The movie that I’ve chosen is Get Out. Get Out is an American horror film that Jordan Peele wrote and directed in 2017. While the theory that I’ve chosen to apply in this movie is Tzvetan Todorov’s narrative theory. Todorov's narrative theory suggests that all stories adopt a three-part structure, beginning with equilibrium, where everything is balanced, progressing as something comes along to disturb the equilibrium, and finally reaching a resolution when the equilibrium is restored. The themes of this film include fear, slavery, trauma, racism, love and betrayal.
Firstly, what is the world like in the equilibrium? In the movie “Get Out” an example of equilibrium is that the black photographer called Chris, accompanies his white girlfriend, Rose Armitage to visit her parents for the first time during the weekend. Chris and Rose have been together for five months, but Rose’s family are completely unaware that their daughter’s sweetheart is black. Chris is a bit worried about how they’ll treat him, as they’re white and he’s black. However, her parents turn out to be unfazed and it seems that everything is going well. So from here, we probably can get to know about the relatable themes of interracial relationships and the awkwardness of meeting the parents. In the beginning stage of the film, we can clearly see everything is balanced and normal. It’s the world in its current state of balance.
When it comes to disruption of the equilibrium, you will see something that is disbalance the equilibrium and feature a problem. In the movie, the disruption is when the young black man (Chris) is unable to sleep and he sneaks out for a cigarette that night. After that, Chris let himself back in the house. As he walks past a room, Chris hear missy say, “Do you realize how dangerous smoking is?”. She invites him to sit with her and she pushes him into a session of hypnotherapy. In a trance, he expresses guilt over his mom’s death in a hit-and-run when he was a child. Chris begins to cry and missy instructs him to sink into the floor. We can see Chris fall through the chair and float through space, getting farther and farther away from missy as he falls. Missy tells him “now you’re in the sunken place”.
Well, the sunken place was one of the most key elements in this film. So in this case, why black people has taken on the concept of the sunken place? This is because the sunken place is the way to describe a lot of things that black community had experienced before. According to Jordan Peele, he said that the sunken place is a metaphor for the feelings of helplessness and subjugation that black people experience in society. In the film, we can see how Chris falling into the place, being forced to watch the screen, that no matter how hard he screams at the screen he can’t get agency across. The sunken place is a way to connect over an issue among the black community and remind themselves that if they don’t stay incisive, and they might end up in the sunken place. Besides that, it also reflects the power that white people can use mental, political, and cultural exploitation to claim against the black people. In short, why the director (Jordan Peele) chose this as the disruption in this film? This is due to the reason that he wants to reflect the real fears of mind and real issues that he has dealt with before.
In the middle stage of the film, this is where the main character, chris realized there’s been a problem and it’s chaos. When Chris is preparing to escape, he found a small cabinet with a box full of photos of Rose posing with Georgina and Walter. This is Rose’s collection of previous “acquisitions”. Chris realized how bad his situation is. The entire Armitage family trying to prevent him from leaving the house. Rose also finally drops her ruse, telling him that everything she had done. All the concerns, intimacy and everything was intended to lure him in.
This is one of the scenes that shocked me the most in this film. The whole premise of this film is based on a girl who takes the boy she dates to meet her parents. But in the end, the thing that keeps Chris in the troubled environment is his love, Rose Armitage. We probably can see the couple share many heartfelt moments throughout the film. Rose constantly reminds Chris that she has her back, even when her family is particularly strange or doing something that makes Chris feel alienated. This emotional bond is what makes the ultimate deception of Rose so terrible. The viewer is meant to think she’s on the side of Chris, but she’s just as cold-hearted and evil as her family. Hence, we can see that love and betrayal is also one of the key elements in this film.
This is where the protagonist (Chris) go to fix the disruption and restore the equilibrium. Chris manages to save himself through covering his ears with the stuffing of the chair to which he is strapped, blocking out the hypnotic suggestions. He also manages to kill Jeremy and Dean when they try to ready him for the brain surgery. He is about to escape in Jeremy’s car when he hits Georgina. He wracked with guilt from newly liberated childhood memories, then he carries Georgina to bring her to safety but is horrified to discover that she had also undergone a brain-switch procedure.
Through the film, we can get to know how Jordan Peele touches on the idea of “white ownership of black bodies”. For instance, Georgina is in fact Marianne, Rose’s grandmother. She begins to savagely beat Chris causing them to crash into a tree. We can see the black bodies being exploited for the benefit of elite whites, while black minds are controlled and co-opted. For example, Georgina, Walter and Logan in the film. Besides that, Peele also wanted the audience watching the film to feel the anxiety and fears of what it is like being a black in America by adding a situation that has high stakes throughout the film but would have a very different connotation if the lead were a white man.
In the ending part of the film, we can see the red and blue flash lights and we assume it’s the police and Chris will get into trouble for sure. But when we see the airport (TSA) logo on the vehicle door and Rod steps out, and we’re shocked at this scene. According to Jordan Peele, he said he originally wanted to keep with a darker tone in the ending part. The movie would end with the police taking Chris away and arresting him for all the killings in Rose's home. Peele changed his mind not only because it was so freaky sad, but also because times changed.
During the Obama administration in U.S., Peele wanted to fight against the idea that racism was over, so the sad ending would help prove that point. But with the ongoing debate on race relations in recent years coming back to the forefront of national consciousness, Peele felt it made more sense to depict an African-American protagonist who wins. So in the end, it turns out Rod come to Chris’s rescue and save the day. They leave together as Rose bleeds to death on the driveway of the Armitage estate. From here, we probably can see the problem is resolved, and it leads to a new equilibrium. The film ends with Chris accepting his fate, happy in the knowledge that he “stopped it.”
All words in one, the film played with the audience's expectations involving genre and narrative structure. The reason why narrative theory is important when it comes to analyze a film? It is relatively easy to identify what the disruption is and what the repair is. Hence, this theory comes from identifying why the director or producer chose that as their disruption and why they decided that repairing this must be the main focus of this film. By looking at those things, we will get the clues to what their ideology is. Get Out does to wrench some genuine emotion out of the audience. It revealed clues as minor details paid off brilliantly in the third act, and the film's message was inherently linked to its ultimate twist.
Comentarios