Key & Peele‘s Jordan Peele earned the honor this year of producing the Sundance Film Festival’s most-talked-about movie. His horror flick Get Out was the festival’s much-anticipated “to-be-announced” late addition, and critics found it hilarious, insightful and terrifying.
But Peele’s scary tale has a twist: It’s an allegory, he says, for “liberal racism.”
The premise is similar to The Stepford Wives, the mid-century film where a woman discovers that the blonde, perfect housewives that populate her new neighborhood are robots, who replaced their less amiable human counterparts. In Get Out, a black man discovers that his white girlfriend’s parents are part of a plot to capture and imprison their black neighbors, who won’t agree with their political outlook.
Peele says that at its core, Get Out is about racism, but he didn’t want to use the typical “redneck” backwoods racist caricature for his antagonists. He wanted to show, he said, that racism comes in a number of forms and affects even “the liberal elite, who tend to believe that they’re—we’re—above this.”
The family in Get Out doesn’t use racial slurs or speak with Southern accents, the way Hollywood celebrities typically envision even Trump voters. They’re a normal family that goes out of their way to prove how “woke” they really are to their black neighbors and friends: they talk about liking rap music, voting for Obama, and supporting Tiger Woods’ return to the PGA.
Deep inside, though, they’re just looking to force their own form of conformity on their otherwise “diverse” group of friends.
“That is how we experience racism,” Peele said during a panel discussion on the movie, noting that the family’s statements are subtle hints at their own bigotry. “The monster of racism lurks underneath that conversation.”
It’s not clear whether the message resonated with the audience, most of whom were themselves white, liberal, Hollywood elites. But it was exceptionally well received. It opens nationwide on February 24.
