JFelix wrote:
Monterey Jack wrote:
I mean, I totally get the movie's concept of corrupt, wealthy people wanting to live forever by hijacking young, fresh bodies, but there's no reason said bodies had to be specifically black people, aside from making the movie into a one-sided racial "statement" from a black filmmaker.
The entirety of American popular culture has been co-opted wholesale from black culture and what black culture that
has been allowed to flourish for the most part was packaged and sold almost entirely by companies operated by white executives and businessmen. It's simply taking the notion of everyone wanting to be black and taking it to its logical conclusion.
Exactly.
Sure, if you boil it down to its basics, Get Out told a fairly straightforward horror-thriller-with-a-twist that would have been relatively unchanged, narrative speaking, if the social commentary was removed.
But the whole point was to recontexualize some common tropes in a way that made important points about America's social and cultural landscape. Using the format to comment on the simultaneous desire for and loathing of black culture that much of white society has is a brilliant re-imagining of standard horror tropes. It's a harsh look at the idea of, "We want all the things we think are cool and admirable about you, but we don't want
you; you don't matter as a human being, all that matters is what we can take from you."
You can do Get Out without that social commentary, yeah, but it'd be a far weaker movie as a result.
Not really understanding the accusation of it being a "one-sided racial statement from a black filmmaker," either. Don't we usually praise filmmakers who have a message and vision, and who use their talents to deliver it? Are we really asking Jordan Peele to "please think of the white people?"
Historically, dudes like Peele have never had much of a platform to deliver a big message in good entertainment. Good on him for seizing the opportunity to do so.