On the Bechdel Cast.
The questions asked if movies have women and them, are all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands, or do they have individualism? It's the patriarchy, zeph and bast start changing it with the Bechdel Cast.
Clink clink, Jamie, you're getting very sleepy now.
I passed out. It's done.
It's done.
Oh those so easy.
Yeah, I know, I know. I mean, that's that's what the movies are about.
Oh goodness. Welcome to the Bechdel Cast. My name is Caitlin Derante.
Clink clink, my name is Jamie Loftus, and this is our podcast where we talk about your favorite movies from an intersectional feminist lens using the Bechdel test.
Cast test.
We've been doing this for eight years as a jumping off point for discussion.
But Caitlin, what the hell is that?
Oh? Gee whiz. It's a media metric to buy a queer cartoonist Alison Bechdel, sometimes called the Bechdel Wallace Test. It has many versions, and ours is this. Do two characters of a marginalized gender have names? Do they speak to each other? And is the conversation about something other than a man, and we especially like it when it's a narratively meaningful conversation and not just you know, throw away dialogue.
Very true. And today we're doing one of our rare do over episodes. We are covering the twenty seventeen movie get Out.
If you were a.
Matreon subscriber, which you should be, this was I think the first matreard episode we ever did that was a live okay.
Okay, listen, listen.
It was a moment in time. Listen okay. So what we were the circumstances under which we recorded our first get Out episode was in the basement of a pizza parlor in Brooklyn.
Yeah, as a part of a comedy festival.
I don't remember which one, but one that was comfortable putting us in the basement of a pizza.
Parlor certainly not a venue that was conducive to a live podcast show, to the point where there was not a sound system that allowed it, that allowed us to record audio from the soundboard, which is how we would normally record audio from a live show. And there weren't even enough microphones. Jamie and I had to share a microphone.
Yes, and we only had like a half hour. So anyways, and this was also it in to give us some criticism as well. This is before we kind of realized that a movie that requires a lot of discussion is maybe not ideal for a live show.
So too a lot like.
We didn't have enough time, We didn't know how to do a live podcast.
It was twenty seventeen, and.
We want to resolve because yes, get Out deserves better. So today we are recovering get Out in the Year of Our Lord twenty twenty four with an incredible guest, a returning guest.
Yes, a friend of the pod.
Indeed, she's a writer actor. She wrote on I Carly and Raven's Home. You remember her from our episodes on the movies US and Cheetah Girls. It's Carama Donqua, Hello.
Hello, bye, thank you so much for having me back. I hope I'm not like a best friend of the pod like you know best friends a tear. I like to think I'm a best friend of the pod. Oh yeah, absolutely, I don't want to like force it or anything.
Happening naturally.
Three Timers Club, Yeah, three pet I love I also love that. Yeah. I kind of forgot what a wide range of movies we've covered with you.
Yeah, yeah, to Jordan Peele Movies Now and Cheetah Girls.
Yes, one cinema classic. And to Jordan Peel Films.
Yes, yes, exactly, yes, And of course shout out to our our guest on the original episode, Ray Sonni, and shout out to anyone who was there at the pizza parlor, not.
On Ray and not on the pizza parlor attendees. Yes, we take we take full accountability. And plus the comedy Fuzzle Will, which I don't remember the name of. So yeah, whatever.
I am because Ray was, you know, like precisely, And yes, we're so excited to have you to talk about this movie, Kroma. What's your relationship with get Out?
What is my relationship with get Out? I went to see it. You know, it's so funny because I'm gonna tell a story that's gonna sound almost identical to my story about Us. I went to go see it in theaters with my friend Mike. I went and saw Us with my other friend Mike. I have a lot of white men, different mic friends that are named Mike, don't well and some non white mics Michael's in my life,
but most of them are white men named Mike. But I went and saw it in the Cinerama Dome rip and I didn't know a ton before I went and saw it. My friend Mike, this particular mic is kind of always like, come see this movie, and I just go. And that's how I saw Moonlight. Also, we went to an advanced screening of Moonlight together. He doesn't have a lot of black friends, so he tends to see black movies with me, which is fine. I love that for him.
I'm not upset about it. But we went to an advanced screening of Moonlight at Lakhma and Janelle Monet was there and my breath gone, Wow, they took it. Yeah. But so I went and saw it at the Cinerama Dome. And I love horror and I love Jordan Peele and I love Danielkluja. I was a Skins person. My ring tone on my phone is the Skins theme song. No one ever hears it because my phone's on silent all the time, but I but, you know, yeah, And I was really struck with get Out, how tight the script
was and how well constructed it was. I love a well constructed piece of writing. Like you know, the word play right is spelled weird because a rite is a builder, and writing things is about like building them, and I think that Jordan Peele built a masterpiece. But yeah, that's where I'm at. And then I took my little brother to see it because I was like, this is important for him to see and no one else is going to take him to see it. And he was like seventeen at the time.
I was like, oh cool, Yeah.
It was not his first rated R movie. I did show him his first rated OUR movie, which was kick Ass.
Okay, okay, another solid choice.
But I really wanted to like share it with my brother, especially because it has so much to do with the way that black men in particular are perceived in society. And I don't think that my brother had somebody who was going to really talk to him about that and what it meant in the way that I was going to like discuss the film with him, And like, I get to discuss it with you two today.
Yeah, yeah, so I'm so excited.
Jamie.
What's your relationship with the movie.
My relationship with the movie is I didn't see it in theaters during its first run, which I really regret. I feel like early twenty seventeen was just before I got a movie pass and before I knew stubs existed, so I just wasn't in the theaters a lot at this time. But I saw it later, I think later that year, in twenty seventeen, and immediately it was like, fuck, I want to see this in a theater so badly. And it took me a couple of years, but I finally did see it. I think I saw it at Vidiots,
maybe like a year ago or so. But it's just like you're saying, Karma, it's a masterpiece. It's so good. I feel like this movie at least I don't know. I mean, I'm I'm a horror fan, but I don't know every single thing about horror. But it just seems like get Out really kicked off a whole new generation of horror films, kind of for better.
Or for worse.
There's a lot of movies you'll see, like a lot of horror movies. Now you're like, Okay, you know, there's a lot of people that want to do what Jordan Peele does, but no one can because he's fucking incredible. And yeah, it was really interesting to go back and revisit this with sort of the knowledge of the better part of ten years of clearly how this was. I feel like get Out was sort of immediately a classic, but now seven years.
On, its influence is so.
So present, to the point where like Jordan Peele has to work around the influence of this movie. Yeah, Daniel Culia is incredible. I was not a Skins head. I regret it was. I feel like I went the de Grassy way and then I never I never went to England with my teen TV.
I'm bisexual. I love both Degrassis and Skins.
The two genders. Yes, yes, but yeah I was.
I could have been watching Daniel Coluia, but instead I was watching a bunch of.
Door Drake I was watching. I know, I was watching Drake. Huge l for me, but yeah, this was.
I haven't seen it in about a year or so, but yeah, it's a masterpiece. And also just going back to I've been rewatching a lot of horror classics lately, and I recently rewatched Rosemary's Baby and The Step for Wives and a lot of things that going through this are, you know, very clear influences on Jordan Peel and listening to him talk. I don't know, it's just it's great.
Kaitlin Winster history with this movie.
This is one of my favorite movies of all time. I agree that it's a masterpiece. I teach it in my screenwriting classes, using it as an example for many examples of what the movie does so well as far as crafting a story and planting payoff and you know, withholding information for later reveal and all this kind of stuff.
So I am just astounded by this movie every time I watch it, because it holds up on a rewatch so so well, the way that some horror movies or some movies with like a big twist don't hold up because then the story logic just kind of falls apart when you rewatch it after knowing the twist. But this movie holds up so well. And yeah, I saw it in theaters and it was one of my favorite theater
going experiences ever. I would say, especially the very end, Yes, when the cop car pulls up and you're like, fuck the fear you feel for Chris, and then the door swings open and it says airport and Lil Rel steps out and the whole crowd screaming, cheering, just like it was incredible.
Nobody has loved TSA as much as they did. I was gonna say in February of twenty seventeen.
What a moment for the TSA.
Truly, I've never seen them get good press anywhere before or since. But yes, Iconic DSA employee.
Oh god, right, right, right, So yeah, I had a great time seeing in theaters and yeah, I've seen this movie probably like twenty times now and.
I love it.
Let's take a quick break and then come back for the recap, shall we.
Let's do it?
Sounds great, and we're back.
I was gonna say, I forgot to.
I think I mentioned this in our first go round of I saw like I saw the wrong Jordan Peele movie in theaters. During this period of time, I did goes to see Keanu in theater. Oh my gosh, why, I mean, that's a fun movie.
There's a cat in it.
There's a cat.
Literally, I got dumped by a prop comedian and I was just like, I gotta go do something, And so I went to see Keanu and I was just like sitting in the back of Keanu crying.
I'm sorry, that's so dark. Getting dumped by a prop comedian is. Yeah, I know that you've gone through some shit, but that is probably the darkest thing I've ever heard you go through.
That's kind of what it is like.
Once you've been not just dumped, but cheated on by a prop comedian. You really it really puts things into perspective. You're like, no one can truly hurt me ever again.
Yeah.
Wow, Anyways, Keanu was there for.
Me when glad to hear. Yeah, oh, we should cover Keanu sometime on the podcast.
Yeah. I mean I haven't seen it since I had negative a strong negative association, but it was funny, it was anyways, Yes, and that came out I think less than a year before Get Out, which is wild the range. Yeah, it came out, like, I think in space of six months. I'm pretty sure both if if my breakup timeline is correct,
both of these movies came out so close together. And that was the other like really exciting thing was like Jordan, I mean huge Key and Peel fan obviously, like yeah, loved love, loved Key and Peel Forever is like one of the best sketch comedy shows ever. And then just being like and Jordan, Peele can do this, Like it was just so fucking cool. So many comedians have tried to do it since, and no one's pulled it off
because he's just different. He's great anyways, Yeah, just wanted to shout out, like we're all comedians here too, and seeing someone who is like at the top of the sketch comedy world immediately also become one of the top tours in the world. It's just like the coolest and get Out is super funny.
Like it's just yeah, it's great.
Yeah yeah he Also, I mean he Jordan Peele talks about the similarities and parallels between horror and comedy and how they function so similarly as like storytelling devices, and yeah, so it just makes sense. Also, the Gremlins two Key and Peel sketch.
Is like where is this going?
OK?
I watch it like once a month. It's the funniest thing to me. Everyone paused this episode and go watch the Gremlins two Key and Peel sketch.
My favorite Key and Peel sketch is the one about the two ethnic restaurants across the street from each other with the chip BOMBI and my mom loves that sketch so so so much because I think it kind of reminds her of like West African Jeeloff Wars. It's like it's all Rice, calm down, and I can say that I'm gonna and we have the best off. Don't fight me. But I worked with Keith and Michael Key a couple of years ago on a show, and my mom was like, Karama, tell him I love the chip Boppy sketch. And I
was like, okay, Mom, I'll tell him. And I didn't. He was like that one.
Look to each their own. I liked the Continental Breakfast one. Do you remember that one? That was always my favorite classic? But yes, anyways, listeners, also let us know your favorite Key and Peel sketches. It's just like amazing, and then I this is beside the point, but here we are.
Do you remember?
