Get Out x Horrifying Whiteness

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Hello and welcome to Material Girls, a pop culture podcast that uses critical theory to understand the zeitgeist. I'm Hannah McGregor. And I'm Marcel Kosman. This week, we are talking about the blockbuster Get Out. But before we dive into the film, I want to quickly ask a question about genre. Hannah, you did like a whole video podcast about...

the topic that I'm about to ask you about. So I'm curious about your thoughts on the capacity of genre, whether it's horror, science fiction, romance, you know, fantasy, whatever, to stir shit up. in mainstream popular culture. What do you think? So we've got this tradition that you are well aware of in like, you know, the 20th century in particular of like disdain for genre and a treatment of like...

some things get to be like exempt from genre for some reason. Yeah. Right? Like literary fiction, like people insisting that literary fiction is not a genre, even though it has all the characteristics of a genre.

People will be like, well, but different literary fiction does different things. And I'm like, yeah, same for other genres. They're also doing other things. But I think what I often find really cool about... sort of self-consciously genre-engaged projects and their ability to be subversive is that like we're collectively very aware.

of genre as a set of containers and like we're more sort of collectively literate around some genres than others right that we like really think of as genres and that have like real norms and so Because we know sort of what the beats are, it makes it really possible to fuck with genre in a way that you can kind of like, not necessarily...

anticipate how it's going to impact audiences, but you kind of know what people's horizon of expectation is. Whose phrase is that? That's a genre phrase. Was it Hans Robert? Yalsis, maybe? Reception theory. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's exactly it. Wow. Well-remembered, Marcia. You know, it's incredible the things that are living rent-free up here, you know?

I always really enjoy watching a genre thing with somebody who doesn't understand that particular genre. So shout out to my dear friends of the pod, Claire and Lucia and I watched season. three of Bridgerton together and Lucia's not a romance reader or watcher for the most part. So Lucia kept being like, oh, she's going to sleep with that guy. And Claire and I were like, no.

No, she's not. No, she's not. Sorry. Sorry. No, she's not. But yeah, like, you know, that's my sort of like genres got these tropes, right? These sort of well-worn tropes. that then like really open up this possibility for being like, ooh, but what are we doing with this? And what if we just did this?

slightly differently. Yeah. And totally radicalized everybody's expectations. Yeah, just like explode everything that's happening because it's like the paths are so well-worn that it's like when you get out of that wheel rat, it's like, whoa.

Yeah. It's one of the reasons why I think that horror in particular has become one of the primary genres for independent filmmaking right now. It has all of these norms and these tropes and these familiar contours that lets an independent filmmaker sort of... get in there and do something weird or subversive or unsettling with it. It's why I wish I could watch horror, but I can't.

I'm a coward. Hold that thought, Hannah, because we're going to talk about that in the next segment because I want to hear more from you specifically about that. Do we have a segment called Why Hannah is a Coward? It's called Why Hannah, Why Coward. Good.

Okay, it's time for Why This, Why Now? The segment that asks the materialist question, what are or were the historical, ideological, and material conditions for our object of study to become a zeitgeisty? So as promised, we are talking about the 2017 cinematic masterpiece, Get Out, directed by Jordan Peele. And before we get started... it is essential that we issue a massive spoiler alert. So coach, insert spoiler alert sound effect here. Yeah.

We don't always talk about the content of our objects of study, but because of the conventions of genre and because of the way that Jordan Peele... deliberately plays with and subverts our expectations in the horror mode. This is going to be one of those blessed conversations when we absolutely get to talk about content.

Okay, so if you haven't seen the movie yet because you're a fraidy cat like me, I will tell you what I did because I have seen this movie. This is one of the very few contemporary horror movies I have seen. I saw it in theaters. Oh, that's brave. Right? Because there was so much conversation happening about it. And so what I did is I read the entire Wikipedia beat by beat plot summary. Okay. So I knew everything that was happening going in.

Because I'm very susceptible to jump scares. I'm very susceptible to strong graphic images. And so I also just needed to check that we weren't going to like see anything. That I couldn't unsee. Yes. But this is much more the like creeping dread. Psychological horror kind of movie than it is. really disgusting things on screen. Yes. And it is a bit jump scary. Yes. And so it helped me to like kind of just be able to anticipate a little bit like.

where those jump scares were coming from and to like know who dies. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that I could not get too emotionally attached to people if I knew they were going to die. So it sounds like if listeners want to see Get Out. but are not super into horror, maybe we won't be spoiling. what happens in the movie, maybe they will listen to our episode where we talk about it and then decide, okay, I can go see it because I know what happens at the end. Yeah.

Okay, so looking back, we can absolutely see that Get Out had a major impact on the horror genre. And I do want us to talk about that impact, but first we should remind ourselves and the listeners what led to Get Out in the first place. I want to start with Jordan Peele's comedic genius and his work with fellow comedian Keegan-Michael Key in their critically acclaimed sketch comedy series, Key and Peele. I have to own...

the loss that is having missed that heyday, because I actually didn't learn how to watch TV without cable until like the lockdown period of the pandemic. Like I didn't know how to get TV. I didn't know what was on. So Key and Peele was something that I learned about in retrospect or in the aftermath, probably around the time that Jordan Peele's name was all over the place because get it was in the zeitgeist.

was so big. What about you, Hannah? Did you watch Key & Peele? I did not. Or rather, I didn't watch it as a show. It's like I watch the sketches, you know, when they like go viral or like are being shared on social media or when a friend of mine who is like...

