US and them
The end of US, Jordan Peele's gnarly new masterwork, sees him pull off a coup, by panning away from the family at the film's heart, towards a shiver-inducing formation of bodies clothed in orange-red clothes reminiscent of prisoner uniforms, holding hands in a line that stretches to the horizon. A supremely ambiguous shot given the social, racial and identity politics that have preceded it, this finale marks a leap forward for a filmmaker whose previous masterpiece, GET OUT, seemed to close down on itself in the final moments, finding a resolution of sorts and giving its audience a much-needed catharsis. In opening his film out like this, and accepting the inevitable messiness that this implies - Peele allows his movie to swell and sprawl, throwing ideas at the screen almost constantly - Peele gives the full measure of his thinking, giving us a film that asks much more than it answers.
Both GET OUT and US locate horror in the heart of the family. In the former, Chris finds himself a prisoner of a nuclear family whose casual racism is amplified by the film into a wider metaphor of overt, murderous racism, where white supremacy has the shape and feel of a cult and black identity is horrifyingly used by and subsumed into a soulless culture that only feeds itself. US presents another nuclear family (and here Peele is already fooling around with us; it would have been easy for him to at least mix up the kids' genders from one film to the next, so the fact that he has chosen to concentrate on this model feels pointed). The mother, Adelaide or Addy, and her partner and their children, are a black, affluent, middle-class family on holiday together: Peele once again manipulates his socio-cultural signifiers with ease, from pop culture references to markers of class, swiftly etching a tidy picture of a standard, goofy family. But he is already at work undermining the workings of the family, even before the horror of their house invasion by a zombie-like family of doppelgangers. Peele shows family squabbles ostensibly as a way of depicting a standard family, but this also gives us an understanding of a fault line in the family itself, from a teenage daughter who is disconnected, to a son caught in his imaginary world, and parents who communicate poorly.
In taking a knock at the stereotypical image of the family - Peele was brought up by a single white mother, which may be significant here - the director is already having a pop at American society, with its capitalist patterns of inclusion and markers of achievement. He also shows how trauma (Adelaide experienced a horrific shock as a child, when she came face to face with an eerie doppelganger in a hall of mirrors) is choked by the family, since the family unit exists for itself only: Adelaide can hardly talk to her husband about her pain, and her children will likely never know.
In this respect, then, US is merely furthering one of Peele's core concerns. But where US is more risky, and is prepared to get its hands dirty, is by shifting its glance outward, beyond the family, towards wider society. For all the people we see here, the families living their lives, Peele proposes a matching, literal underclass, a cohort of non-citizens who don't see the light of day but whose lives and actions mirror ours in a way that speaks to their misery and abandonment. (I should add at this point that Peele seems to be spinning his own beautiful pop culture web here, by making these figures resemble the creatures from Michael Jackson's Thriller video, which is referenced on a t-shirt in the film. Peele would have been 8 in 1986, the same age as his protagonist, and is clearly enjoying giving a hint of dread to key elements of his childhood)
This idea of an immiserated underbelly, which finally rises and attacks bien-pensant middle class America, making itself seen in that final, devastating shot I described earlier, gives US great heft. Peele refuses any easy interpretations, which is perhaps what makes the film become slightly messy at times in its structure and scenarios - this is because Peele is proposing something radical and gritty, which is a tearing down of class collusion. Nobody among Peele's audience could watch US and feel let off - this time he's coming for black America as well as for white. The attackers are 'us' and 'the US' (and Peele's willingness to be on the nose about this is to be saluted), this is clear: this means that we're all implicated. Peele is tearing at the very fabric of our society, of our bourgeoisie, of what we assume to be our own identity. The way Peele shifts his narrative in the last minutes of his film so that it's impossible to pick a side in this battle with our undernourished 'other' selves, is masterful. His vision of people fighting to maintain their good lives and the misery of others, is equally shrewd.
After watching US I recalled reading Zadie Smith on GET OUT a couple of years ago - a brilliant, considered essay full of admiration for the film, which nevertheless kindly took him to task for what the author deemed a slightly simplistic view of race. I wondered if I had remembered the final words of her essay correctly, because if so, it would mean that in her criticisms of Peele's first film she was already anticipating what he would do with US. I returned home and looked up the article (you can read it in full here), and got shivers up my spine. Here is the conclusion of her piece:
"Get Out—as evidenced by its huge box office—is the right movie for this moment. It is the opposite of post-black or postracial. It reveals race as the fundamental American lens through which everything is seen. That part, to my mind, is right on the money. But the “us” and “them”? That’s a cheaper gag. Whether they like it or not, Americans are one people. (And the binary of black and white is only one part of this nation’s infinitely variegated racial composition.) Lobotomies are the cleanest cut; real life is messier. I can’t wait for Peele—with his abundant gifts, black-nerd smarts, comprehensive cinematic fandom, and complex personal experience—to go deeper in, and out the other side."
