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Mar 16, 2017 06:19
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Hey, I like like SMG's oppositional readings. There's nothing threatening about someone watching a film differently and coming up with a heterodox read. It's at least interesting, and if it wasn't the last 2 pages would be about something besides that topic. I think it's definitely not a "troll" argument especially because every film with a hypnosis or dream or mental illness component almost always invites that question. "What's real in the film? Is what we're seeing in this scene the same reality as that scene?" I love films like Shutter Island or the Machinist or Inception, but it's the "problem" with the genre. If you set a film in an asylum with "normies" and "crazies", the viewer would be stupid NOT to wonder if the normie is actually crazy. And even if the text of the film seems to indicate a more straightforward narrative (as I believe Get Out does), it can still be interesting to play with other possibilities.
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Mar 16, 2017 12:40
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HellCopter posted:I don't understand. That is explicitly what happens. The point is that the whole part where a cult of white folks abduct POC in order to control their bodies like robots is a facile horror movie concept - and that the film doesn't hide from this. This is why Rod is there: to immediately and unceremoniously open with the proposition that white people are not merely well-meaning idiots, but actually evil psychosexual devils; so that we can revel in the dark comic anti-irony that Rod's off-the-top-of-his-head diagnosis was correct all along. The film is very direct about this scenario, so in an ideological sense to ignore it in order to avoid the obvious paranoid reading is actually to discredit the filmmakers, like they didn't know what they were doing when they made a movie about mad science, brain transplants, hypnosis, etc. That Get Out really is just the story of a man who gets invited to an awkward party and then goes home is what informs the meaning of the extraordinary horror scenario, not the other way around. Otherwise, we end up beating around the bush of what it means that this white devil goes through the trouble of taking a queer black woman's body just so she can hang around the house and serve tea, being talked down to by her daughter-in-law. Even from the perspective of the villains, their whole cult is goofy and stupid. It only matters insofar as Georgina is evocative to Chris, like all of the black characters he meets at the party, because she is specifically not in on the joke, i.e. that these rich white people are goofy cultists and that Chris (as with Rod) is supposed to be able to identify with Georgina through this shared experience. The specific absence of this is what generates and accelerates the paranoid fantasy. It's no longer a joke, so it becomes literal.
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Mar 16, 2017 16:25
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Personally I don't think the idea of it all being in his head is inherently ridiculous, during the whole climax I was certain we would snap back to Chris on an operating table and just end the movie all Brazil like. But arguing that Chris's perception of the white peoples in the film are just his paranoia and delusion kind of flies in the face of what the movie was clearly going for. Chris is paranoid for good reasons, everyone was being shady as hell or just completely nanners. It's just whenever he brought up his concerns to his white girlfriend she immediately deflected his suspicions and made it seem like HE was crazy, or that he's the one acting unreasonable. It's reminded me at least of how white society will invalidate a black person's feelings when that person feels that something is wrong, or when that black person isn't acting "naturally". So to then argue that a large part of the conspiracy is just Chris being unreasonable kind of argues in favor of what Rose was saying the whole movie.
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Mar 16, 2017 16:28
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Of course, white people are extremely goofy, this could just as easily be a film about getting tricked into going to a Christian pizza party.
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Mar 16, 2017 16:31
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Magic Hate Ball posted:Of course, white people are extremely goofy, this could just as easily be a film about getting tricked into going to a Christian pizza party. It's basically the same premise as The Invitation.
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Mar 16, 2017 16:38
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Magic Hate Ball posted:Of course, white people are extremely goofy, this could just as easily be a film about getting tricked into going to a Christian pizza party. Yeah, if anyone besides SMG had said "the horror stuff is a metaphor for being weirded out by conservatives but also tempted to stop worrying and love the bomb" it would be uncontroversial. Chris is in effect facing conversion therapy for blackness.
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Mar 16, 2017 16:40
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The mean joke is that it works.
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Mar 16, 2017 16:45
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So it's a metaphor for the internalized process of Ice Cube going from Amerikkka's Most Wanted to Are We There, Yet?? Or Eldridge Cleaver pushed into The Sunken Place and having his brain replaced by an old Mormon grandpa? Lil Mama Im Sorry fucked around with this message at 16:58 on Mar 16, 2017 |
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Mar 16, 2017 16:53
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Haha I mean, essentially, yeah. You can apply it to any situation of conformity.