A sketch show watcher is like, oh, you know that Key & Peele sketch. And I'm like, I don't. And then they send it to me and I watch it. And I'm like, hooray. And so that is the way in which I have consumed Key & Peele the same way I've consumed Key & Peele. other sketch shows in individual sketches when they have like crossed my own horizon of expectation. So like I knew that it was a big deal or at least I knew that it was a big deal for comedy people.

which doesn't necessarily translate into big teal for the mainstream, but I knew that for people who loved comedy, they loved this show. And I knew that there were a number of sketches that... became like formative, you know, that like really entered the zeitgeist. The one that I'm thinking of is the mispronouncing white kids' names, A.A. Ron. Yes. So I think we have like a similar experience. We didn't watch Key and Peele when it was...

on, but we knew about it. I did a little bit of digging around about the cultural impact and popularity of the Key and Peel. comedy sketch series, which aired on Comedy Central between the years 2012 and 2015. It had just over five seasons and 53 episodes. Not only was the show incredibly popular. and growing in popularity with each successive season, but it was also critically acclaimed, particularly the last two seasons. I've seen a number of articles that touch on the pair's particular gift.

for sharp political commentary and how like precisely and uniquely it's summed up that era. And so like, that's very much the like Obama era. So, Hannah, can I ask you to read this quotation from culture critic Mary McNamara's commemorative reflection on the series. She wrote this as the show was coming to an end. She wrote this in response to the series finale. Gotcha. Yeah. So this is her commemorative reflection on the series for the LA Times. Quote.

As biracial men, Key and Peele physically embodied the post-Obama America, both the ongoing arguments about the nature of race and the absurdity of those arguments in a time when racism continues to claim lives. It's no accident that their breakout occurred during the last election, with sketches involving President Obama and his anger translator, Luther.

While Peel's Obama spoke in a carefully soothing cadence, Key's wild-eyed Luther gave voice to the president's imagined inner thoughts, which were those of an angry Black man. But the beauty and significance of Key and Peele came from its refusal to be defined by race or politics or culture or anything other than all of those things.

Just as their lives are informed by many things, so is their comedy. End quote. So we've got to talk about how McNamara immediately moves from praising the pair's embodiment. of the Obama and post-Obama eras to actually kind of undermining the political salience of the show by being like, but it's not about politics or race. It's about all of those things.

And I feel like when I see stuff like that coming from white cultural critics, that this is a way of saying this show is safe for white people. Hannah, what's your read? Yeah, even just reading it out loud, I found just the turn from the phrase angry Black man to but really sort of startling because it feels like a need to apologize or push aside the fact that anger is part of that sketch. The point is that in order for a Black man to occupy public space...

he must be preternaturally calm and measured and reasonable. And so there's this like, okay, so like... That's there in the sketch. It makes it the Obama-era sketch. But actually, what matters about this series is that it's not defined by the figure of the angry Black man. And I agree. I think Black anger is something that is very, very frightening for white viewers, for white people in general. I mean, we can see how effectively it gets used to, like, for example.

turn people against protesters, right? Like, frequently the figure of Black anger or Black violence is what is activated to sort of turn public opinion against protests against the fascist government. For example, And it's particularly interesting to see the way that in this profile, what defines Obama is also kind of being leveraged.

to define key and peel as well. A kind of like, but don't worry about it. They're not angry. That's right. They're doing something interesting. So you don't have to be scared. That's right. So the connection might not... make sense right away, but we'll get there. But this is leading us to the next piece of social context that is, I think, relevant to the emergence of Jordan Peele's Get Out. And this is the rising popularity of the concept of Black excellence.

because I know you love a visual graph, Hannah. You really love a visual graph for this audio medium. I have included this graph that shows... the Google search results for the term black excellence over time. And we can actually see that the term's growing popularity absolutely lines up with the success of Key and Peele. kind of maps with the Obama administration.

for one thing. And then it starts to spike shortly after 2016. Its use becomes visibly heightened right around the time that Get Out emerges. But we're not there yet. The reason why I wanted to bring this up is because I will be damned if I can find a single contemporaneous reference. to the Key & Peele sketch comedy series as an example of Black excellence. The references to their self-identification as biracial came up a lot, but the only examples I could find...

of media outlets referring to Key and Peele as an example of Black excellence was in retrospect. So media outlets thinking back. And I wonder how much of that is about... the very narrow scope of art forms or not even art forms of like behaviors or public roles that black excellence as a concept.

sort of particularly as it's leveraged in, like, mainstream media discourse, can encompass, right? That, like, I mean, undoubtedly, I haven't checked this, but I'm sure that Obama and Black excellence appear alongside each other.

A lot. But I would be really curious to know how often, like, Black excellence and hip-hop or rap musicians, for example, show up next to each other. Like, what kinds of... art or politics or public work actually gets encompassed in the term as it is deployed, especially in like... mainstream white-owned media and what is excluded. Hannah, you are anticipating so beautifully where this conversation is going. Let's first give the listeners a definition.

of what Black excellence is because I think I know I first heard it in relation to Get Out. And so for me, like that's sort of the period when I started to think about it as a concept. But I know for some folks, this is probably a new term that they...

aren't familiar with so let's do a definition from dictionary.com another dictionary of the people quote The term black excellence refers to a high level of achievement, success, or ability demonstrated by an individual black person or by black people in general. The term black excellence, as it's defined here, has been used since at least the 1970s, emerging alongside other similarly structured terms, such as black power, that grew out of the civil rights movement of the 1960s.

