the racist rhetoric and ways the moment a black person behave in a way that they find disagreeable. These are white people who are so bored with their lives of privilege, they imagine that it’d be great if they had the virility, beauty, and physique of beautiful, black people, and even better if they can do this while continuing to live like and enjoy the privileges of white people. In other words, the disingenuous upper-class white people who think they are such amazing people for viewing persons of color as human beings, and expecting these persons of color to celebrate them as heroes. The very people who have overrun both social and mainstream media in the US and the UK, in other words.
I love how these very white people think that it only makes them superior beings for championing this movie, when Jordan Peele’s script is actually a big middle finger and a kick in the crotch to them.
Anyway, all this aside, Get Out is a well-made, well-paced, and well-acted movie, although I personally hesitate to call it the horror film that it is marketed to be. It’s more of a slow-boil thriller in the vein of The Stepford Wives, with some wry but accurate zingers here and there about the ups and downs of a black person dating a white person. The characters aren’t deep, although it’s nice to see Daniel Kaluuya showing that he has some comedic chops, but the whole movie is put together very well.
After all is said and done, though, it a good movie? Well, I guess, but in the end, the novelty value of the social importance placed on this movie – which is calculated on the part of Mr Peele and the Blumhouse folks, I’m sure (and yes, I’m cynical; sue me) – far outweighs the actual story itself. Get Out is a decent lazy afternoon flick, but it’s nowhere close to being as good as the hype from the white woke media made it out to be. As a horror movie, it fares even worse as the only thing scary about this one is how it is politicized to hell and back without any hint of awareness by the very people it satirizes mercilessly. The real terror is what the Western social and mainstream media has become… hmm, maybe we should have a horror movie about that.