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Mar 16, 2017 16:57
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Magic Hate Ball posted:The mean joke is that it works. Exactly. It's like a gay kid goes to the weird Christian party, and he thinks they're all weird and awful but after he still says human being a lot and has a girlfriend. Lil Mama Im Sorry posted:So it's a metaphor for the internalized process of Ice Cube going from Amerikkka's Most Wanted to Are We There, Yet?? hahahahaha yes
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Mar 16, 2017 17:00
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DeimosRising posted:Yeah, if anyone besides SMG had said "the horror stuff is a metaphor for being weirded out by conservatives but also tempted to stop worrying and love the bomb" it would be uncontroversial. Chris is in effect facing conversion therapy for blackness. err no.
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Mar 16, 2017 17:42
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Groovelord Neato posted:err no. Why do you think Peele cited Rosemary's Baby and The Stepford Wives as influences? Do you think he saw these films and didn't grasp what they were about?
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Mar 16, 2017 17:49
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A better critique would emphasize capitalist exploitation of black bodies -- that black bodies only become profitable when used by white people (slavery being the obvious parallel but the more modern critique would be black celebrities/athletes, which is why the NCAA browsing has a powerful double-meaning) -- and Chris struggling with that via his art and Stephen Root's character and being around conservatives. And I think that's closer to how y'all are interpreting SMG. Instead, SMG is getting to that via an argument about essentialized blackness -- that Chris concocts a fantasy to comfort his own transition into "whiteness" because his art isn't 'truly black' if it's accepted by the white upper class, or that Chris and Rodney are traitors because the film doesn't show them saving Andre. That's loving stupid and racist, and it pins a lot of blame on Chris's internal struggle instead of the institutions in which he is operating. TheHan posted:It's just whenever he brought up his concerns to his white girlfriend she immediately deflected his suspicions and made it seem like HE was crazy, or that he's the one acting unreasonable. It's reminded me at least of how white society will invalidate a black person's feelings when that person feels that something is wrong, or when that black person isn't acting "naturally". So to then argue that a large part of the conspiracy is just Chris being unreasonable kind of argues in favor of what Rose was saying the whole movie. and also this. i am the bird fucked around with this message at 18:17 on Mar 16, 2017 |
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Mar 16, 2017 18:09
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Yeah I don't think Peele made the film as a way to gaslight his entire ethnic group's struggles.
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Mar 16, 2017 18:49
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The critique is not that Chris has not experienced overt racism and been manipulated. The point is that it's a psychological horror movie. Chris finds himself once again being 'hypnotized' by an blinding white source, and then the next day the coven of weirdos comes over and does a bunch of stupid things like have a silent auction, and he himself is expressing attitudes he never felt before, like how smoking is gross now and it's his own fault that his mom/Georgina died. This is not a mistake or misreading, this is what happens in the movie. The 'sunken place' is presented overtly as a monolithic sense of being trapped and watching one's life play out as a distant farce beyond one's control. The solution that Peele chooses is very overt and nuanced, but it requires understanding critical scholarship about the coding and representation of 'blackness' through American popular culture, particularly cinema. The choice to have Chris slay Dean with the buck's head is both a callback to the latter's casualness in despising deer, as well as a fulfillment of Chris himself embodying a 'Buck'. The character performs this action because of another overtly coded contrivance: To block out the hypnosis, he stuffs cotton in his ears.
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Mar 16, 2017 18:53
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I dont think anyone is saying that it is one way or another, the film works very well on multiple levels and from multiple perspectives, which is why I like it.
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Mar 16, 2017 19:10
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Yeah, this discussion really makes me want to rewatch the film. The first time was just an experience with a crowd, will be interesting to watch it with more a little more mindful unpacking of what's going on.
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Mar 16, 2017 19:26
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HUNDU THE BEAST GOD posted:Why do you think Peele cited Rosemary's Baby and The Stepford Wives as influences? Do you think he saw these films and didn't grasp what they were about? rosemary's baby and stepford wives weren't "it's all in their head". just like the twilight zone episode improperly cited. do you folks even follow the posts you're defending. i could certainly read all the shapeshifting alien poo poo in john carpenter's the thing as the whiskey dreams of macready since none of it happens until everyone goes to sleep. he's become paranoid after seeing someone murdered. he finds solace in the bottle at the end of the dream. it's certainly a reading but it isn't particularly interesting, and is far less interesting than a "straight" discussion of the film. Groovelord Neato fucked around with this message at 22:11 on Mar 16, 2017 |
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Mar 16, 2017 22:09
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Groovelord Neato posted:rosemary's baby and stepford wives weren't "it's all in their head". just like the twilight zone episode improperly cited. do you folks even follow the posts you're defending. Rosemary's Baby is 100% "it's still paranoia even if they're really out to get you". Like Get Out, its protagonist is a person from a real minority subject to oppression, and it literalizes that oppression by presenting a paranoid fantasy from the perspective of the paranoiac. And none of the Satan cult reveal happens at a point where Rosemary is sober and clear minded. She's drugged, drunk, or traumatized at a minimum whenever something more than slightly suspiscious happens. Haven't seen or read Stepford in a while, the wife is the real Levine buff in the family but the premise is the same.