However, the concept that Black excellence refers to can be traced to the writings of many earlier Black thinkers. Use of the term greatly has increased. I'm sure that you copy and paste this, so dictionary.com. Get your syntax right. Use of the term greatly has increased in the 2000s, likely due in part to its use as a hashtag, end quote. Oh, fantastic. Okay. Now, as you were alluding to, right, the concept of Black excellence does also seem to get deployed in relation to...

what we might think of as notions of success that are largely defined by our white supremacist culture. Yes. Right? So like you were saying, don't tend to think about Black excellence in relation to, say, hip-hop. but in relation to a breakout horror film that redefines the nature of horror by a Black director.

Yeah, and it's considered to be elevated horror that, like, is, you know, is more filmic. More filmic. More auteur-ish. Sure, yeah. Yeah, and I think reading that history from dictionary.com, I also immediately think about... again, sort of the difference between the roots of the term in Black cultural thought and then the way it gets taken up in mainstream.

white-dominated media. I think the definition shifts depending on who's deploying it. And I think, anecdotally, a lot of Black people in my life came to find the term

off-putting because of the way it was being deployed by white people. Okay, yes, yes. So this lines up really nicely with the next source that I'm going to bring into the conversation. We're going to talk about some... Thoughts from Cheryl Thompson, a Tier 2 Canada Research Chair in Black Expressive Culture and Creativity. So on her blog, Dr. Cheryl Thompson, she...

argues that the messaging around Black culture in the 2010s largely came down to, quote, Black death as Black life. She writes in her blog, quote, By celebrating Black people's accomplishments while ignoring the systemic realities we have lived and continue to live through, Black excellence became the veil that shielded people from seeing how our systems and institutions are still rooted in white supremacist notions of success.

In many cases, Black success has been measured up against the alternative, Black death. So either we are excellent, achieving goals that affirm normative modes of behavior, or we die. symbolically, spiritually, or physically. In this dualistic logic, a myriad of Black experiences cannot exist. End quote. Yes. And this is a conversation I remember having with friends of like,

And whence the space for Black mediocrity? Ah, yes. Are you allowed to just be a person who is living in the world? Yes. Like Thompson says, I remember the period leading up to Get Out's release as one of... heightened attention to the murders of unarmed Black men and boys. That's that paradigm of Black excellence contrasted to Black death that she's talking about here. So we should...

Probably also talk about Black Lives Matter, which is another term that took off thanks to the use of hashtags. Yeah, absolutely. I'm so glad you brought that up, Hannah, because... You're absolutely right. Listeners might remember that we talked about the Black Lives Matter movement in our

on Blackout Tuesday, which we released back in November of 2023. But we didn't at the time get into like the nuts and bolts of what the Black Lives Matter movement is, where it came from, et cetera. So I think this will be. especially useful for our international listeners who have maybe not been as entrenched in the dialogue and movements in its early days. So Hannah, how would you describe the Black Lives Matter movement? Black Lives Matter...

as I have encountered it, is a political movement. I've encountered it primarily or originally online as a protest movement against the killing of Black people. Particularly, I think, in those early days, the killing of young Black men, young unarmed Black men. I know the killing of Trayvon Martin was like...

one of the sort of major incidents, and not just his murder by George Zimmerman, but then Zimmerman being... Acquitted, right? Acquitted. Yeah. In this sort of political and legal decision that signified... that killing a Black person is not as considered as serious a crime as killing a white person. Like, I think that that was the... response to that acquittal I think the very legitimate and accurate reading of that acquittal of like the sort of you know deep anti-black racism built into

in this case, the American legal system, though also, of course, the legal systems of many countries. It was a saying, like, young people like Trayvon Martin are not just... a statistic, right? Not just an accident like, this was a person. And this death matters. Yeah, that's right. Because the hashtag Black Lives Matter was also often accompanied by say his name or say her name. You know, like that reminder that these people who have been murdered.

were murdered and that they were people. With communities who love them and are grieving, right? Like, a lot of, I think, particularly sort of social media-focused protests. One of the points of focus was the kind of cultural storytelling that happens around Black life in a white supremacist culture. How do the stories of men like or...

I mean, he was 17. Out of the stories of children like Trayvon Martin get told, what language gets used, how does his humanity get erased through a deliberate set of... tactics used by the legal system, used by mainstream media, used by the cops. It really is insisting on taking back or retelling these stories. Yeah, absolutely.

So I wanted us to talk about both this sort of collision of Black Excellence and Black Lives Matter because of the way that Get Out. when we look at it in light of this political climate where it emerges, Get Out is responding to and participating in the Black Lives Matter movement because... of the way that the film uses these very specific visual signifiers that cause its audiences to make these cognitive jumps to anti-Black violence, to anti-Black police violence in particular.

