When exploring the themes of Black resistance, Jordan Peele’s film, Get Out, is a shining example of the reconstruction of the Black narrative, which creates a resistance towards hegemonic white narratives around Black bodies. For this analysis, I have chosen a scene from 1:36:56-1:38:00 in the film to explore how Peele highlights the stereotype of “Bogle’s bad, Black buck” (Henry King 273) that perpetuates a hypermasculine violence on the white female body before there is a firm resistance and reconstruction of the Black man from a symbol of Black violence to one of hope and goodness against the backdrop of the monstrosity of Whitopia.

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          While my focus is on the specific scene, it is important to preface it with a shot in the opening credits. At 00:05:06-00:05:11, the photo of a black man walking a white pitbull is shown with the Childish Gambino song, Redbone, (Means Coleman et al. 57) playing. This important detail creates a circular narrative in time as explored in class in several ways: 1) Pitbulls are depicted by mainstream culture as violent and uncontrollable; 2) The breed is tied to Black culture, creating an image of Blackness as inherently violent; 3) Gambino’s song illustrates the importance of Hip-Hop in Black resistance and culture and ties into the first section of our second week’s lecture on how “rappers [and Black men] have been vocal and un­ruly stray dogs” (Rose 102) as depicted by the media; 4) The pitbull being white eludes to how things are not as they seem and the violence is, instead, white supremacy on Black bodies.

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          This image takes us to the scene in question for my analysis where we see Chris (Daniel Kayuula) and Rose (Allison Williams) both grabbing for the rifle on the ground. After wrestling the gun from her hand, Chris is left with a choice to walk away from the violence and horror of Whitopia and the Armitage family or to shoot her. However, Chris begins to strangle Rose, which pulls to mind the historical white fear of Black violence against white female bodies and showcases the Black male body as being one of “embedded deficit and danger” (Henry King 273).

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          The scene is powerful, visceral and done without any real dialogue between the two. The music heightens that shift for Chris from surviving violence to embracing his own monstrosity. When Rose begins to smile, she confirms the stereotype of Black men as violent, uncontrolled animals and Chris has become a “colonized people…disfigured and distorted beyond recognition” (White 423) into the stereotype set by hegemonic white narratives. It is at that moment that Chris realizes that he is becoming the very stereotype that made the Armitages so comfortable in their violence toward Black people, and he stops himself.  In that moment, Rose becomes shocked and disappointed that her own twisted views are no longer accepted as a location for Blackness and, instead, Chris represents a resistance to the narratives of white hegemony.

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          In conclusion, the scene is a powerful resistant narrative of how Blackness can transcend, challenge, and reconstruct the hegemonic white narratives that mainstream society has set. It is an integral moment in the film where the Black man becomes a celebration of hope and goodness and solidifies, while challenging chrononormativity, that circular, polyrhythmic timeline that Peele sets in those opening credits.

 

Works Cited

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Henry King, Lorraine. “Black Skin as Costume in Black Panther.” Film, Fashion & Consumption, vol. 10, no. 1, 2021, pp. 265–76, https://doi.org/10.1386/ffc_00024_3.

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Means Coleman, Robin R., and Novotny Lawrence. “A Peaceful Place Denied: Horror Film’s ‘Whitopias.’” Jordan Peele’s Get Out: Political Horror, edited by Dawn Keetley, Ohio State University Press, 2020, pp. 55–61.

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Peele, Jordan. Get Out. Universal Pictures, 2017.

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Rose, Tricia. “Prophets of Rage: Rap Music and the Politics of Black Cultural Expression” in Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary University Press of New England, 1994, pp 99-106.

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White, Renée T. “I Dream a World: Black Panther and the Re-Making of Blackness.” New Political Science, vol. 40, no. 2, 2018, pp. 421–27, https://doi.org/10.1080/07393148.2018.1449286.