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Mar 16, 2017 22:19
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once again, science is the bad guy 
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Mar 16, 2017 22:43
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Groovelord Neato posted:rosemary's baby and stepford wives weren't "it's all in their head". That's not the reading. The reading is that all of these films fundamentally portray social and domestic pressures as horrific, clandestine conspiracies. Whereas those two cited influences portray the collective pressure upon a '60s urban creative class and '70s upwardly mobile suburban class wife respectively, Get Out deals with Chris's persistent sense of being 'evaluated/appraised' in the post-Obama world.
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Mar 16, 2017 22:45
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K. Waste posted:the collective pressure upon a '60s urban creative class I don't think I've ever heard anyone summarize Rosemary's Baby from Guy's point of view. While I agree that the "conspiracy/paranoia that also happens to be real" ideas influenced Peele, Get Out gives us POV from Andre and Rod that discount any chance of the film taking place in Chris's imagination. Rod's scenes are explicitly about hammering that point home. He sounds crazy but he's almost entirely correct in his claims. i am the bird fucked around with this message at 23:01 on Mar 16, 2017 |
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Mar 16, 2017 22:53
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i am the bird posted:I don't think I've ever heard anyone summarize Rosemary's Baby from Guy's point of view. Your statement is very confusing. Could you clarify what this means? How do the words you've quoted have anything to do with "Guy's point of view," or whatever?
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Mar 16, 2017 22:59
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The idea that Chris is afraid of white people influencing black people into losing their "blackness" is pretty clearly true, even if their method of doing so is presented in a very literal and terrifying sense. Why is Andre's apparent choice to change his clothing and start dating an old white lady a problem? Consider the black people for a moment and think on if they weren't actually mindfucked. Would their lifestyles be wrong or just too "white" for Chris
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Mar 16, 2017 23:04
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K. Waste posted:Your statement is very confusing. Could you clarify what this means? How do the words you've quoted have anything to do with "Guy's point of view," or whatever? I guess I'd ask you to clarify what you mean by "collective pressures on the urban creative class" because that sounds like you're framing Guy's pursuits as the focal point as opposed to Rosemary and the exploitation of women's bodies/denial of female autonomy. If you're using Rosemary's Baby as a point of comparison and not putting women at the fore, then I don't know what to say.
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Mar 16, 2017 23:06
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Does this happen to every thread that SMG descends upon?
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Mar 16, 2017 23:10
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I think this is a good thread ATM and the arguement that the movie is about Chris's struggle with his own sense of "blackness" didn't originate with SMG iirc
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Mar 16, 2017 23:14
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RBA Starblade posted:Actually, the twist at the end of the episode is that the damage is visible and the narration makes it clear that it is real. In the film, it's even more explicit with claw marks seen by maintenance crew. Well no; Nightmare At 20,000 Feet is not about the threat evil gremlins pose to our nation's aircraft. It's about a harried buisinessman, recovering from an earlier nervous breakdown, choosing to quit his job and leave his wife rather than go back to 'the way things were'. The ending narration is a sort of forced 'have the cake and eat it too' resolution that establishes the possibility that the wife and job will bend to accommodate his new personality. We can even read it as the protagonist's own internal monologue. Unoriginal Name posted:The idea that Chris is afraid of white people influencing black people into losing their "blackness" is pretty clearly true, even if their method of doing so is presented in a very literal and terrifying sense. Andrew Logan very obviously stands for Chris' fear of what he will become after twenty years of marriage. SuperMechagodzilla fucked around with this message at 23:25 on Mar 16, 2017 |
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Mar 16, 2017 23:19
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Zwabu posted:Does this happen to every thread that SMG descends upon? Discussion becomes more than "IT GOOD?" Yeah.
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Mar 16, 2017 23:22
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DeimosRising posted:I think this is a good thread ATM and the arguement that the movie is about Chris's struggle with his own sense of "blackness" didn't originate with SMG iirc That may be true but I'm responding directly to these exemplary assertions by SMG: quote:Chris believes, to some extent, that his talent comes from his blackness. quote:The truth is, of course, that Chris was 'a sellout' from the beginning, making his modest success with palatable images of children and animals. Like, those are what he uses to convey 'the black experience': children and animals. Think about that for a second. Absolutely nothing in the film supports this reading of Chris's mindset. quote:Chris sincerely believes that 'selling out' in the photography world is as bad as getting Trayvon Martin'd. And this is just loving crazy.