Yes, yes, absolutely. And I'm doing that thing where my brain is like, jump into the thesis and I'm like, oh, that's so interesting. And it gets framed as Black excellence because of Cheryl Thompson's point about Black death versus Black life. But I won't. Better not. Instead, I think this is where we talk about the content of this film. Yeah, it absolutely is. Yes.

Okay, so let's do a quick overview of the film, just like very bare bones, because, you know, folks will have not seen it. And Hannah, let me know if you think I'm missing anything. big and significant. It's been a few years since I've seen it, but I'll do my best. Okay. Okay. So we have a couple, Chris and Rose. Chris is black. Rose is white. Chris.

is going to Rose's white suburban home to meet her white suburban family for the first time. Her dad, Dean, her mom, Missy, and her brother, Jeremy, are all going to be there. Okay. They arrive, and Chris also meets Walter and Georgina. Walter is a Black groundskeeper, and Georgina is a Black housekeeper. Okay. And immediately...

That's weird. Yeah, like he's in an uncomfortable situation where the only other Black people in this home are employees. Yes, exactly. And Dean and Missy, Rose's parents, are liberal. white people. They want Chris to feel at home. The catchphrase. To like signify to us the kind of liberal white people they are is that Rose's dad keeps saying, I would have voted for Obama for a third term. Exactly. So Dean in particular is very much trying to like.

let Chris know that he knows he's Black and that's okay. Yeah. So something unexpected happens and that is that... Dean and Missy have a big party planned and Rose has completely forgotten about it. This is a party that happens every year. And oops, it's also happening on this weekend. And she's like, oh, man. Oh, what? I totally forgot. And they're like. Don't worry. It'll be fun. Okay. At the party, Chris, similar to his experience with Dean and Missy, also encounters a bunch of other...

older suburban white people who all want to let him know that they like the fact that he's black. That they would have voted for Obama for a third term. Yeah, basically. They're like, we see that you're black and we're okay with that. That's very much the vibe. and it's creepy. Similar to his encounter with Walter and Georgina, he encounters another Black man at the party. This man's name is Logan, and he is the much younger Black husband of...

an older suburban white lady whose name I actually forget. She doesn't, she doesn't matter. And like his experience with Walter and Georgina, there's something off. Chris tries to like talk. to logan like a person and logan is weird okay okay so gradually it is unfolding for the viewers that like

Fucked up stuff is happening. Something sinister is happening. This is what I remember best is how effectively the movie slides from the creeping horror of... just the reality of this social situation and the understanding that Chris is in danger. without the need to introduce any more literal horror elements is just like, as a viewer, you're like, you are in danger. You need to get out of there. And it like...

escalates and becomes a horror premise, but the origin of the horror is whiteness. Yes. So then there's an auction. Chris is not present for that. And it turns out that the people are bidding on a great big portrait of Chris. Meanwhile, Chris and Rose are taking a little walk. I forgot about this part. I forgot about this part. It's so creepy.

Yeah. Chris and Rose are taking a little walk. She's reassuring him that everything's fine. They can leave. Like, don't worry. Like, it's okay. We can get out of here. But they can't.

because Chris has actually been purchased. It's not a picture of Chris that has been purchased. It is Chris himself who has been purchased in a modern-day slave auction. And he has been captured and... purchased in order to undergo a procedure called the coagula because Rose's parents are part of what is called the order of the coagula. Hannah, would you mind reading for us the explanation of what the order of the coagula is from the fandom.com page on Get Out?

BlassieFandom.com. Okay, quote. The Order of the Coagula is a secretive cult group of prospective and wealthy Caucasian buyers and a villainous faction in the 2017 horror thriller film Get Out, founded by Roman Armitage somewhere around the 1930s.

or 1940s and headed by the Armitage family themselves, members of this unusual secret society seek out, kidnap, hypnotize, and force brain surgery on healthy and young African Americans via partial transmutation, which is to implant the brains of the members. their old relatives and friends, into the bodies of the far younger and fitter Black people, end quote. Okay, yeah, so they are using hypnosis. This is Missy's big thing. This is Missy's big thing, is that she's a therapist.

And when he is like feeling really freaked out and uncomfortable, she's like, oh, well, why don't I help you with some therapy? And then she uses the therapy to essentially hypnotize him. By separating his mind from his body and sending him into a place called? The Sunken Place. The sunken place. That's right. So again, we're bare bones explanation here. Chris is going to undergo this procedure called the coagula, but...

Because he's incredible and amazing, he escapes. He has to kind of kill his way out of the household, but he survives. And the movie ends with him escaping. And surviving. Yay. Yes. Yay. Okay. I make that noise because, you know, he doesn't get coagulated. But I remember... The ending being perhaps a bit ambivalent about like how effectively Chris has in fact, quote unquote, got out. Hannah, you're so right.

And I know I've made some big promises about how the movie also is like directly engaging with the concept of Black Lives Matter and police brutality and anti-Black violence. I think we need to get into some theory first, and then we can talk about that ending in particular. We can talk about the beginning. We can talk about the ending. Maybe we even talk about the auction scene. I don't know. I can't predict the future. What do you say?

It's impossible to know, but you know what? We do know is we're going to do some theory now. Okay.