This was I think the same year that A Quiet Place one came out, and there was this brief moment where they're like two brilliant O tours Jordan Peele and John Krasinsky, And then I think we disabused ourselves of that pretty quickly, were like one great O tour and John Krasinski you.
Didn't like if? Are you talking about?
Oh?
Did direct that if? Or a quieplace?
I think he uh wrote if or like developed.
If if being like imaginary friend right that wait was that the horror movie that came out about Imaginary Friends.
Comedy.
Okay, okay, it's the one that felt very Foster's Home Imaginary Friends, but like wasn't Yeah I.
Saw Imaginary I think is what it was called a horror movie. Yeah, it was not good, except the third act just goes off the rails in the most hilarious way. Highly recommend watching the third act of that movie. Anyway, we're here to talk about it.
Yeah, I think what makes it out so good is that a lot of horror movies really fall apart in the third act for sure, and this one is like, no, no, we're just getting better, like a fine wine over time. Just wow to.
The last wine, like the the TSA line. It's just.
Incredible.
All right, Yeah, let's get into it. Sorry, I just needed to do a quick key and peel.
Diverse check in. Yes, no important. So for the recap forget Out, I'll place the content warning for anti black racism and violence. So we open on a young black man played by Lakeith Stanfield who is walking in a suburb at night. He's trying to get somewhere, but he's kind of lost, and then a car approaches and starts creepily following him. The driver gets out, wearing a medieval
helmet and attacks and abducts the man. We then meet Chris Washington played by Daniel Caluya, a photographer living in I think New York City is where it's meant to be. He's dating Rose Armitage played by Alison Williams, and they're about to leave on a weekend trip to visit her parents, who Chris will be meeting for the first time, and he asks Rose, who is white, if her parents know that he's black, and she's like, no, but it's not a big deal. My parents aren't racist, and he's like okay.
Chris's friend Rod, played by little Ral Howry, is similarly skeptical. He works for the TSA.
This is defining characteristic. That's kind of all we know about him. Loves the TSA outside of the fact that he's Chris's best friend.
He works for the TSA, and that is what we know.
And he's a dog sitter on occasion.
Yes, he's a dog lover.
He's dog sitting Chris's dog, Sid while Chris is gone, and he jokes to Chris about how he needs to be careful around these white people. He's like, don't go into their house. But despite Little World's warnings, Chris and Rose head out on the road to her parents' house. They hit a deer that suddenly runs out on the road, and Chris can't really do anything about it, but you know, watch it slowly die.
I know, we just watched Triangle of Sadness and I was like, wait, they don't do a Triangle of sadness animal sacrifice?
Do they?
Then they don't. I was just thinking, what.
Do they killing Triangle of Sadness?
It's like a donkey a donkey. Yeah, I don't know. I just had a flash back to that. Anyways, we're spared that.
Yes, So a cop shows up to this, you know, like accident, wanting to see Chris's ID even though he wasn't driving, and Rose implies that the cop is being racist, and so the cop concedes and leaves. They arrive at the Armitage house, this like you know, large rich people home. We meet Rose's dad, Dean played by Bradley Whitford, and her mom, Missy, played by Catherine Keener, and they seem
warm and inviting to Chris. We also meet a grounds keeper and a housekeeper who work for the Armitage family, Walter and Georgina played by Marcus Henderson and Betty Gabriel. Both of them are black, and Chris can't help but notice that they seem kind of weird. Then Chris and the family get to know each other a bit more. We find out that Chris's mom died in a car accident when he was a kid. Also, Dean suggests that Missy hypnotized Chris to help him quit smoking. She's a
psychiatrist and she's like developed this method of hypnosis. But Chris is like, no thanks, I'm good. Then Rose's brother Jeremy played by Caleb Landry Jones shows up to the house. He's there for a party that Rose's grandfather used to throw every year while he was alive, and the family just like kept this tradition going of throwing this annual party.
Jeremy is generally an asshole. He says some weird things to Chris about his physique and genetic makeup, and he tries to play fight with Chris, and so there's you know, weird vibes from him as well.
And I know this isn't true, but this is always the point in the movie where I'm like.
Is this supposed to be Jonah Piretti because.
Oh, because of Chelsea was famously a piece of shit. Anyways, maybe Jordan Peele says, no.
Well, I think he'd have to.
Yeah, you can't be like, yes, it's my brother in law who I hate.
Yeah, mister BuzzFeed him son.
Oh gosh. So Rose is like, oh, sorry about my family, maybe they are racist, and Chris is like, yeah, no shit, I told you so.
Uh.
Later that night, Chris can't sleep, so he goes outside for a cigarette. He sees more of Walter and Georgina being weird, and when Chris goes back in, Missy reprimands him for smoking and that she kind of coaxes him into being hypnotized. She's swirling a spoon around a teacup, and she weaponizes the guilt that he feels about his mother's death.
Catherine Keener is terrifying.
Oh my gosh, she's very, very scary. The performances all around in this movie are just like next level.
Yeah, I mean, but Daniel Kleia obviously is like the reaction shots of him are like iconic at this point. But yeah, that like every single performance it's so well cast. It's yeah, it's great.
He really shows that acting is reacting because he doesn't talk a lot. Yeah, he's a man of few words. He's very observant. Yeah, and not he doesn't he holds his cards a little close to the best.
Yeah, for sure. And I also, I mean, just I didn't really think about it before, but like Jordan Peel's casting process, he's like chosen these white actors that are associated with these famous white liberal shows like Alison Williams Is and Girls. Bradley Whitfer was in the West Wing, so it's like there's already this sort of subconscious association with white liberalism with the casting too, and then the performances are just unbelievable. It's yeah, he's playing five D chess.
Very much reminds me of Emerald Fennel's casting process for promising young women, where she was like, I want all of the men to be like these lovable white boys that everybody is like, oh my god, he's the best, and then they're horrible sexual assaulters.
Right and or complicit Adam Brodie bo burn up, Yeah.
Max Greenfield my husband right, right.
Yeah. I guess that never like really fully clicked for me on previous viewings, but I was like, wow, he's really playing a game of five DCHSS for the viewers.
So we're in the middle of this hypnosis scene. Chris is crying, he's scratching at the armchair, and then Missy puts him in the sunken place where he's basically trapped in his own mind. He can see what's happening in the world around him from a distance, but he can't move and he no longer has control over his own body. Cut to him waking up in bed. Things seem back to normal. He thinks it was probably a dream. And shortly after this, guests start arriving for this party. They
are almost entirely older, wealthy white people. They direct several racist microaggressions at Chris and macro.
Aggressions, yeah, just to also aggression.
A lot of everything.
My favorite of the aggressions is when when that woman looks at Rose and says, is it better? Yeah?
Ohh god, lady yeah.
And then Chris notices the one other black guest at the party and approaches him. We recognize him as the Lakeith Stanfield character we saw at the very beginning of the movie, although now he's acting and speaking and dressing very differently, and he seems to be like romantically with a much older white woman, so the vibes are very weird there. The inter action he has with Chris is
very weird. And then Chris Cross's path Chris Cross Chris Cross's paths with a guy named Jim Hudson played by Stephen Root, who Chris had heard of because he's an art dealer. Jim knows of Chris as well because he's an admirer of Chris's photography, although he hasn't been able to see it because due to a genetic disease, Jim Hudson went blind, and he explains that he has his assistant describe artists work to him in detail, so he knows if he wants to, you know, buy and deal
it or not. Then Chris goes inside and we see that all the guests are hyper fixated on Chris being there.
It's very eerie.
The moment where he walks upstairs and everyone pauses is just like everyone's worst fear.
I remember that being in the trailer. You know, watching the trailer, you don't really know the context, so.
You're just like, what's going on?
And then you see the movie and you're like, oh my god. But anyway, Chris calls Rod, who is convinced that the family is trying to hypnotize him and turn him into a sex slave. Chris is like, a haha, I don't know. And then Chris has a bizarre interaction with Georgina. We also have seen him have a similarly bizarre interaction with Walter. Those performances are also incredible from the actors playing Georgina and Walter. And then Chris returns
to the party. He observes more of the Lakeith Stanfield character being weird, so Chris tries to take a picture of him on his phone in secret, but the flash goes off and this seems to perhaps unhypnotize Lakeith's character, and he screams at Chris to get out, Hey, that's the name of the movie.
You're like, whoa, oh asah.
And the family explains this character's behavior away as being an epileptic seizure. And when we see the la Keith character again, he's back to being this like bizarro hypnotized version of himself. So Chris and Rose go off by themselves and Chris is like, that was no seizure. This whole thing is very uncomfortable and I want to go home, and eventually she's like, yeah, this sucks, let's get out of here.
So yeah, the way that she soft nags him throughout the movie is so effective.
Yeah, she's the master. She is. Give credit where credits due that woman, the character Rose Oscar.
I mean it's like, I will, truly I will. It took me, probably on my first viewing too long to catch on that she's almost certainly in on it.
But I didn't get it till the keys right right, same, And you're like, fuck, yeah, of course right, because the movie kind of implies that maybe she's also hypnotized.
And if she's doing this, it's against her will. But just kidding, No, she's in on it.
Yeah.
But before we get that reveal, we see what appears to be an auction. It's like disguised as a bingo game, but it's an auction that Dean Armitage is conducting, and it's revealed that what is being sold is Chris and the highest bidder is that art dealer, Jim Hudson, and all of this is of course unbeknownst to Chris. So Chris and Rose go back inside and they get ready to leave, and he sends the picture he took of Lekeith to his friend Rod, and Rod is like, wait
a minute, I know that guy. His name is Dre and Chris is like, yeah, I thought I recognized him. And he's explaining how different Drey is now and then and this is the only part of the movie that like, I'm like, oh, this is a perfect movie, except for this where Chris just kind of randomly finds this statue of photos in Rose's room, and each one is of Rose and a black person, and the last two photos are of her and Walter and Georgina. And so Chris
is now very much panicking. He's trying to get out right now. But Rose's family descends on him, including Rose, who surprise is in on the whole thing, and Missy hypnotizes Chris via the teacup and spoon and puts him in the sunken place. He wakes up in the basement
of the house, strapped to a chair. There's a TV in front of him, and it starts playing a video about the coagula procedure, a surgery where part of a person's brain will be transplanted into Chris's body in this case, Jim Hudson, who will have control roll over Chris's body and Chris's consciousness will live in the sunken place.
This is one of my favorite, like horror movie tropes, is all of a sudden when the instructional video comes on and it's like, Hi, you might be wondering what the scary thing is. Well, I'm a scary guy, and here's what the scary thing is. I love it.
I will say Jordan Pield does a good job of giving an in world reason because he has Jim Hudson say you know, they say that our mutual understanding of the procedure helps it take root.
And you're like, yeah, I believe that.
I was like, why is this an evil monologue situation? Like they don't need to tell him? And then I was like, oh, okay, that makes sense.
He has to understand for it to work.
But it's justified, right. Yeah.