Did Peele also read Smith two years ago? Right down to the 'us' of her last paragraph and his film's title, he is doing in his churning, furious, funny movie exactly what she called for in her cool, lucid essay. US is the work of someone going deeper - he digs right under what we thought were our solid roots - and coming out, to the blaring sounds of Minnie Riperton, in one final shot that stretches across the wilds of an embattled America, on the other side.
Both GET OUT and US locate horror in the heart of the family. In the former, Chris finds himself a prisoner of a nuclear family whose casual racism is amplified by the film into a wider metaphor of overt, murderous racism, where white supremacy has the shape and feel of a cult and black identity is horrifyingly used by and subsumed into a soulless culture that only feeds itself. US presents another nuclear family (and here Peele is already fooling around with us; it would have been easy for him to at least mix up the kids' genders from one film to the next, so the fact that he has chosen to concentrate on this model feels pointed). The mother, Adelaide or Addy, and her partner and their children, are a black, affluent, middle-class family on holiday together: Peele once again manipulates his socio-cultural signifiers with ease, from pop culture references to markers of class, swiftly etching a tidy picture of a standard, goofy family. But he is already at work undermining the workings of the family, even before the horror of their house invasion by a zombie-like family of doppelgangers. Peele shows family squabbles ostensibly as a way of depicting a standard family, but this also gives us an understanding of a fault line in the family itself, from a teenage daughter who is disconnected, to a son caught in his imaginary world, and parents who communicate poorly.
In taking a knock at the stereotypical image of the family - Peele was brought up by a single white mother, which may be significant here - the director is already having a pop at American society, with its capitalist patterns of inclusion and markers of achievement. He also shows how trauma (Adelaide experienced a horrific shock as a child, when she came face to face with an eerie doppelganger in a hall of mirrors) is choked by the family, since the family unit exists for itself only: Adelaide can hardly talk to her husband about her pain, and her children will likely never know.
In this respect, then, US is merely furthering one of Peele's core concerns. But where US is more risky, and is prepared to get its hands dirty, is by shifting its glance outward, beyond the family, towards wider society. For all the people we see here, the families living their lives, Peele proposes a matching, literal underclass, a cohort of non-citizens who don't see the light of day but whose lives and actions mirror ours in a way that speaks to their misery and abandonment. (I should add at this point that Peele seems to be spinning his own beautiful pop culture web here, by making these figures resemble the creatures from Michael Jackson's Thriller video, which is referenced on a t-shirt in the film. Peele would have been 8 in 1986, the same age as his protagonist, and is clearly enjoying giving a hint of dread to key elements of his childhood)
This idea of an immiserated underbelly, which finally rises and attacks bien-pensant middle class America, making itself seen in that final, devastating shot I described earlier, gives US great heft. Peele refuses any easy interpretations, which is perhaps what makes the film become slightly messy at times in its structure and scenarios - this is because Peele is proposing something radical and gritty, which is a tearing down of class collusion. Nobody among Peele's audience could watch US and feel let off - this time he's coming for black America as well as for white. The attackers are 'us' and 'the US' (and Peele's willingness to be on the nose about this is to be saluted), this is clear: this means that we're all implicated. Peele is tearing at the very fabric of our society, of our bourgeoisie, of what we assume to be our own identity. The way Peele shifts his narrative in the last minutes of his film so that it's impossible to pick a side in this battle with our undernourished 'other' selves, is masterful. His vision of people fighting to maintain their good lives and the misery of others, is equally shrewd.
After watching US I recalled reading Zadie Smith on GET OUT a couple of years ago - a brilliant, considered essay full of admiration for the film, which nevertheless kindly took him to task for what the author deemed a slightly simplistic view of race. I wondered if I had remembered the final words of her essay correctly, because if so, it would mean that in her criticisms of Peele's first film she was already anticipating what he would do with US. I returned home and looked up the article (you can read it in full here), and got shivers up my spine. Here is the conclusion of her piece:
"Get Out—as evidenced by its huge box office—is the right movie for this moment. It is the opposite of post-black or postracial. It reveals race as the fundamental American lens through which everything is seen. That part, to my mind, is right on the money. But the “us” and “them”? That’s a cheaper gag. Whether they like it or not, Americans are one people. (And the binary of black and white is only one part of this nation’s infinitely variegated racial composition.) Lobotomies are the cleanest cut; real life is messier. I can’t wait for Peele—with his abundant gifts, black-nerd smarts, comprehensive cinematic fandom, and complex personal experience—to go deeper in, and out the other side."
Did Peele also read Smith two years ago? Right down to the 'us' of her last paragraph and his film's title, he is doing in his churning, furious, funny movie exactly what she called for in her cool, lucid essay. US is the work of someone going deeper - he digs right under what we thought were our solid roots - and coming out, to the blaring sounds of Minnie Riperton, in one final shot that stretches across the wilds of an embattled America, on the other side.
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