We call this segment The Theory We Need because this is where we introduce some critical theory to help us make sense of our objective study. So for this segment, I'm drawing on an absolutely phenomenal article written by scholar Julia Mollenthiel, an assistant professor in the African American Studies program at the University of Florida. The article is called... Horrifying Whiteness and Jordan Peele's Get Out. And in it, Mullen Thiel...

defines a theoretical lens to help us think about the growing genre of new Black horror, which Mollen Thiel actually attributes directly to Get Out. So the name of Mollen Thiel's theoretical lens, as you might be able to guess from the title of the article, is horrifying whiteness. Let's get into it. Hannah, would you kindly read Mollenthiel's preface to the explanation of what horrifying whiteness is?

Ugh, will I ever. Quote, this article is intended to further the project of developing a theoretical foundation for new Black horror. Horrifying Whiteness is my contribution to this project, offering a lens by which to read the paradox of white people rendering blackness as monstrous, even as they playfully terrorize black people by executing physical, verbal...

legal, and sociocultural attacks against them, end quote. Marvelous. So Malanthiel starts by pointing out the paradox wherein white people render blackness as monstrous, even though it is white people who have and do enact violence against black bodies. So drawing on foundational Black scholarship on the gays, Mollenthiel's horrifying whiteness, quote, distinguishes itself by rendering white supremacy and the gays as horrific via the horror genre, end quote.

Hannah, can you read this next much longer quotation, please? Sure can. Quote, this rendering not only challenges white denial and obstructs the rematerializing of white innocence. but provides a lens through which Black vulnerability can be most clearly seen by shifting the conversation from white fears of Black people to Black fears of white people.

As its name suggests, horrifying whiteness evokes the complex relationship between white supremacy and the horror genre, calling attention to the violent white supremacist performances that are enacted on and off the big screen.

Since horror films similarly situate viewers in a nexus of pleasure, and the genre has a historical pattern of white redemption, horror becomes a fruitful way of critiquing white pleasure at the sight of Black pain, as well as the maintenance of white innocence, even in the midst of white... End quote. Expertly read. Thank you. So in addition to reading the paradox of white supremacy figuring Blackness as monstrous...

Horrifying whiteness also disrupts that dichotomy of whiteness as innocence and Blackness as culpability. This concept of rematerializing of white innocence. This is a reference to... I mean, it makes me think about Trayvon Martin and George Zimmerman, right? Like in a situation where a Black teenager is the subject of white violence. the legal and social mechanisms of a white supremacist culture rematerialize white innocence in a very material way by insisting on Zimmerman's

innocence by positioning the Black subject as always potentially a threat. Yes, yes. A site of horror or violence or danger. Yes. And so this is part of how and why, like, Black children especially are never in the media figured as children. They're always figured as men. And the flip side to that is always that when... white men in their twenties do something horrific, the media, if they are like a beloved child of some important American.

business mogul or whatever they're always like innocent baby who couldn't have known better boys will be boys that kind of terminology and then this point about like horror films like the history of horror films like Part of what horror does is offer, like, pleasure and redemption, like the relief. Yes. Right? But that relief in horror centers around white redemption.

historically as a genre. And so this is what we were talking about earlier, the way that like these sort of familiar contours of genre become a space for disruption. Yes, yes, exactly. Yes. Okay, I am ready for the next quote. All right. Quote. Get Out dismantles the Blackness as culpability and Whiteness as innocence dichotomy that maintains the power structure of the United States by centralizing Black fears of white terror in our contemporary moment.

This is a radical and reforming intervention, given that the horror genre has not traditionally engaged with issues of history and Blackness in a way that actually disrupts the operations of white supremacy. end quote. Yes. So this is what we were talking about in terms of like what horror can do and like the ongoing construction of whiteness as always already a position of innocence. Totally. Absolutely. And the subversive power of the genre, right?

So with the concept of horrifying whiteness, Mollen Thiel has taken these largely affective experiences that we as the audience of the film might be experiencing, and she's shaped them. into a language that actually explains the powerful political intervention that Get Out is making in a white supremacist culture that perceives Blackness. or figures blackness as monstrous and itself as innocence. Okay, we're going to keep going. Hannah, another quote, please. Quote.

Peel's film rebels against white supremacy by returning the infamous look historically directed at Black people in cinema and by challenging white liberalism. Instead of viewers being called to look at monsterized Blackness, Peel's film calls viewers to look at horrifying whiteness and its dreadful impact on Black humanity.

By narrating the story through the eyes of a Black man, a perspective not traditionally offered in horror, Peel provides viewers with a first-hand glimpse into the dangers Chris faces. and the fear he feels as he maneuvers through the white world in his Black body. This offers viewers a visceral experience of what it feels like to be a Black man in 21st century United States." Thank you.

all right so i want us to pivot somewhat here because We're talking about the gaze. We're talking about looking. And we have on this podcast talked about looking and cinema before. So listeners may remember our episode on Jurassic Park. which we released in September of 2024. So horrifying whiteness shows us that like Jurassic Park, Get Out is a film that is deeply engaged in the politics of looking.

Hannah, you did such a beautiful job in our Jurassic Park episode of explaining the racist origins of the spectacle. Could you give us a quick reminder about how Black and non-normative bodies have shaped Western expectations of the spectacle and of looking? You may have even written about it in a book. About. Jurassic Park. I don't know. I sure did. Okay, so this is from scholar Louis Chudsoke.