The reason I don't like Chris just like randomly finding all those photos is because one, like it feels a little too much like a coincidence that he just randomly finds them to me at least, and two like, why would they have that evidence? Like very out in the open and available for him to see. I don't know it just it felt a little silly to me, but otherwise perfect movie anyway. So we understand that this coigular procedure is what must have happened to Drey and Walter
and Georgina. And then Chris is hypnotized again via the teacup and spoon coming on the TV screen. Meanwhile, back in the city, Rod starts investigating this whole ordeal and discovers that Drey has been missing for six months. So Rod goes to the police and tries to explain that he thinks the Armitage family is abducting black people, brainwashing them, and turning them to sex slaves, but the cops all laugh him off. Back at the Armitage house, Dean and
Jeremy prepare for the surgery. Jeremy goes to collect Chris, thinking he's hypnotized, but just kidding he's not because Chris had stuffed cotton in his ears from the armchair that he was anxiously scratching, so he didn't hear the teacup thing that triggers the hypnosis, which means he's able to fight back against Jeremy. He bashes him over the head with I think a bochi ball feels appropriate, right, And then Chris impales Dean with the antlers of a taxidermied buck.
He breaks Missy's teacup and stabs her and kills her, and then Chris takes Jeremy's keys and starts to drive off, but then Georgina, who is actually Rose's grandmother, tries to stop him and Rose, who's eating cereal inside here's the commotion and goes outside with a rifle. Walter, who is Rose's grandfather, chases after Chris, but Chris is able to use the flash on his phone to unhypnotize Walter, so
Walter shoots Rose and then himself. Though Rose is still alive and Chris starts strangling her, but then a cop car shows up and Rose is like, help me, and again we think, oh no, but the door swings open on the car and it says airport because it's Rod in a TSA car there to save his friend, and we.
Can't stop cheering, and we're like, I didn't know.
That there were alternative endings to this movie until I was researching for this.
People did not like the alternate ending, and I don't think I would have liked it either.
No, yeah, no. So this ending that we see, you know, the theatrical ending is that Chris gets in the car and they drive off to safety. The end, the alternate ending, at least one of them.
It seems like there's a couple.
Yeah, there was one that was actually shot. So Chris strangles Rose and kills her, so she dies, and the cops still show up in that moment, and it's actually the police, not Rod in his TSACR. The cops arrest Chris and he goes to jail. We cut to six months later. Rod visits him in prison. He's trying to help Chris clear his name, but Chris, realizing that the racist system won't work in his favor, he's just like,
it's okay, like I stopped this from happening again. And then Chris walks away and that's the end of the movie. And Jordan Peele spoke about this as far as when he was writing the movie, that was the ending that he had envisioned. He wanted this sort of gut punch realistic ending.
Which does feel like more in step with what he says his influences are, because like the step for wives, Anne Rosemary's Baby both end with like a pretty severe defeat of the protagonist for.
Sure, right, But by the time he was shooting the movie, he realized that he wanted an ending that would be like cathartic and uplifting and empowering. And that's why we get the ending that we get where Chris triumphs and Rod saves him.
So, yeah, that is that.
Let's take another quick break and then we'll come back to discuss.
And where we're back.
I missed you guys during the breaks.
I miss you too.
I feel so safe now I'm back with my friends. Yeah, where do we want to start?
I guess I want to start talking about like the influences. We talked a little bit about Rosemary's Baby and Stepford Wives being influences, which both of those are written by the same person. The original text I relevent Or eleven. And the first time I ever heard it compared to Stepford Wives, I was at work and one of my coworkers who I didn't like, said, you know, get Out is just like a ripoff, like a bad ripoff of
Stepford Wives. Oh, And I was like, I knew I didn't like you, and I was kind of resentful of the comparison at all, not knowing that Peel himself had said, yeah, no,
I drew from Stepford Wives. And I think what's really specific about Stepford Wives in particular this did not happen in the two thousand and four remake because it's bad, But in the nineteen seventy five original film and the nineteen seventy two book, the end is that Joanne or Joanna, I don't remember which one is her name, but she is.
She becomes a Stepford wife, and at the grocery store she sees this like black family moving into the neighborhood, integrating the neighborhood, and it's very heavily implied that they will be next. So I feel like it was sort of, in a way a symbolic passing of the tour of the baton to tell this story about blackness, because Stepford Wives is very specifically kind of like in the way the feminine mystique exists by Betty for Dan is foreign
about white women. And I think that it is very dynamic and it is very of its time, but it is definitely foreign about white women. And this movie is for and about black men in a way that draws from Stepford Wives, but is not a cheap ripoff of it. Man from work whose name I don't remember.
Good God, I love men in writers' rooms.
They never this was not a writer's room. I will give credit where credits do. I don't want anybody to think that anybody like I Carly or Raven's Home was saying that stuff. I was working as a telemarketer at the time. Very different vibe right around when Sorry to Bother You came out, which, uh was you know interesting that Lakeith Stanfield has taken on many roles embodying like whiteness and blackness at the same time.
Yeah, yeah, I mean I didn't really connect what Peel's influences were before. I just like happened to rewatch these and then yeah, he does cite that. But you're totally right, Crum.
I mean, any anyone saying that Get Out is derivative is a fucking liar who just like and and just with like the specificity of who this movie is for, because absolutely like the Rosemary's Baby and steph For Wives have this like whiff of second wave feminism about them, where you know, points are made, and also it's so clearly focused on middle to upper class white women and what their struggles were, ignoring everybody else and get out.
I mean, it's just like it's clear what Jordan Peel's folks, and it's like you can reference and be inspired by other works.
But this is so different.
And the fact that in this movie, like white women of this same class as Stepford wives are taken to task. They are the active aggressors in this situation, and he's not shying away from that. So it almost feels like it's in conversation with stephyr Wise. But to say it's a ripoff is just like a lot.
It was. It was deeply appalling, Like it has stuck with me that this man said that and I didn't I flames flames on the side of my face.
Okay, clue reference you love to see it? Yeah, I mean, you know, this movie is obviously one that has a very clear agenda as far as examining anti black racism in the US. It's a movie that forced a lot of people, especially white people, to interrogate their history with anti black racism, to interrogate their allyship if they consider themselves to be anti racist allies or non racist allies, and how they approach allyship and whether or not it's
actually helpful or if it's performative and false. It's a movie that examines racial and cultural appropriation of black people and examines the exploitation of black bodies throughout history into present day. Like it's doing all these things, and also like all these metaphors that you can apply as far as the prison industrial complex, slavery, that the bingo scene, you know, being an allegory for a slave auction, like all these things.
I have to say something about the bingo scene and just something that always is bone chilling for me when I watch a movie where somebody sinister does like crafts to prepare for their sinister activities. I'm just like, you weren't to FedEx copy and print and got those bingo cards made and had like a big ass picture of Chris printed and framed it and put it on an easel. That's not that's not nothing. I co hosted a bridal
shower for my friend. There were a lot of little things that I had to do and it was exhausting, and I'm.
Just like, you're so evil you had to go to CVS about that.
Yes, someone put stickers on the Bengo cards and very specific places and like color coded them and everything like yeah, effort, No.
It's nefarious.
And I don't think Bradley Whitford is doing that either, like he's outsourcing that labor.
I don't think that Georgina's doing it either, because she is secretly the grandma, right. But like I'm wondering if they do have sort of a what Rod's thinking of, like separate like actual slave people doing it, or if they just have like an assistant. I don't know, someone might tell it's like it's a turn.
Even the house.
The house is very like plantation coded I know is shot in the South. Like there's just so many signifiers of this slavery era in the US and then to have I don't know, I mean, like speaking to your point, Caitlin, of how a lot of people, not all of them, because there are people who are just outwardly racist they're
not even pretending to not be. But for you know, I guess with the exception of Jeremy, for like Rose and her parents, it's like they're saying the right thing, but they're not doing I mean, they're actively inflicting harm with their actions, and it's like it's just I don't know. It's like the best possible use of the horror genre to make that point for me.
With the outwardly racist people at the party, it's really interesting because they're never outwardly racist in the way that is like bad that you're like, oh, this is a bad person because they're being racist. But like to bring up that lady again who is man handling Chris, and then is like asking Rose like is it true that
sex with black men is better? That is obviously very racist, But then you know, you always have those people who are like, but it's a compliment to say that sex with black people is better, Like we're saying a good thing, and it's sort of like the positive stereotypes that are just as harmful as the negative stereotypes, but sort of like passed over. So it's like, oh, I love Tiger Woods.
And I'm just like, oh my god, buddy for Obama the third time, Like right, it's.
Very Northeast racism.
I feel, yeah, well that's the thing, Like even though the movie was shot in the South, Jordan Peele deliberately was like, I want to communicate that these are like New York upstate like neoliberal white rich people, because he's like, it would have been too easy to like do a very like, you know, southern plantation racist kind of thing.
Right, people, We've all men like it's right. There's people in my family that it's just like there's uncomfortable echoes of cringe inducing, embarrassing, gross shit that they would say and be like, but what you're just like, you're awful, you're awful, And I think that you know, we don't know what we don't know.
And for some people, the first time that they say something like that and somebody's like, hey, that's not cool, they're like, oh my god, I totally didn't know that, Thank you so much. But I think it's the well, I'm not a racist and not being willing to confront like you can be racist accidentally and that's okay as long as you are like, oh, racism is not great, let me not do that again. Like nobody is saying like, oh, once you do a racism, you are automatically hitler, Like
that's not how it works. And I feel like a lot of people feel like that, and there's like a discomfort that they're not willing to sit with for sure.
Yeah, yeah, And I feel like that is the idea that if you are racist in any contact at any point, that you are forever horrible is used as like a defense mechanism by people to refuse to learn and just like double down and make people calling them out seem like inherently unreasonable, where it's like, well, no, you're like being asked to listen and adjust your behavior and think. And I feel like that is just so antithetical too.
That's what I find so interesting and like effective about the way most of the members of the Armitage family behave as like fake allies basically, where for example, with Rose, we are seeing her anytime that Chris brings up something about oh someone said something that made me uncomfortable or I told you they were probably racist, you see her like downplaying his concerns but like joking around about them.
And on the surface, initially that could be interpreted as like, oh, she's trying to put him at ease, she's like, you know, bringing levity to the situation, but really she's gaslighting him and luring him into a false sense of security so that her family can entrap him and steal his body. And even the part where she you know, calls out the cop for wanting to see his ID in a way that feels racist. Her defending Chris wasn't her being anti racist, That was her like avoiding a paper trail.
So there's like all these things that could be you know, interpreted through different lenses depending on what you already know about these characters. And then like Dean when he first meets Chris and he's like giving him the tour of the house, he's saying some like cringey things the way a like rich white boomer man would try to be an ally and they're cringey, But it seems like he means well, like he acknowledges the optics of being a
wealthy white family having black servants. He's saying the you know, I would have voted for Obama a third term. He you know, makes a comment about Jesse Owens winning gold at the Olympics in front of Hitler and like all this stuff. Again, it seems like he's trying, but it's all a facade and it's all right.
But because it's like everything he's doing is like self defensive, which we later learned is because he has a lot of reasons to be like, oh, don't nothing to see here, But on like subsequent viewings, you're like, he's not trying to get to know Chris at all because he doesn't care, Like he's just pointing out all of the ways in which he is not racist towards black people and doesn't ask Chris a single question about himself right at any point, Like never gets to try to know the guy at all.
Yeah, I think the different ways that different generations and genders of people in the Armitage family are sort of representative of a class of racism is very interesting. Sort of like the one that stands out the most is Jeremy the brother, and he sort of gives off this like angry alt right internet.
Boy down to the haircut down down like sort.