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Mar 16, 2017 23:25
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i am the bird posted:And this is just loving crazy. The film itself directly links Trayvon Martin (the opening scene) to fear of becoming a lame retiree (Andrew Logan). In the fantasy of the film, Martin never died; he just moved to Florida and took up lawn bowling.
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Mar 16, 2017 23:28
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weekly font posted:Discussion becomes more than "IT GOOD?" Yeah. I might, maybe, be taking a job doing a geologic survey of Greenbrier County next fall, btw. Just as likely I'm moving back to Pittsburgh but it may happen.
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Mar 16, 2017 23:33
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weekly font posted:Discussion becomes more than "IT GOOD?" Yeah. quote:They both deal with the subjugation of the unpopular voice — whether black, female, gay, Muslim, Jewish or immigrant — through the enslavement of the body.
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Mar 17, 2017 01:06
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i am the bird posted:I guess I'd ask you to clarify what you mean by "collective pressures on the urban creative class" because that sounds like you're framing Guy's pursuits as the focal point as opposed to Rosemary and the exploitation of women's bodies/denial of female autonomy. I wrote urban creative class in juxtaposition with suburban upwardly mobile class wife, I'm sorry if that wasn't clear. I at no point mentioned Guy.
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Mar 17, 2017 01:42
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RBA Starblade posted:Actually, the twist at the end of the episode is that the damage is visible and the narration makes it clear that it is real. In the film, it's even more explicit with claw marks seen by maintenance crew. While true, the "it's all in his head" also refers back to the lack of repercussions at the climax of the film. The horrors the family were up to burned up in the fire, the cops will never believe or be privy to what actually happened, and the conspiracy dies in the car with Chris and his buddy.
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Mar 17, 2017 02:20
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Groovelord Neato posted:rosemary's baby and stepford wives weren't "it's all in their head". just like the twilight zone episode improperly cited. do you folks even follow the posts you're defending. Hmm. DeimosRising posted:I think this is a good thread ATM and the arguement that the movie is about Chris's struggle with his own sense of "blackness" didn't originate with SMG iirc It originates from the film itself, with his studio photography set to neo-soul. This whole idea that either you're authentically black, or you're a white person trapped in a black person's body is odd, to say the least, because it doesn't even take into account the differences between the black characters. It's as if they're just "black" and the threat is "turning white". It's somewhat more complex than that. HUNDU THE BEAST GOD fucked around with this message at 02:55 on Mar 17, 2017 |
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Mar 17, 2017 02:46
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ruddiger posted:While true, the "it's all in his head" also refers back to the lack of repercussions at the climax of the film. The horrors the family were up to burned up in the fire, the cops will never believe or be privy to what actually happened, and the conspiracy dies in the car with Chris and his buddy. Realistically, there was no way Chris was getting out alive if cops were involved. The story of one black guy vs. the story of an entire town of rich white people? I don't think there'd have been a way to have Chris get his revenge and also end the movie with "And then the judicial system made sure justice was served to the guilty parties."
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Mar 17, 2017 03:00
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ruddiger posted:While true, the "it's all in his head" also refers back to the lack of repercussions at the climax of the film. The horrors the family were up to burned up in the fire, the cops will never believe or be privy to what actually happened, and the conspiracy dies in the car with Chris and his buddy. That doesn't seem like it's entirely the case, even. He killed the family and burned down the house where the operations themselves took place, but that entire town of elderly white people still exists. Andre/Logan still exists with a massive surgical scar all around his head. They might circle the wagons and ghost Andre before any police can investigate (if they even WANT to), but at the exact point the movie ends, that physical evidence remains out in the world (and we aren't really presented, I don't think, with a decisive argument that the Andre that Chris found doesn't exist himself). And if the rich white people DON'T immediately ghost Andre once they hear what happened, he's a camera flash away (combined with the presumed surgical scars) from drawing suspicion that Chris's recollection of events might actually be closer to the truth than someone might otherwise believe. Again, that's not to say any follow-up from those events would definitely go one way (Chris in prison, accused of arson/murder) or another (Chris vindicated by the judicial system) or even a third (Chris/Rod never speak of it again, the rich white folk ALSO never speak of it again, the deaths of the Armitage family are left an unsolved mystery), but just that there's more lingering in the aftermath than what Chris and Rod carry with them in that police car.
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Mar 17, 2017 03:13
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Get Out 2 will just be him going to prison and sitting in solitary confinement in real time.
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Mar 17, 2017 03:25
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