And his article, The Uncanny History of Minstrels and Machines, 1835 to 1923. And what he is talking about in that is how sort of the history of American popular spectacle, which he links to. circuses and carnivals as sort of preceding cinema. which becomes sort of the primary site of American spectacle, and that it is rooted in a history of the display of non-normative bodies for the pleasure of a viewing audience that is assumed.

to be white, able-bodied, normative according to how normativity is structured within a white supremacist culture. And so his example is that P.T. Barnum... of greatest showman fame, got his start displaying a Black woman. Yes. Who he originally claimed was the nanny of George Washington. And then when people stopped...

being excited about that. He then deliberately leaked a rumor that she was actually an automaton. She was not. She was a human woman. And so there is this deeply rooted into the history of... again, in particular here, American spectacle, you know, which is also the history of cinema, is the sense that non-normative bodies are a thing that you look at and that that includes, you know, Blackness, indigeneity, disability.

etc. And that the assumed looking subject is generally going to be a white man. Right. That that is the gaze that is operating. That is the default gaze, right? The default gaze. Exactly. Thank you so much. I'm so glad that you had your copy of Clever Girl handy. Unfortunately, I've got a copy in every room. So one of the reasons why I found Mollen Thiel's... article so incredibly exciting is because there were parts of Get Out that when I watched it, I've watched it a couple times.

Because in addition to having gone to see it for the sake of seeing it, I also taught it a couple of times. Oh, cool. Yeah, thank you. It was a fun inclusion. There were parts of the movie that I always was just sort of like, I know I don't understand what's going on here. Also a useful experience as a viewer. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. So just like being able to sit with the discomfort of being like, I know that there's something going on.

I don't know what it is. I mean, I'm not a horror guy for one thing. So I don't like know a lot about. the genre and I'm not always sure if what I'm watching is subverting expectations or not. I mostly just show up for the entertainment, right? And also we're white. Yeah. There's whole significations of the film that I know are lost on me. Yeah.

It is a film that is anticipating a Black viewer. Yes, 100%. So reading Monthiel's article really helped me to understand that that sort of audience distance that I was experiencing, where I was like, I know something's up, but I don't know what it is, is largely because I didn't understand the significance or the function of spectacle in the film. In particular, I didn't fully appreciate the silence of the auction scene.

In my head, I was like, of course, it has to be silent so that Chris doesn't hear them bidding on him. But in reading Mollen Thiel's article, I'm coming to realize that the function of that silence is to force the audience. to look at the spectacle of white supremacy. So rather than white supremacy being normative in the film, it becomes the spectacle that we then are forced to look at and recognize. And see as horrifying. And see as horrifying. Yes. Yeah. Okay. We've got one last quotation.

Here, Malan Thiel is addressing the character Jim Hudson, played by Stephen Root. He is the blind art dealer who ultimately places the highest bid and quote-unquote purchases. Chris. Hannah, can you read this final quote, please? Okay. Quote, Hudson's literal and figurative blindness symbolizes horrifying whiteness because he fails to see his purchase of Chris and the horrifying doom he subjects Chris to as an enactment of his white supremacy.

Nor does he see that race has everything to do with these monstrous transactions because they are based on the notion that black bodies are commodifiable and that black people only exist for the purposes and pleasure of the white elite. That's so interesting because it reminds us that the gaze is not... just a literal capacity to see, that the gaze is like an operation of power that renders one person a subject, like a rights-bearing subject, and another person a consumable object.

That's right. Yes. In the movie, Hudson actually says to Chris, I could care less what color you are. I want your eyes. So he's fully stating that Chris is something. a thing, an object. that he has some kind of right to claim and his suggestion that it has nothing to do with what color Chris is. We are able, through horrifying whiteness, to see as a perfect example of...

white supremacy in action. I mean, also so much in there when we're talking about the Obama era about race blindness and the violence and the claim towards race blindness. Yes. Exactly. I know. And this is also, like, Maul and Thiel absolutely gets into that.

When I stress that this article was such a pleasure to read, I don't always get really excited about the scholarly texts that I bring for us on the show. You know what? Because not all scholars are good at writing, but when they are good at writing, what a joy. Yeah, what a joy. Anybody who's interested in Black cinema or in horror or in Get Out, I would...

absolutely recommend reading Julia Mollenthiel's article in full. It's excellent. Incredible. You know what? I probably will. Okay, since we're not going to sit here and quietly read this entire essay in total. Not right now. Not right now. I'm wondering if you might have a thesis for us. Yes, Hannah? I thought you'd never ask. Okay, it's time for our final segment, In This Essay I Will, in which Marcel will get her thoughts out, ah, in a coherent argument. Okay.

in her article on the genre-defining horror movie Get Out. Julia Mollenthiel argues that the film, quote, exposes the horrifying whiteness that went unchallenged during the Obama era because of the post-racial myth that inversely strengthened white supremacy. Not only does horrifying whiteness enable us to perceive the revelatory power of Get Out on screen,

but it is likewise helpful to understand the film's reception among white audiences. Nothing but horrifying whiteness could explain the fact that white audiences of Get Out chose to believe against all evidence that the pretty white lady, Rose Armitage, was herself hypnotized and not actually a monster.