Of racism where he is like trying to scrap with him and talks about physical superiority, which is very reminiscent of the way that like in Cells talk and gives me like Elliott Roger vibes. I think about Elliott Rodger all the time. He's so scary to me, Like I never got past that. That was like really freaky for me. But I think that then when you also look at you know, his dad, this older boomer who is a doctor, not for nothing. The medical system is very, very racist.
They're trying, some people are trying within the system, but you know, it's still bad.
Same with psychiatry too, yeah, yeah, mm hmm.
And he is sort of this more one microaggressive racism when he's like, oh yo, how long has this thang been happening? Which I'm not joking. My family friend has this husband who is an older white man who's been rich for most of his life. And I would go to the family friend's house and I stopped going there because I felt so microaggressed because when I would go over there, the husband would be like, Oh, what's up, dog, And I'm like, I don't talk like that. You don't
talk like that. Why are we doing this? And it was just exhausting to deal with every time I was there, and it was very real and these different classes, and then we can talk more about like Rose and Missy and the ways in which it's like one of them is like, well, I deep black men, so like I'm not racist, and the other one is sort of like bringing up this trauma that he has and weaponizing it against him in the way that like, you know, a
Karen would sort of weaponize her whiteness, white womanness. It's interesting, it's very it's all very deliberate, like we said at the beginning, it's all very well crafted.
Yeah, and then the I don't know if like compromises is the right word, but like what Chris does in response to these constant aggressions from the family or like the guests at the party, and like it's a sort of like choosing his battle sort of thing, but he isn't able to actually like he just has to say, well, there was another one. Okay, I'm gonna go over here now and pretend to take pictures so I don't have
to talk to these people. And then he's interrupted from that and more, you know, macro and microaggressions are hurled at him and.
As well as like with with Rose occasionally, and this caused me to reflect, I'm like, fuck do I do that? I don't know. I mean, you have one must consider, but how you know, Rose will occasionally sort of monologue about like, wasn't it fucked up when they did this?
Wasn't it fucked up when they did this?
And you can see that Chris is like kind of exhausted by it and is like can we just not because she's not really doing anything about it, which we realize is very deliberately she's not doing anything about it, but just like seeing this be yet another sort of like drain and burden upon Chris to like have to listen to his girlfriend recap the ways in which people were racist to him throughout the day and then being like, well, I'm not okay with it, and he's like, all right, great, can.
You say something about it to your family?
Right?
Yeah?
She's like nah, yeah.
Yeah, she's She's just again, she's a master. She needs a she needs an oscar and a copy of the DSMM that wamon.
And they cut to her drinking milk with headphones on. I'm like, that is very funny when like listening to I've had the time of my life drinking milk like and.
Outing other people to try to abduct. Yeah.
I do wonder about and this is I hadn't thought about this before on previous watches, so it's like not a big deal, But I wonder at the logistics because if you look at say like Jim, he is a major art dealer, to the point where you know Chris knows who he is separate from Rose like, where does he go because he's his physical body is gone? And then like does Chris just kind of step into that role? Like I don't understand the logistics.
Is he just like kept on like life support?
ID?
Yeah?
Unclear?
Yeah, not sure either. But that brings to mind a piece I wanted to quote from by Damon Young in a Slate piece entitled The Disturbing Truth that makes Get Out depressingly plausible, where he compares and contrasts get Out and Gone Girl, just saying the latter, of course, being a movie about a pretty white woman who goes missing and how that captivates and paralyzes the nation, which is what tends to happen when white women are missing, and then he goes on to say, quote and get Out,
the Armitage family and their dozens of co conspirators are able to do what they do and are able to continue to do it for what seems to be at least a decade, because well, no one gives a damn about missing black people. The writer goes on to say, the actual facts on the disparities in regard and attention between missing white people and missing black people are predictably disheartening.
Although black people only comprise thirteen percent of America's population, we are thirty four percent of America's missing, a reality that exists as the result of a millange of racial and socioeconomic factors, rendering black lives demonstratively less valuable than the lives of our white counterparts unquote. And then he goes on to discuss, you know, the lack of media attention paid to missing black people versus the disproportionate amount
of attention paid to missing white woman syndrome. So as far as like the logistics of like, yeah, would Chris just be the art dealer at Hudson Galleries now, or like, you know, Chris's body piloted by Jim Hudson, or how does that work? It seems like they do keep a very like close knit community for this to work. But also, as this piece points out, like this is plausible because of how law enforcement and media and all this stuff doesn't pay much attention to missing black pa.
Well, I mean, we get the scene in the police station where three black officers laugh in Rod's face when he's like, hey, my friend was supposed to come back. He didn't. He also found this man who has been missing for six months and even just a statement like, well it doesn't look missing because we found him.
Yeah, effective commentary on you know, policing and cops not believing people absolutely.
Right and to just have police force like I mean, just do answer to white supremacy at the end of the day. And like I mean, I thought the way that even it's reference, I mean, it's it is like to get the plot moving forward. But even how like if Andre was missing for six months and he was a white man, everyone at the Armitage House would know
about him because of how the media is different. And so the fact that the reveal that he's been missing for six months is just presented very passively, and it's like there are these old news articles, but it's clear that there was no you know, like media blitz the way that there would be if if he'd been white.
You know, it's like that's how they get away with it, is that armitages are very knowingly taking advantage of how they know the world works, and that they're like, you know, sure, maybe Chris has people in his life who will miss him, but you know, no one's going to actually pay attention outside of maybe a few people. That's what they're betting on not knowing that the TSA is on it.
Well, and also he is notably an orphan and exactly no family, no actual like blood family. That's gonna be like, no, we are going to keep looking in the same way.
Yeah, I mean, just like the way that his vulnerabilities are targeted is so disgusting on like on subsequent viewings, because at first I didn't even really fully take in. I was like, oh, you know, part of the reason Rose target him specifically is because he has suffered so many losses in his life. Yeah, and then the way I mean the scene with Missy where he's she's just digging in and in and in on the worst thing that's ever happened to him, Like it's just.
I also want to talk about the selection process of picking who these people are. What's interesting to me is sort of the reactions, Like we talked about Chris's reactions like oh, it's probably fine, and sort of picking his battles, and you see Rod's reactions which are much bigger to these things. And part of it is Rod is supposed to be a comedic character. But part of it, also, I think, is the reason that they choose a Chris over a Rod and this idea of sort of palatable
blackness and being black but in the right way. He works as a photographer, he's involved in the arts, and then you find out that Andre Dre was a jazz musician, and they're sort of like, you know, pretty chill. When we see Dre walking through the suburbs, you know, he's like, I don't feel comfortable here, But when he sees that car, he kind of turns and walks the other way. He
doesn't want to get into a confrontation. And I think that there is a reliance on choosing palatable black people, people that are not going to call people out in their face the way that a Rod would like, nah, I'm out of here.
Because Chris had so many opportunities to be like, yeah, that's a very fucked up thing to say. And to be clear, I am not you know, passing judgment against him for not calling out people in those situations. I just mean that it happened very frequently that he was put into those situations.
Which almost feels like it's getting into I mean, just speaking to like the like working artists, it's like that becomes a class thing too, where I feel like, you know, Rod working for the TSA and having a working class job versus Chris being a working artist. Like yeah, like you're saying, GRAMA is like a very intentional choice from I mean by the armitages, but also you know, by Chris. I thought there was a There was an interesting quote
from Jordan Peele. He said, Chris feels like an everyman. He's kind of like J Cole. Chris is that guy everyone knows who has been in everyone's class at school, that good guy from around the area, which is just I feel like a really like speaks to what you were both just saying. And also that the j. Cole comparison is funny to me.
That's very funny. I wanted to talk about black women because there are three black women I would say in this movie, two you see when you don't, and the two you see are Georgina and the police officer, and
then the one you don't is Chris's mother. I think that it's really interesting the sort of and not to rag on Jordan Peel, he made a masterpiece, like I said, but the erasure of black women in this conversation and sort of the only time that anyone explicitly mentions black women and Black womanhood is to talk about the purported jealousy that black women express when they see black men with white women, which like, you can have him, Like
it's fine, I'm not mad at you. Calm down, and you know how he says, like it's a thing, and then Rose tries to downplay it by saying, Oh, you're just so sexy that people are unplugging your phone, like that's what's happening.
She responds by gaslighting her mem.
And you know, at the end of the day, he is able to, in a way, heal the trauma of not doing what he was supposed to do for his mother by going back for Georgina, because even though she is inhabited by evil Grandma Armitage, he knows that there is a black woman in there. But she's also sacrificed in his attempts to escape, and she doesn't kill herself, Walter kills himself. So I really am intentionally using the
word sacrificed. And it's interesting the way that the film shies away from showing violence against white women in the same way that it shows the violence that Georgina faces when she gets hit by the car and later when she's in the car because we don't see Missy die on screen the camera pans away, and.
We also don't see Rose technically die. I mean, we see her get almost off.
We see her get shot, but then he stops after everything, and I just stop. He just violently violently killed her father, her brother, and her mother, but something about her is still like he still loves her a little bit, I think despite all of that, and watching him wrap his hands around her throat, it made me think of Othello and I was like, oh, yeah, you know, because he jokes does Theemona.
Yeah, I've definitely read that. I am so educated, and I've read so much Shakespeare.
Yes, people, for people who aren't as educated in Shakespeare as Caitlin.
Oh yeah, please explain it for them.
Othello is a Shakespearean tragedy that features at its center a black man named Othello. Fun fact, my college did a production of Othello with zero black people.
Oh oh my god.
So we can talk about that on a whole other episode. But Othello is this sort of like military, like decorated military man, and he has this white wife named Desdemona, and this other man, this white man who's jealous of Othello, And I might be glossing over a lot. But basically, this Maniago, who's jealous of Othello, convinces him that Desdemona is cheating on him, and then he murders Desdemona by
strangling her. And there's a really good you know, I love a Shakespeare adaptation, as does any person who was a teen in the two thousands, but there's a good adaptation with Julia Styles as Destimona called oh and.
Yes, I've never seen it, but yeah, I remember it.
Yeah, but like the visual definitely reminded me of that, And when he stopped, I was like, oh, that's interesting. And the tragedy of Othello is that he kills this
woman and then he ends up suffering for it. And I wonder if, in this sort of remade version of not of Othello but like the do over ending, the alternate ending that became the theatrical cut, if it was supposed to be a softer ending than him actually killing her, because if it is the police, and we think it's the police, it's like, okay, well they can save her and question her or whatever and she'll lie, but they can get rid too.
Yeah, I mean, unfortunately, like they needed to kill her, like they had to.
Yeah, I mean she had to go.
I mean not even unfortunately, like, yeah, she she had to go. But I honestly, like I hadn't really I noticed the absence of black women in roles that. I mean, so much of Chris's characterization is defined by his mother's absence, her violent absence. And yeah, we don't really get to spend any time with anyone other than Georgina, who, as you were saying, Croma, it's very complicated, like where is
Georgina within Georgina? But I hadn't really connected the Yeah, the the sort of avoidance of violence towards white women. I kind of wonder, like seven years on, if that would not be as much of an avoidance if this was made right now. I'm not really sure.
I think I think it probably would be, and I do think that also, Jordan Peel is married to a white woman, and I think it's very interesting the I mean sort of the mention of, you know, black women look at East sideways when you're with white women, when you're with white women, and maybe that is his experience. I love Chelsea Peretti, I'm not looking at anybody sideways. They're a great duo, but I do think that, you know, the life experiences that we have color the way that
we see the world. And also, again, he is biracial, and I believe that his mother is white, if I'm not saying, okay, So I think that his connection to white women is interesting. And I don't know if it was not to say it wasn't intentional, like he doesn't do things intentionally, but I wonder if there was a subconscious sort of wanting to protect white women in there.
