Blog Post #5: Get Out: A movie Of Slavery

Get Out Witten and Directed by Jordan Peele

    For this week's blog post, I chose to critique the article "Why Get Out is the Best Movie Ever Made About American Slavery" by Steven Thrasher. Thrasher argues that Get Out is a masterwork of Afrofuturism, using science fiction to help the viewer understand race through time and space. He writes, "Get Out is really a masterwork of Afrofuturism, the artistic and scientific framework for understanding race as a technology across time and space" (first paragraph). The film is a powerful and thought-provoking work that tackles the ongoing issue of the theft of the Black body. In the article, Thrasher writes, "A recurring image in Afrofuturism is the Black body abducted by aliens as an allegory for enslavement in different eras and places" (paragraph 1). Peele, the director of the film, uses classical Afrofuturist imagery to depict this allegory, exploring the theft of Africans, Henrietta Lacks' HeLa cells, Emmett Till's lynched body, and other aspects of Black music and sports. He aims to highlight how slaves were treated during the era of American slavery, seen as property rather than human beings with feelings and thoughts. Get Out shows the same dehumanization and objectification of Black bodies and how it continues to manifest itself in modern society.

    I find it very interesting that Thrasher does not see the movie as a horror movie, but rather as "the best damn movie he'd ever seen about American Slavery" (paragraph 3). He says that the movie represents slavery through the theft of the Black body, as previously mentioned. I have yet to see the film, but through Thrasher's description, I think I will watch it with a new perspective, not as a fictional horror story but as science fiction and a representation of slavery. I am glad I got to read this article before I watched the movie and believe that others should read this article before watching the movie as well.

Article: https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/movies/a53515/get-out-jordan-peele-slavery/

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