In this essay, I will... No, no, no. No, no, no. Marcel, no. Sorry, what? Yeah. So there is a clip of Alison Williams, the actor who plays Rose Armitage, on Seth Meyers' late night talk show, where she's... telling the story of how people would ask her, like Rose was hypnotized, right? And she would have to be like, no, she's evil. We gave you everything you needed to know.

in order to draw that conclusion. No, the absolute insistence on white innocence. Oh yeah, no, this is when Mollenfield is writing about the rematerializing of white innocence. Like, it's not unbelievable. I believe it. It is. Horrifying. Actually, the perfect word. It is horrifying the insistence with which white supremacy constantly re-centers around white innocence. particularly around the figure of the white woman, which I do think is another piece that's really significant about...

this film. We've talked about this before, that one of the functions that white femininity plays within the larger project of white supremacy is sort of representing and maintaining the figure of whiteness as innocence. And that then white men can participate in all manner of violence. That is the violence that white men must do for the safety of the state, etc. But white women maintain this position of innocence that... operates to constantly redeem whiteness as a project.

It's so important that, in fact, our primary villains in this movie are these two white women, right? Like, it's Rose. Her dad sucks, but it's Rose and her mom. who are the people who deliberately trap Chris, like lure him in, manipulate him. It's established one of the things we find out is that Rose has done this over and over and over again.

Every other Black person that Chris encounters at the Armitage's estate is someone that she has done this to. Yes, that she and her mother have done this to, and that they have done using technologies of... white innocence, right? Technologies of white femininity, sex, romance, care work, therapy, right? These are specific technologies. I mean, wow. What an important reminder that you can make any art you want and people will not stop misreading it. Yeah, totally right. Yeah. You just can't.

I think, too, one of the things that you are drawing attention to as well is highlighted in that final scene that I really want to talk about the opening scene and the final scene. Let's do it. So the final scene, Chris wants to kill Rose. Yes.

has been shooting at him her grandfather who has hijacked a black man's body has attempted to assault him and kill him like chris is in full-on self-defense and he chooses not to kill rose he decides not to and in that moment we get this like whoop whoop of a police cruiser And we see these, like, red and blue lights flashing on Chris's face. This is what I remember, right? This ambivalent ending where you're like, at the end of a horror movie, the best thing that can happen...

is the cops arrive, because that means you're safe now. That's right. But in this moment where it is a Black man who has been subjected to this violence... and a white woman who has been performing this violence, the arrival of the police is very scary. It's so scary. And Rose knows exactly the power that she has as...

a white woman, and suddenly she turns towards those flashing lights and starts to call for help. Yeah, yeah. And we've seen, right, we've seen earlier scenes of Rose's interaction with the police. Right. There's another earlier scene where they like sort of get in a little minor altercation with the cops and she gets really aggressive with them. And Chris is like, please don't do this. It's both a kind of like performative allyship.

moment, but also a reminder that for her, the police are not a danger. That's right. Whereas for Chris, the police are an ever-present threat of violence. Yeah, absolutely.

So watching this movie, this scene is one of those incredibly powerful moments where we're able to recognize the work that this film is doing of gesturing to... the vulnerability, what Mollen Thiel is calling the vulnerability of Black people in white spaces, in proximity to police, and also in these white suburban spaces, which we have to talk about the opening scene.

as well right because the character Andre who Chris is introduced to as Logan later he's walking through a totally quiet white suburb and this is another of these moments where this

opening scene. I don't think I'm wrong. I don't think this is a stretch or a hot take. It's a direct reference to Trayvon Martin's murder in a white suburb because This man, Andre, this Black man is walking through the suburb and he is growing increasingly stressed and anxious about the fact that he is the only Black man in a darkened white suburb.

as this car, like, starts to follow him, the audience of the movie is like, oh, fuck. Like, this is not okay. Whatever, we don't know what's going to happen, but whatever is about to happen is not okay. And like, what happens to Andre is like an exaggeration of what... happened, it takes the murder of Trayvon Martin and turns it into a spectacle so that we can see that horrifying treatment of Black bodies.

I also wonder if, you know, because you mentioned like the audience sees, and I think your point about readings of Rose remind me that like we can't speak generally about. an audience response to this film. And so I think also about how that opening scene is operating within a tradition of horror that tells us that if we open like a cold open... of a horror movie in which somebody is alone walking through a deserted area means something really bad is about to happen to that person.

Right? It's like, we know how horror works. If you're a horror viewer, you know this person's going to die. Because that's how horror movies open. This is going to be our first encounter with the killer. And so the genre... tropes position, you know, the operation of the camera, the way that the music is, you know, it positions Andre as a victim. Somebody who is at risk. Somebody to whom...

This neighborhood and its silence is a threat because of the genre tropes. As soon as another player gets introduced into the scene, we're going to be like, uh-oh, that person's going to kill you. And so, you know. There may be, I'm certain that some viewers watched it and thought the danger of a Black man in a white suburb, you know, we know about Trayvon Martin, we know what can happen.