Yeah, that's very possible. And he had also spoken about when he was making this movie that he was concerned that it wouldn't do well or that no one would come to see it because he was concerned that black people wouldn't want to watch black people be victimized, and he was worried that white people wouldn't want to go see it because white people are the villains. So I wonder if that kind of informed some of those choices.
Hard to say, but I do know that he had those concerns when he was making the movie.
I remember a yeah, because I mean, it's I didn't really connect to the fact that I was like, oh, I guess this could be an awkward night at the Parrettes for Jordan Peel after Get Out comes out. But I did remember this tweet from Chelsea Pretti I think a couple weeks after Getout came out, where I think everyone was, you know, like tweeting at her, being.
Like, is this about you?
And Chelsea Pretti replied in a very Chelsea Pretti way, she said, we all cried for weeks. We were so hurt to see our family secrets exposed in this documentary. I almost forgot about that, right, which is the only rational response to it, because you're just like.
Shut up, just go see the movie.
But yeah, I mean I think that that is interesting, and I guess it's not. Yeah, it's not even like necessarily a criticism of Jordan Peele, but just that's that's O tour shit where it's like, it's not unreasonable to think that some of his own personal stuff is gonna get tangled up in it because of how it was made.
And it's not bad stuff. It's just interesting stuff to note and stuff that you know, my personal experience is also going to make me notice because I am a black woman, and I also I don't know if Rose is queer or not, but I also do think it's interesting that Georgina is queer and one of the only Black women that we, you know, learn the name of Get to See is a queer Black woman, and they sort of double oppressed her.
Right we only see a version of her that's inhabited by thiss like grandmother, so we don't even get to know. Yeah, to your point, Grama, it is. I found it disappointing that this movie about anti black racism and black liberation because of how the movie ends, mostly leaves out black women.
And I don't know if this would have been narratively possible, but I wish the movie had found a way to save Georgina where he unhypnotizes her and there's enough of her left in there that she can, you know, be liberated from this situation. But it's tricky because, like, you know, you see Walter kill himself, and you can imagine that it's because he wouldn't want to go on living after having experienced these horrors of Welle.
Also, the other guy is in there and it's mostly him, so I think that he's like, no, I'd rather die.
Yeah, I just feel like there is room for there is room for black women in this narrative without meaningfully changing it.
I will say. I will say one thing that I did think was interesting is we see three coagulate black people throughout the film, and two of them are men, one is a woman, and the two men get released through the camera flash at some point and we see a peeking through of the real Georgina. Yeah, without that, and the black woman is the only one who is strong enough to keep continually fighting to get out to
the point where she is in tears. And we know that your physical nervous system is what is connected to you, so those tears are coming from her. It's yeah.
And the scene when she's pouring tea and like almost spills it, it's like she's trying to break free from this.
Yeah, it's really really really good performance from Betty Gabriel, Like, yeah, who, I didn't realize she's like a scream queen. She's a Bluemhouse girly in the Purge election year. She is an unfriended dark web, which I have seen and I was like, oh, she's she's an unfriended dark web. She's in upgrade, she's in it, lives inside. I mean, she is a but just like a really really great performance from her, especially because it's like she's not given that much screen time.
But Yeah, makes a meal of it. I agree.
I don't know, like narratively, how to get around all of this sort of lore, but I do. It's just like there there was room for black women within this plot and it feels intentional, feels like too, but like it, I don't know.
I think. I also think that black men are allowed to have their own stories, their struggles an entirely different thing. I just am pointing out what I see. And I think that a lot of people talk about Get Out as being black generally, and I think that there are a lot of women who are black, a lot of women of all races who do love get Out, but it is definitely specifically a story about and for black men.
Yeah, And I mean something that I think Jordan Peel does really well. Conversely is like knoweeling how white women can weaponize their white womanhood in all.
Of these different ways.
Where I mean, by the end, you see that Rose has spent whatever the better part of a decade weaponizing her white womanhood to bring people to her family's creepy estate. And the way that Missy acts, I want to talk about Missy a little bit, because it's like that character is so ah.
Yeah, I do want to just stay on Rose for a second and talk about the weaponization of her white woman. This and one that I don't think I've ever heard anybody talk about, and that doesn't mean people aren't talking about it. That stuck out to me on this rewatch was when Rod calls to check in on Chris and he finally gets through to Chris's number and she does this again, absolutely alarming performance. Yeah, just blank blank face, and she's like, Chris, where are you? Is this Chris?
And then Rod's like, he's not with you. He left two days ago. And then when Rod is like, you know what, this bitch talks too much. I'm gonna I'm gonna catch her and starts recording, she switches tactics and makes it seem like he is sexually predatory towards her, which is very for me, reminiscent of like Emmett Till and this idea of protecting white women's virtue. And he knows. He's like, I'm fucked, Like this is this is not helping Chris. This is only going to hurt me. I
need to shut this down. This recording is of no use, and she knows to do that. She's like, no, he's gonna start recording. I've been doing this for ten years. I know what to do. And it's very insidious and it is very calculated. And I'm also very angry that that woman who lied about Emmitt til never went to jail and she said she lied. She said she lied, yeah, and they were like, well, she's an old lady. What are we gonna do. Now.
That's part of the reason where it's like we should be We should have just seen Rose die on screen like she has a coming, because you see her, I mean, and in the movies last moments, you see her preparing to do the exact same thing to Chris. She says, I.
Love you, she yes, which is tactic.
Well, I mean, like when she thinks that a white police officer has arrived, she's preparing to be like he attacked me, I don't blah blah blah, and just playing into all of these white supremacist narratives that police, you know, don't blink at. But thankfully it's the TSA right.
But even before that, like she's trying to save herself. She knows that he wants to strangle her to death. So she's like, I love you even though she's just tried to kill him with a gun. But she's like she to the very very end, she's doing these manipulating tactics. Whatever she thinks, will you know, save her, get her out of this situation. And he doesn't buy it. But then I'm like, just kill her, just strangle her to death, finish the job.
Chris the gun is my favorite plant in Payoff when he says at the very beginning, like I just don't want to get chased off the lawn with a shotgun, and then that is the very thing that happens to him.
But she, yes, should we get into Missy.
Yeah, let's talk about Missy.
I feel like she is i mean speaking to like the generational stuff we've been talking about, Like she is a different kind of white woman doing a different kind of white woman thing where she's clearly playing off of her husband, which you know, later revealed to be this
very insidious performance. This family like the worst piece of community theater ever to take place, but that she's playing off of like, oh my husband, please ignore him, Like I'm I'm the nice parent, I'm the normal parent, and the second she gets Chris alone still tries to sort of maintain that for as long as possible, while pushing past every single boundary that he sets, until he's plot wise completely paralyzed. Yeah, I just noticed you're wearing a Shrek shirt.
Sorry, yes, well, I mean I wasn't sure when or if I would bring this up, but I did at some point want to draw some parallels between Get Out and Shrek two.
Okay, okay, okay, listening the parents.
So, a man who is marginalized by society goes to meet the family of his partner, who is far more privileged than he is. It's very uncomfortable. The family, you know, makes a bunch of aggressive comments towards him. The family of both has a secret that deals with inhabiting a different body because in Shrek two, the king is actually a frog. Okay, not the same secret, but but there's
divergences right. Similarly, you know, the protagonists of both movies, they either exchange bodies or almost has their body taken over by someone else because in Shrek Too, Shrek becomes a human, a white human man. So a body swapping element in both movies, and both protagonists have a comic relief sidekick friend played by a black comedian.
Wow, it's crazy how get Out is a cheap knockoff of Shrek Too.
Don't tell that to the guy worked with, so he'll be taking that theory all around town.
I feel well, I read was this true that Shrek Too takes inspiration from guess who's coming to dinner?
I would believe that. I one believe that having seen both movies.
I vaguely, I vaguely remember us talking about that in our Shrek two episode.
Yeah, and Jordan Peele, you know, cites that is somewhat of an inspiration for get Out as well.
So by way of by way of Shrek Too.
And then the get Out and Titanic parallels are that both movies have a character named Roseye come from a rich white family.
Wow, the end.
That's the end of.
Those the similarities. Hopefully we don't know. Our family is pretty pretty fucked. Yeah do we have?
Is there anything else we wanted to talk about with with Missy?
Just that Again, everyone in this family is such a master manipulator, and they're doing things to either put on the facade of allyship to try to manipulate Chris into feeling more of a sense of ease, or they are weaponizing things about him against him, like you know, Missy with the almost like using therapy speech as a weapon in the way that some people do.
Know what I was gonna say, is, you know, by leaps and bounds therapy and psychiatry and psychology, is it feel dominated by white women? Definitely more psychology than psychiatry, just because you know, medicine. But I think it's interesting that we have created a sort of system where the people that you're supposed to turn to in trying to figure out how to navigate, you know, what you're struggling with, for the most part, are white women, And like, what
if white women are the problem? And which is true in this case. And she's let me help you, let me help you stop smoking. He's like, no, that's fine, I'm good. And it's not that he doesn't want to quit. He just doesn't want to get hypnotized with good reason, right, And she's like, no, trust me, bro, And that's sort of like the thing you I mean, I have never had a black therapist. I have primarily had white women therapists.
And I've had some great therapists but there are times in therapy where I have to like stop and explain something in a way that I wouldn't have to if I had somebody who was from a similar background to me. And there are times where it's like, you look like
the problem. And now I'm at a point in my therapy where I'm comfortable enough, but it's hard at first to be like, you look like the problem, and I need to tell you about the problem, and I need you to not take this personally, and I don't know if you can do that.
Yeah, which theoretically a therapist should, but boy, are there are a lot of therapists out there who take shit so personally.
Yeah.
Yeah, it felt very again just like intentional of in a gendered way, like you're saying, like, because therapy in the US is so dominated by white women, and the fact that like it's almost sort of implied with like, well, the man is the doctor the surgeon, and the woman handles emotions, and it's like it's prescriptive in a gendered sense too, but they are very much working in tandem with each other towards a common goal.
And just like Catherine.
Keener is so scary and I feel like also is just very well cast in like, you know this lady, she wouldn't hurt you, right, Like it's.
And I think it's interesting that when they're talking about Jeremy being in medical school, Dean says, oh, he wants to follow in his old man's footsteps, and it's like, you're both doctors. I hope you know that.
Yeah, rightst psychiatrist go to medical school.
Right.
So there are these little like I do appreciate, I guess in movies where it's like gender discrimination is acknowledged, but not as something that would get you off the hook for being actively aggressive in the way that Missy is, where like the harm is like this is not the same amount of aggression that's being experienced, and she is the perpetrator of so much of it. And yeah, I guess we should have seen her die on screen a little more brutally. It's weird that we didn't.
It could be a contract thing. I don't know.
Katherine Keener will not screen.
I know that the Julia and Moore thing, Julia Moore will not die on screen. That's her. That's her rule, So I guess don't look for her in a slasher movie.
