by: Jordan Bartlett
Black horror films, traditionally a haunting and scary genre with familiar tropes and stereotypes, isn’t new, but the genre has seen a renaissance and new approach with deep meanings and messages for Black Americans. Over time, Black horror began to focus less on standard horror tropes and stereotypes and shifted more to what it is like to be black, and how the struggles of racism and inequality can be compelling in horrific ways. Instead of trying to have the audience frightened, the films yearn to give the audience an understanding of the American Black experience and perspective. Jordan Peele is just one of the Black filmmakers who has changed the game for Black horror, not just with a new perspective for Black viewers, but for all viewers as well.
Peele, who tuns 44 today, is an African-American actor, comedian and filmmaker who came to prominence of one half of the comedy team behind the show “Key and Peele.” Peele has won multiple Oscar awards and Emmy awards for his distinctive outlook on the horror genre. Peele wrote and directed the movie Get Out in 2017, winning him the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay – the first-ever African American screenwriter to achieve that title. His social awareness approach to how horror is viewed heightened the meanings behind his films. The films were created for the audience to attempt to understand what they were about without directly telling them. Peele hoped to get his audience thinking, as noted when he said, “I think when you tell people to think, people tend to get resistant and defensive, and feel like you’re accusing them of not thinking. His main goal for his films was to get people to think hard about the underlying message rather than trying to scare them, although there certainly are moments in his films that are both creepy and haunting. Most of his movies were based on race and unfair discrimination towards African Americans, which brought a frightening image.
Peele’s film Get Out, takes us through what systematic racism is like for African Americans, but not in a telling way. Get Out is about a Black man who enters the world of his white girlfriend and endures unusual encounters as he goes home with her to meet her parents. While visiting his girlfriend’s parents, he comes across strange people and unnoticed racism that he doesn’t realize until the film’s end. Get Out is scary in a way that doesn’t make the viewer afraid but relatively awake. The film calls attention to the struggles within the African American community that go unnoticed by many, including those who aren’t African American.
In his follow-up film, Us, a young woman and her family go on a vacation where they come across horrifying replicas of themselves. As the woman realizes she has a doppelganger, she is reminded of her childhood when she swapped worlds with her doppelganger inside a house of mirrors. The film has realistic subjects relating to America and its people. The message is that America seems to put a barrier between its people, primarily through race. Peele does an incredible job in the film of interpreting this message without having the movie’s structure lead up it predictably. The message only becomes clear towards the end of the film, thus heightening both the tension and the message. His latest film, Nope, added some science fiction and western tropes to his library of work in a blend hailed by New Yorker writer Richard Brody as embodying “the moral and spiritual implications of cinematic representation[of Blacks]—and exploitation.”
The approach Peele has taken in Black horror has dismantled cliches of black people that were used in older films. Most often, a black person (the “toke black character”) would be the first person to die in a horror film. The token black character is usually the Black friend of the protagonist who knows there is danger, sometimes even more than others, yet still manages to die first. After decades of this cliché being around, Peele brought a better solution to Black horror. Get Out, Us and Nope all allow the Black character to take center stage in the story, and both stay alive and “win.” His work paved the way for better horror and to the portrayal f blacks in general in cinema.
Unlike the usual mainstream black horrors, Peele used the idea of racism to his advantage to create something both surreal and scary from a storytelling standpoint, and realistic and poignant as social commentary. His films connect suspense to real-world problems in the African- American community. Peele has made a big difference in Horror, especially black horror by calling attention to the everyday struggles African Americans go through. There is a massive difference between the old structure of black horror and the new way, and Jordan Peele is one of the main contributors to that by being able to scare the audience and teach them a valuable lesson.
Sources:
https://www.theverge.com/2017/3/2/14781308/get-out-jordan-peele-horror-movie-race-interview
http://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-front-row/nope-is-one-of-the-great-movies-about-moviemaking