And I'm certain that there were some viewers for whom that history was not evoked at all, for whom the genre norms of the film were positioning Andre as under threat. And I think it's that. double gaze, that's part of what makes this movie so smart. Is that it is, you know, both a film that is

speaking to a Black audience while also anticipating and challenging the gaze of a white audience. You know, and it makes me think about, like... where Peele comes from as an artist, and probably just the kind of experience he had making things, putting them out in the world, and then seeing the wild ways people will misread art.

especially the wild ways that white people will misread Black art. And I say this with a full awareness that there may be people listening to this right now who are like, yes, you're doing it too. And it's like, yeah, I know, I know, because whiteness is a very specific...

gaze on the world and the fantasy of thinking that like oh i read some books so i can get outside of it is like you know it itself just just another fantasy but like i think that opening scene and then it's echoing in the closing scene where by the closing scene, hypothetically, everybody now gets that, like, uh-oh, the police arriving is not...

a straightforward good but again maybe not like some people might have just gotten to that end and been like great everybody's fine now yeah so for folks who want to know exactly how it ends it's actually not a police cruiser. It's Chris's friend, Rod, who works at the airport. He works for TSA. And he gets out of the car and he's like, Chris. So Rod has shown up.

to save his friend. So Chris is saved by his friend whose vehicle just happens to look like the TSA. And it's like, cool, the police showing up would have been very bad. his friend showing up, like another Black person showing up is like, okay, I might be okay. Yeah, yeah. And one of the things that I didn't know is that Jordan Peele actually considered different endings for this movie.

That's so interesting. Yeah. Yeah. His initial plan was for Chris to be caught by the police murdering Rose and to go to jail. Because he wanted initially the film to be a true representation of the violence of white supremacy, right? But he changed the ending in light of... I can't remember exactly how we phrase it, but it was like the need for a hero, the need for a happy ending in light of Black Lives Matter. And I think it's really significant.

for that reason, that Chris lives, right? That he escapes the armitages and he lives. Yeah, that he lives not through the intervention of a single white person. That's right. Not a single one. And that was another conscious choice that Peel made as well, right? There will be no redeemable white people in this movie. Yeah. Which is also incredible to think about that as a directorial choice.

And how people have still refused that, refused that premise of the film. It is a function of my own white femininity that I find that surprising. But people insisted that Rose was a good guy. Or that she couldn't help it, right? Even if she wasn't good, that she just couldn't help it. Wasn't her fault. If folks want to hear us talk a bit more about sort of white femininity and... the operations that it has within white supremacy as a project and this idea that white women

Maybe we do bad things, but it's not our fault because we're easily taken advantage of. Yeah, we have a Witch Please episode about sentimentality. You could also read my book, A Sentimental Education, also talks about the same thing. Double book plug!

Okay, so, Marcel, I'm wondering if, to sort of tie a bow on this episode, if we can bring it back to this conversation about Black excellence. Because... I feel like part of the conversation around this movie, the sort of auteur-focused conversation that really was about Peel as an artistic genius... and Peel as an example of Black excellence, that being part of how the mainstream discourse responded to Get Out feels like

a way of like defanging the movie a bit. Oh, that's so interesting. I really hadn't thought about it in that way, but you are so right that it can absolutely be seen to function similarly to that. like Mary McNamara piece where she's like, but it's not just about politics and race. It's about everything all together. Yeah. Huh. Yeah. This sort of wave at discourses of Black excellence.

operate in a sort of, I mean, this is Cheryl Thompson's point, right? That Black excellence as the flip side to Black death, which precludes the possibility of Black life. as, you know, an actual sort of thriving rich complex set of possibilities within the constraints of white supremacy, that a way to undermine this film's emphasis on white horror is for white critics to position it as a film about Black excellence rather than a film about white horror.

That's so interesting. I'm totally on board. Yes. That's a thing that I'm kind of like, I'm just throwing it up in the air and I would be really curious to hear sort of how that sits with folks because I think that these are really complex. set of ideas. And like, you know, part of the work of Black Excellence as a concept is also to reject discourses of like, only white people are great artists, right? Like, that's part of its...

original function is to push back against sort of white supremacist ideas that like filmmakers are just automatically in default white, that the gaze of the film is automatically in default white. And also it's like... How does then Jordan Peele as like a wunderkind kind of figure step in to be like, this is what the conversation is going to be about so that white viewers...

don't have to spend as much time grappling with what the film actually has to say about whiteness and the white gaze. I totally hear what you're saying, and I think that makes perfect sense. And I also think that... This film needs to be celebrated because this was Peele's directorial debut. And this movie is fucking brilliant. It's so good. The layers at which this film operates, the fact that it...

like, kick-started, to use Mullen Thiel's term, it kick-started a new genre of horror. Like, that's huge. That's a really big deal. So, also, this film is incredible. Also and also, this film is so incredible. While we're on the topic, I love Jordan Peele's filmmaking because... He is thinking so much about the materiality of cinema in the way that he makes films. His films are so interested in their own filminess.

in a way that I find just rich and nuanced and endlessly interesting to think about. Because it's like doing all this narrative stuff. And then also it's doing all of this like material stuff at the same time. It's just great. It's just great. Material Girls is a Witch Please production and is distributed by ACAST. There's really no reason to fear visiting our website, ohwitchplease.ca. There, you'll find tranquil transcripts, reassuring reading lists, and meditative merch.

You can also learn about our other two shows, Gender Playground, a podcast about gender affirming care for kids. Now with two seasons. Two. And Making Worlds, a video podcast about sci-fi, fantasy and the radical power of imagining otherwise. Or perhaps you are a horror buff looking for more thrills and chills. If so, check out our terrifyingly good newsletter at owitchplease.substack.com or visit patreon.com slash owitchplease to uncover the...

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