My favorite rule is that Denzel Washington will not kiss white women on screen. Really yea good for him, and not because he's got anything against them, but because he thinks that it would be alienating to his target demographic, which is primarily black women. And I think that that is absolutely true, particularly black women of a certain age. And I think that it's really interesting and kind of wonderful that he has put that much thought into it.
And he's like, no, I know who I know who supports me, and I want to support them back.
Yeah, right, Yeah, that's beautiful. My favorite rule of an actor is that Leonardo DiCaprio has to be fully clothed in water in all of his movies. This is not actually substantiated. This is not kram I see your face.
It's it's just something that happens mysteriously in every Leonardo DiCaprio movie. I think he might have a no topless rule or something. I feel like you rarely see him shirt yeah, most hunks you see short lists more. I feel like maybe he's just not comfortable with it.
There's like ten movies where he's fully clothed in water.
We've been working on this theory for years.
I feel like the woman in that meme where there's like math in front of her. I'm like, what, like, it's like a beautiful mind. I'm like putting things together. I'm like, I don't think I've ever seen that man with his shirt off in water.
You're right, it's a Titanic, Romeo, Plust, Juliet inception, the Shutter Island. The list goes on.
There's a few exceptions, but it's way, yeah, vastly. He's he's always wearing a clingy shirt underwater.
The beach anyway, the Beach one.
Of our famous, our most famous underwater actors and later add to Dicapria.
One thing I.
Wanted to just get everyone's feeling on.
I mean, this is like a again trope of the horror genre, but the Stephen Root character, which I was also like, how do I know this guy? How do I know this guy? Milton got Space, Milton off Space Office Space. Yeah, did not connect that until this viewing.
Good for Milton, but the incorporation of his blindness as a you know, I don't know, it's just I'm curious what you guys think from a disability perspective of how that is used, because I know that's something that is used in the horror Disability is weaponized in the horror genre very frequently.
I think it is.
Easy to understand what you know, Jordan Peel is going for metaphorically with sight and the sort of horrific quality of a white man wanting to literally steal and take a black man's perspective from him, which I feel like is very much what he's saying, because Chris as a photographer, his perspective is very you know, crucial to who he is, and you know, Jim Hudson knows he's very town and he wants to take that from him and claim it as his own. So I think as a metaphor it works, but.
It feels absolutely like nonsensical to think that now that you're in his body and you have his physical eyes, that you will gain his perspective because his talent being a photographer is not about having literal good eyes. Yeah, it's about noticing things, and the ways that we notice things are influenced by the things that we go through. And we can see these sunken place people and how they're not black, like they look black, They're not black.
There's nothing about them that feels black. And it was interesting that and I'll get back to Stephen Root's character in just a second. It was interesting that Chris said that when he saw Dre he felt like he knew him, and it sort of felt like kind of a positive inversion of the idea that all black people know each other and like knowing your people when you see your people. And he was very clear that like, I didn't know that first guy, I knew the second guy.
Yeah, the guy who came at me.
Yeah, right, which I think was interesting with Stephen Root and the blindness. I think one he gets to Nazee color and very explicitly says like I could give a damn about what color you are. I half wanted him to say, like he could be black, white, green.
Purple, that old boomer boom chestnut.
I love it when they say that. It's so funny. To me, it's so funny because like, show me the purple people, show.
Me the purple, well, show me the green people. It's Shrek.
But anyway, but the thing about obviously like he gets to be colorblind, and that's a statement on that, and it's like even if you're not seeing race, you're still being racist. But also talking about disability in horror, I think a lot of times disability makes the people evil. It's like they're disfigured and we're seeing they're evil on
the outside. This for me feels more like the problematic aspect of disabled people always wanting a cure for their disability, and he's willing to go to these evil lengths to get a cure for his blindness, which is yes, comes from a genetic disorder and it's not something that he was born with. But it's like when you have a disability, it is a change in perspective and it is a change in the way you live your life. But not
everybody wants a cure for their disability. They want accessibility, but they don't want a cure, right, Yeah.
That and it's just another example of a disabled character being played by enable bodied miltoner by Milton. So yeah, I think that could have been handled very differently and better than it is.
Yeah, it's not. I mean, it's not the most egregious example we've seen of it by a long shot in the horror genre, but it did feel worth mentioning, And I honestly, I mean, like even hearing you say, like, how like ridiculous is it that Jim Hudson would expect to like gain Chris's artistic perspective by having his body is like just another way that he's reducing every black person he encounters to a body versus a person or a consciousness or like you know, he's like eyeballs equal perspective,
which is pretty fucking rich coming from an art dealer. I'm like, Okay, so you just don't understand your own job, which is a lot of people in high places, so.
You can just say you want to see Jim like it's okay, Yeah, yeah, you can say that, right, and that's okay, you can want that. Yeah, don't lie to yourself and don't lie to me that you're like, I want to be able to take real good pictures. That's the goal.
That's why I'm doing the eugenicist experimented Bradley went for his house. It's just fucking horrible, Like I yeah, I mean, and I do think that it's like a valid point that yeah, I mean, the fact that you know, Jim Hudson sort of uses his disability to explain why he isn't racist, where that's not how racism works. It's not connected to your ability to see it's connected to how you've been societally conditioned. And Jim Hudson is fifty sixty
whatever years old. Yes, he does have internalized and externalized racism. So I get I mean, I don't know, I get why from like a writing perspective, Jordan Peele did that. But yeah, there's a few things that I mean, starting with by actually casting a disabled actor would have you.
Know, yeah, because there's no reason not to. Yeah, there's literally there's no reason you don't have to draw.
Right. It took me almost ten years to figure out, Oh, that's Milton.
And you know, he's a great actor, but I'm sure that there was a great blind actor who could have then been the draw for the next big movie if we knew who he was for sure.
Yes, I also wanted to chat about the character of Hiroki Tanaka. Yes, so this is one of the party
goers at the Armitage family party. He is the lone Asian man, the only person of color who hasn't been you know, coagula procedured, and he's one of the people like, you know, bidding in this auction, and a lot of people were like, wait a minute, why is an Asian person at this racist party hanging out with all these racist white people, and a lot of people have written about it, and the response was mixed, where some of what I saw were op eds from Asian writers that
interpreted the inclusion of the Hiroki Tanaka character in this particulgular context as commentary on the existence of anti black racism and complicitness in white supremacy in the Asian community. I'll share a quote from a piece by Rainier Miningding
in Next Shark entitled why Get Out? A movie about anti black racism, had an Asian character says, quote to understand why the Asian man asked this being the question that he poses, which is something like, do you find that being African American has more advantages or disadvantages in the modern world? So that's the question the character asks. So to understand why the Asian man asked this, you have to consider Claire gene Kim's theory of racial triangulation.
Racial triangulation posits that Asians exist on a spectrum where they are one perceived as better than blacks but not as good as whites, and two categorized as perpetual foreigners who will never be accepted as quote unquote full Americans. According to racial triangulation, Asians are in racial limbo, trying desperately to achieve whiteness and status as quote unquote real
Americans by stepping on the heads of black folks. So when the Asian man asks Chris, is the African American experience an advantage or disadvantage, he wasn't just making small talk. He was wrestling with the decision of whether or not it would be better to trade bodies with Chris and experience anti blackness, or stay the same and live life as an Asian man in America and experience xenophobia unquote.
And that piece goes on to describe other ways in which Asian people have been complicit in white supremacy, not saying that that's a universal thing or anything like that, but that there is a history of that happening. And then other writers felt the portrayal of this character plays into stereotypes about Asian people and perpetuates the idea of Asians as foreigners and perpetuates the myth of Asian people
being the quote unquote model minority. Where friend of the show Olivia Truffau Wong wrote in a piece on Bustle entitled why the Asian character in Get Out matters. She says, quote the inclusion of such an individual in this particular context trivializes the Asian experience. The discussion of race relations between Asians and African Americans is an important one and it deserves more than a throwaway line and a few
short scenes unquote. So again, mixed interpretations of it, but I just wanted to.
I think everyone's right. I think that it is a very nuanced conversation. A couple of things that I'll say. I want to first talk about the Supreme Court, which I could talk about the Supreme Court for a long time, but I specific want to talk about I don't know if you guys remember Becky with the bad grades, that girl who didn't get into University of Texas at Austin. And she was like, it is because I am being discriminated against because I am white. And she wanted to
get rid of which has successfully happened. Wanted to get rid of affirmative action, which white women are the primary beneficiaries of. She wanted to get rid of affirmative action in college admissions because she didn't get into the school.
And she's like, I saw people who were less qualified than me, who were black and brown who got in, and they just got in because of that, which what's funny to me is, first of all, Becky with the bad grade, you t Austin has an admissions policy where if you were in the top ten percent of your high school class, you automatically get in. You can go to Utube. I didn't know that. Yeah, no, that's what makes it so much funnier to me. And she was like, well I didn't get in, and I'm like, okay.
You weren't good enough at school.
Yeah, it sounds like you should have invested more time in working on your grades, ma'am. But I do think that it is very interesting that that Supreme Court case failed when the white woman was the person behind it, but succeeded when it was spearheaded by Asian people. And Asian people were saying that they were hurt by these quotas because people can like, we're like, oh, there's too many Asian people who are excelling and who are qualified, and we have to have a certain number of them.
And now that we've had this policy in place for a few years, the numbers of Asian people who are getting into elite colleges has in fact decreased who defunk it. But and with the idea of Asians being seen as the perpetual foreigner, which I think is very true. And it's interesting because my parents are actually immigrants, and people
never assume that about me. Because people, when they see black people in America make a sound about the Atlantic slave trade, and the majority of black people in America did end up here because of that. But Asian people who have been here for just as long and who you know, came and were building railroads and also helped build this country are seen as foreigners, which is bad.
It's bad, end of story. But when you're applying to college, they don't see a picture of you, but they see your name, and if you have a name that sounds explicitly Asian, even if they don't see you, they make
their judgments. And I think that it's really interesting that Asians were spearheading this because of that particular detail that there are more Asian people who have names that specifically out them as Asian than there are black people who have names that specifically out them as black, especially because black people in America for a very long time have and I think the tide is turning on this more now, but have specifically named their children so that they would
be able to later in life, be able to get jobs and be able to have like a resume name that wouldn't get their resume thrown out. And then the other thing I wanted to say about I forgot his name, Hiroki Tanaka, that's his name? Is that Jordan Peele explicitly said that he was paying homage to again Rosemary's Baby because at the end of Rosemary's Baby there is one Japanese man there. And he said that it's about the double worship being a global thing. It's not just these
people in this place. It is global. And I think that if we look at it from that perspective, it could be a nod to the idea that anti blackness is global. And we think of anti blackness, and we think of black and white a lot in this country, but there are more layers and more nuance to it.
It is far reaching. Jordan Peele lists two other reasons. He was a guest on the Tiger Belly podcast hosted by Bobby Lee and Klaia kuhn Yep and they ask him about this about this character being included in the movie. And I'll paraphrase here, but Jordan Peel in addition to the homage to Rosemary's Baby and you know, wanting to kind of showcase how far reaching an underground society like
this could be. He also said that, and you know, we can discuss this if we want, but he wanted the fact that because the character's first language is not English, and he's posing the question in a kind of more direct way than perhaps a native English speaker might ask a question like that, he wanted to like use that to heighten the awkwardness of the situation. So there's that.
And then he also says, and also, like, what doesn't make sense an old Japanese billionaire comes and wants to buy a black body, I think is what he says. He's interrupted by the host, so it's kind of hard to tell what the last few words were, but I mean, that is why all those people are there for the party. So but anyway, the hosts jump in and they agree and they're like, yeah, it makes sense to me, honestly. So those are the least the reasons he cites.
Yeah, I mean, you know, I.
Don't feel like I can make any intelligent comment on this, I think get Out is not a movie that is I think trying to deconstruct this particular dynamic, and it's I feel like it is always a slippery slope between expecting everything of one movie. But I agree with the Krama that all, like every perspective we've talked about makes total sense, and there's no like perspective on that character that I don't know. I'd be comfortable being like, no, you're wrong, because I think you can also go into
like histories of colonialism between different countries. I mean, there's like a lot of different ways to approach that conversation.
Of like also co opting blackness for like cool aesthetics. That is something that is very prevalent in many different Asian countries. I would say most prevalent in the way that we see K pop borrowing from arguably stealing from black R and B music from the nineties and sort of recreating these sort of like voice to men situations, and they even have like similar dance aesthetics and things
like that. It's very much steeped in black culture. And like I saw Black Pink in concert with my mom because I'm cool and also parent.
I love that you and your mom went together.
It was we went to Coachella together and Black Pink was headlining, so it's even cooler than you thought. But my mom was kind of like checked out during Black Pink, which I expected that that's fine, that's not her her vibe. She listens to Joni Mitchell, so I but I was like, oh, aren't they cool? And my mom was like, I just I'm really sick of people who are not black taking
black things and becoming more popular than black people. And so I don't think that the prospect of this Japanese billionaire coming to this party and wanting to co opt blackness in a way is that far reaching. And I think, you know, we can have the conversation about wrestling with is it better to be experiencing xenophobia or is it better to be experiencing what it is to be a black American, which they're all, it's it's not good either way, I think personally. But I also think that there is
the idea that you know, Jim talks about. I keep wanting to say Jim Henson instead of Jim Hudson.
Because it's like Jim Hudson Galleries, and you've got like Jim Henson Studio.
Would never Oh, I thought we were talking about Jim Henson, I.
Know, But Jim Hudson talks about like because Chris asks the very valid question why black people, which also makes me think of Zulander, Why male models?
Oh my god, oh Zuland.
But he asks why black people, and Jim says, some people want to be faster, some people want to be stronger, some people want to be cooler. And I don't think it's out of the realm of possibility that a wealthy Asian businessman would want to be cooler. I just think that, oh, taking a black man's body is the way to do that, right, I think that there is precedent for them.
Yeah, I guess I like assumed that the intention of including that character was to say that anti blackness is a global problem and not a problem that is siphoned to white liberal Americans, even though they're obviously a disproportionate perpetrator of anti blackness. But I also like totally understand the perspective that, like, having such a complicated dynamic siphoned into like one character is not gonna sit well.
Yeah, I think that the movie did not benefit enough from that addition to be like, no, it's necessary. Yeah, I think that it's fine with it. I think it would have been just as fine without it. But I'm glad that that man got a job that is not an actor.
He's Ken Marino's father in law.
Yeah, and a karate master.
What wait, Yeah, he's not really an actor, although there is an actor named Hiroki Tanaka.
Oh that's fine, you know, different guy.
Well, because a lot of the op eds I read about this, it's like it's a character named yeah, so he go a Yoma played by actor Hiroki Tanaka, but it's flipped. Yeah, the guy's real.
Name is.
Yeah, so he go a Yoma. But they, I think were just like looking up what the actor's name was, and because there was an actor named Hiroki Tanaka, they thought that that anyway.
So that's so it's it's so funny, like how in Jordan Peel's work you occasionally just get like a weird gen X comedy connection. We were like, oh, yeah, of course Jordan Peel and Ken Marino are pals, and this would be some weird thing that would happen in the same way that in US when you're like, wait, why is Tim Heidecker here and you're like, oh, because him and Jordan Peele have probably known each other for five thousand years.
Yeah, and you know the reason that he hired this man who was not an actors because they were doing all of the casting for the secondary characters in Mississippi. And shockingly, there are not a lot of Japanese actors in Mississippi.
Well I thought it was Alabama.
Oh, maybe it was Alabama.
I could be either way, but yeah, I mean not not a lot of Japanese actors in either place. Something I remember learning a while back, or maybe it was even kind of recently that sort of show. Oh, yeah, it was recently, because this was revealed on Graham Norton's show.
I Love Graham Norton. My goal in life is to be famous enough to be a guest on Graham Norton.
I wish you all the best that's gonna happen.
Daniel Klulia was on the show and revealed that he was not invited to the world premiere of Get Out at the twenty seventeen Sun Dance Film Festival. He said he cleared his schedule knowing when it would happen, thinking he would be invited and then he was just never invited and blames it on the industry.
I don't.
I'm sure people advocated for him to be invited, but yeah, he.
Just was nominated for an Oscar what.
No, he was not invited and so he did not go to the premiere. Yeah, I don't think I had anything to do with any like bad Blood or anything between like him and Jordan Peele they go on to make Nope together and everything. But yeah, he just wasn't invited and someone fucked up.
Basically, I'm curious if like Catherine Keener was invited and Alison Williams was invited. Maybe they weren't either, But I'm curious.
Hard to say, we don't.
We don't know.
I haven't looked it up.
But he's I just am like he is the star of the movie.
Like it makes me so sad.
That, Yeah, that's ridiculous. Well that's a bomber.
I did not know that. However, this movie was obviously don't need me to tell you.
Tremendously successful.
It was made for less than five million dollars and made a quarter of a billion dollars.
Geez, Louise, Yeah, I.
Didn't even I didn't realize it was like making its budget back eighty times successful, but it absolutely was obviously launched an incredible directing career for Jordan Peel, and Jordan Peele also produces a lot of a lot of director's works as well. It seems like, I mean, whatever, we love Jordan Peele. We don't need to belabor that point, but that this movie got It also won Jordan Peele his first Oscar. He won for Best Original Screenplay, also
a nomination he got a nomination for Director. I don't know who he lost to that year, but the movie was nominated for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor for Daniel Caluia, and Best Original Screenplay, and it won Best Original Screenplay.
And Jordan Peele is the first and only black person to win for Best Original Screenplay. I will say there are like, I think seven or eight black people who have won for Best Adapted Screenplay, So that's got a little bit more a little bit more weight behind it.
I yeah, And I think it's interesting that there's such a disparity between original and adapted, and it kind of speaks to sort of the fun thing that's happening in the industry right now where they want a sure thing, and they're like, this thing that was already commercially successful, that we can adapt this ip. We will. We will take a chance on you to do that because we are pretty sure that you can't fuck it up.
And that's why we don't have enough original stories from marginalized filmmakers in general.
Because it's like Precious. I think the guy who wrote Precious based on the novel Push by.
Sapphire famously based on.
It's right there on the poster, which I think Sapphire like made them include that legally good for her, which you know, because the book has a different title and it's gonna be forgotten and overshadowed by the movie. And I you know what, I more power to her. Yeah, But Precious based on novel Push by Sapphire. The guy who wrote that was the first black person to win Best Adapted Screenplay, and I know that the guy who wrote Twelve Years of Slave also won. I think that
American fiction most recently won. And then two of the four writers for Black Clansmen were black as well, and they.
Won, which is a Jordan Peel produced movie.
He's everywhere, It's all connected, everywhere, his influence.
I'm just I'm looking back at the Academy Award page from this year, it's always funny. I mean, and I like the Shape of Water a lot, but the Shape of Water sort of became the Oscar Movie of the Year this particular year, where right with all love to Giamo del Toro and the Shape of Water a movie I very much like, you know, get Out and Ladybird and Phantom.
I mean, come on, I was gunning hard for get Out to win Best Picture, and I will admit being furious that Shape of Water one instead.
I mean, yeah, I mean it's not only I mean, there's so much like horror movies are so I mean, I think get Out kind of changed this narrative. But not only is you know, Jordan Peel marginalized director, he's also directing a genre film. And I feel like the Oscars love to dismiss genre films up until very recently, because get Out was so fucking good.
I think only six horror films have been nominated for Best Picture, and Silence of the Lambs is the only one that's ever won.
Yeah, Exorcist too, because we just covered that on the The Exorcis the Matreon, But it didn't win.
It just was nominated.
Yeah, yeah, I don't think the Issis won anything.
Yeah, they took away like one our hearts.
It was nominated for like ten things and won only two.
I want to say I was kind of surprised I was nominated for that much in any case. I mean, I like, get Out broke all of these barriers, and I feel like it's not very often discussed what a huge thing it was for the horror genre as well of just like getting all of these I mean, because it is a masterpiece and it is better than the Shape of Water. Not to pit them against each other, but that's what the oscars is.
Yeah, that's true.
Yeah, first movie or no, not for it was his first movie. It was his directorial debut.
It was Yeah, he wrote Keanu, he did not direct Kian.
Yeah, you know, we don't know what Keanu could have been had they let Jordan direct.
His vision would have changed the game. I also thought it was this was just nice. I don't I mean, I don't know what the deal is with Key and Peele. I feel like there's all these theories as to why they don't work together anymore. However, get Out was made possible by Keeth and Michael Key, and he introduced Jordan Peel to a producer director he knew the producer of like Donnie Darko, and that was like, how this conversation around get Out got started was by his friend and
collaborator being like, Jordan is obsessed with horror movies. He has a lot of great ideas. You should talk to him, And that was how get Out sort of came to be.
So yeah, they had a lunch and Jordan Peel pitched get Out to this producer and he like bought the pitch at that very moment, and.
Thank god different times truth, I know, I was like, this was ten years ago.
I actually can very confidently say that the reason that Key and Peel don't work together anymore is a disagreement over a recipe for chibapyous.
It was a documentary the whole time.
What if I had the tea? What if I actually had the tea? You know, I think their careers are just going in different directions and different people have different priorities.
And I know the Twitter algorithm is design to torture me with speculation as to why they don't work together. So maybe it's just always on my mind because the algorithm decided that.
But if anyone knows, let me know.
Yeah. I love when a movie and I feel like this happens, maybe most often with horror thriller type movies, but when the audience is so affected by it that they become like for example, Fatal Attraction, everyone like being so scared of Glenn close and like being afraid that that would happen to them, Or the way that like Misery made everyone be so afraid of Kathy Baits and I the.
First time I ever saw Kathy Baits on film was in the movie Misery when I was twelve.
Yeah, oh it was now too.
I was too young and she was too scary, And I can't watch Matt Locke.
Now you watch Titanic, though, But that sentence was a journey.
This is a journey.
But just the way that like certain movies will have such a cultural impact and like incite fear in so many people. I feel like get Out is another one of those movies where on like dating apps, for a few years after this movie came out, I saw a lot of people's profiles be like, if you're a white woman, please don't get out me, Like that was a thing, so so interesting.
I don't remember seeing that, which doesn't mean it wasn't there. I think I've blocked out a lot of the trauma of dating apps.
They're so traumatic.
My favorite dating app copy pasta for a while was when Game of Thrones was still in the air. It was like, oh, I'm just a bastard looking for my wild lang and I'm like, okay more, Oh dude, awesome, I'm so happy for you. The first time I saw it, I chuckled, and then I realized that guy and come up with it, and.
I was like, oh, isn't that.
It's such as Yeah, every time you're like, oh, that man was clever, and you're like, wait a second, that's a.
Thirty year old movie. I haven't seen.
Fuck you.
Yeah, he loves the office, Oh my god, oh.
Wow, so original?
Wow?
Or another Game of Thrones thing is I'm still not over the last season of.
Game of Thrones.
Oh you and eight million other people shut up say yeah that too. Anyway, does anyone have any other thoughts about Get Out?
I want to talk about the music for a second. Yeah, because the guy who did the music was the same guy who did the music for us, and I talked a little bit about him and not. And his name is Michael Abels, and I love him. This was his first film score ever, nailed it ever in the world.
He was like a professional composer, but he's just never done a film.
Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah he and he went to like the Thornton School of me at USC so he yeah, he has the pedigree, he has the talent, and now he's a Pulitzer Prize winner. Fun fact, he won the Pulitzer Prize for Music in twenty twenty three for an opera that he wrote called what is it called? I
don't think down? What it was called Omar Yes, yeah, and it was about Omar ibn said, who was an enslaved Muslim man, and he wrote a he wrote an autobiography that was primarily an Arabic and it's, I think, if not the only, one of the only autobiographies by an enslaved person written primarily in Arabic.
Wow.
And I think what's interesting about Michael Abels is that, you know, he sort of cut his teeth on this very successful film. And he is a black composer. And if you look at his work on IMDb, he has by and large worked on films that tell black stories like he worked on See You Yesterday, also worked on us and films that have primarily black casts, which I think is a really interesting calling card and you know, a gift to be able to do not exclusively those. He worked on Bad Education, which.
By that weird HBO movie. I was like, huh is that what my friend.
Wrote that movie? Oh? Really, my friend Mike, who I saw it out with. Yeah, my god, white Mike.
That's so that's wild.
Yeah, I watched that movie.
I think that movie came out during the pandemic, right.
It came out during Lockdown.
Yeah, I need to rewatch it because I feel like I saw it, liked it, memory hold it because Lockdown.
Yeah, highly recommend am fully biased. But my mom also liked it, and she was like, oh my god, tell Mike, I'm so proud of him. Hugh jack Finn, I'm telling the truth.
And Jenny Okay, yeah.
I have no memory of this movie. I'll have to check it out.
We'll talk about That Education well, because it was so theatrically released. If you want to talk about it, I have an end with Mike.
Mike, come on the pod. That's fascinating. I didn't realize that Michael Abels had gone on to win a Pulitzer since we last talked about him.
That's fucking incredible, and.
Not the first black opera to win a pullet Serprize, which I thought was really interesting. There was one that I actually saw, and I'm gonna be really honest, I did not like that was about the I think the Exonerated five is what they're called now, but the people who were accused of that horrible sexual assault in Central Park all those years ago and were eventually exonerated because they were in fact innocent. But there was an opera
about that as well that won a Pulitzerprize. So I think that it's interesting that there is this sort of growing world of black opera telling black stories, and that Michael Abels is, you know, out there repin yeah, oh yeah, yeah.
There's also like I just now that we have three Jordan Peel movies too to pull from, Like you can see sort of how he has like this repeated motif of rabbits in his movies and then like the opening song and like the repeated song, yeah.
Where's the rabbit in No, I don't remember the rabbit.
I don't know there was a rabbit refer it was not. I mean, I feel like US is still the movie that obviously references rabbits most heavily. Yeah, because that opening shot lives in my mind rent Free all the time.
But I've said it before and I'll say it again, the most upsetting and scary part of the movie US was the part at the beginning where they talked about all the tunnels creepy. I'm not okay, I don't like it.
Yeah, it's unsettling. Yeah, as far as the Bechdel test goes, I mean, I think the movie Probab passes. I wasn't really paying much and Rose and Missy.
It like lightly passes. Yeah, I think that there's the conversation that Missy and Georgina have about how it's like you should lie down that passes. But I do think the majority of the conversations are about Chris, So I don't think Missy and Rose have any one on one conversations. I don't think Georgina and Rose have any one on one conversations. There just aren't a lot of women also, right, there aren't a lot of people.
To be fair, this is true, but it does feel especially glaring knowing that black women were mostly left out of this narrative, right, and it just speaks to the need of more stories featuring black women and black people of marginalized genders.
And I will say black women are much much more at the center of the stories that are in us And Nope, yes, for sure.
Yeah, it's definitely an you know, continued glaring thing throughout his filmography. Yeah, so I yeah, And I also, I mean, just going back to your original point at the beginning of the episode, Krama, it's like, this is a movie made by a black men about black men and for everyone, but it's like particularly made with that audience in mind. And that's you know, we don't have a lot of movies like that.
And yeah, and I think that he gets to tell that story, and I'm so glad that he told that story. Yeah, and I'm so glad that it resonated on this massive global scale where people enjoyed it, people were moved by it, people were provoked to think by it regardless of their own personal experience.
Yeah.
Absolutely. As far as our nipple scale zero to five nipples based on examining the movie through an intersectional feminist lens, I mean, and maybe this is just how much I love this movie coming into play here, but I want to give it like four four and a half nipples. I do feel like there could have been and should have been more inclusion of black women.
In this narrative.
Make Little Rall's character, you know, cast a woman in that role that's an active participant in the story, who's you know, helping and who saves Chris at the end. You know, that could have been something or just found other ways to include black women more significantly. So with that in mind, I think I'll give it four out of five. But I just I love this movie so much and I think it has so many interesting, important
things to say, And yeah, four nipples. I'll give one to Jordan Peel, I'll give one to Betty Gabriel who plays Georgina. I'll give one to Sid the Dog, and I'll give my final nipple to the Gremlins. Two sketch of k and people.
I'm going to meet you at four.
I agree.
I mean, it's like, because this is a podcast about intersectional feminism, it cannot get the full five unfortunately, But you know, I think that this is I'm I'm glad and encouraged to see that Jordan Peele has centered and prioritized black women in the movies that he's made since. So I would maybe granted a little more harshly if we didn't have the sort of benefit of future knowledge. This is not a continued issue in his filmography and get Out is just a fucking masterpiece.
We didn't get into it.
But I also think it was I'm trying to remember. I think it was maybe on the press cycle for Us, where there was this expectation that all of Jordan Peele's movies were going to be about race, and then US wasn't explicitly about race, and it like broke a lot of moviegoers' brains where they're like, wait, why are you trying to make a move about something else? And he's like, because I'm a filmmaker.
And I have other things I want to talk about.
And like people were like, but there's black people.
In it, but it's not explicitly about race, and he's like, yeah, Like I yeah, he's he's had to be at the center of all of these like obnoxious media press cycles, and I just like, also.
The movie was not about like blackness, but it was very explicitly about the idea of stealing land and the idea of taking land from Native people, indigenous people in this country. Yeah, and how we're living on top of them and their second class citizens. Like that was not subtle, Absolutely not.
I mean, and I think that that just like goes back to something we've talked about on the show a lot of just like when you are a marginalized filmmaker, that you are expected to only make stories that reflect your specific experience, and that like original stories outside of your own experience that references your own experience in the way that like an executive would expect is.
Not permissible or is like this.
Radical act when it's like, no, that's just what filmmakers do, and it's not an opportunity that's given to enough marginalized filmmakers. So anyways, just Jordan Peel fucking rocks. I like, his movies are so distinct, and get Out is probably one of the old timer like directorial debuts. It's it's ridiculous, it's it's unfair, it's fucked up. He's so good. So
I'm gonna give it four nipples. I'm gonna give two to Jordan Peel, one to Daniel Cleia because it's just like the wildest performance, and I'll I'll also give one to Betty Gabriel.
Nice I am. I'm gonna come in a little lower than you guys on the nipple scale. I'm gonna give it three nips. I was going to start with one, but then I heard you guys out and I was like, okay, they have points, they have points. Let me, let me, let me readjust so I'm going to do three nipples. I think that through the lens of intersectional feminism, the best thing that this film does is lambast the weaponization of white womanhood, and that is like that was always
going to get one of the nipples. I think it does a great job at that, and it is very unflinching in its ability to do that. I'm going to give a nipple to Daniel Kluya because I've loved him since his days is Posh Kenneth on Skins, which fun fact, he also wrote an episode of Skins.
Really not kidding, God, he's so fucking cool. I forgot.
I was like, where did I think I had I had first seen him in Black Mirror.
Yes, yeah, And then I will give my final nipple to Georgina's no no, no, no no scene.
It's so good.
I love a scene that just really stands out, and it's kind of up there for me with Viola Davis in Doubt, which interesting that they both involve a black woman crying but stand out performances.
Yeah.
Absolutely, Well, we haven't brought up doubt in a while on the show.
I love about times what I'm here for now.
We found it. We found it in the eleventh hour. We brought it back to doubt.
All roads on the podcast lead back to Titanic, Shrek or doubt.
And occasionally a doubt.
Just word saying Alfred Molina could have been in this movie, but I'm just assuming he was busy.
I feel like he also could have been not Jim Henson, but Jim Hudson.
Oh yeah, yeah.
Again, we want a disabled actor to play a disabled character. But if they were gonna cast a draw non disabled actor, Alfred Molina, Yeah, there you go.
Yeah, I mean, I you know, let's let's speak it into an existence, a Jordan Peel al Ford Molina collaboration. It's not a question of if, it's a question of when. And I personally can't wait for when.
Yes, well, Karama, thank you so much for joining us once again. Come back anytime.
Thank you so much for having me again.
Oh we love having you. Tell us where people can follow you online and check out your work.
I am at Karama Drama on all platforms including Yes, I'm back on Twitter. I came crawling back.
I there with you.
I had a thought about yogurt and I had no one to tell it too, so I wish I were joking, but that's what brought me back. I was like, strawberry yogurt is that bitch, and no one can tell me otherwise.
You're like, Okay, I'm reactivating. I'm reactivating.
So Karama Drama on Twitter, Instagram occasionally TikTok, but really not really it's too much, man.
I'm too I'm too fucking old. I'm not doing it.
I'm not I'm a watcher. I'm just not a creator. I don't have it in me. That's I am like a plus commenter though, I feel like my comment game on point. So if you follow me, I'll comment on your stuff. Where can they find you, guys?
Oh my gosh.
Thanks.
You can follow me at Caitlin Durante on Instagram and you can follow us on Beachtel Cast also on Instagram and our Patreon slash Maytreon. Two episodes a month, it's five dollars a month and it's always on a fun little theme that Jamie and I cook up.
Yes, that's less than a latte, honestly, a.
Steal, exactly exactly. And you get our back catalog of over one hundred and fifty episodes.
It's a blast.
We've been having fun over there. We just are finishing up horror movies. We just covered The Exorcist, which is why exercise the Exorcises top of mind. We did the exercise and Pearl Over in the Matreon this month. If you to check it out, it's a blast over there. You can get merch at teapublic dot com slash the Bechdel Cast, which is the name of the podcast. I just almost said it wrong, and uh with that, all hail the TSA.
Yes, Wow, yes, bye bye.
The Bechdel Cast is a production of iHeartMedia, hosted by Caitlin Derante and Jamie loftis produced by Sophie Lichterman, edited by Mola Board. Our theme song was composed by Mike Kaplan with vocals by Katherine Voskressenski. Our logo in Merch is designed by Jamie Loftis and a special thanks to Aristotle Acevedo. For more information about the podcast, please visit link tree slash Bechdel Cast