Underlying Themes
Last night I caught up to Jordan Peele’s wildly successful Get Out (2017), courtesy of Netflix. It is the story of a young black man who meets his white girlfriend’s well-to-do parents, who live in an exclusive community. The only member of the cast I recognized is Catherine Keener, although most of the players have extensive credits, including Peele himself. He also wrote the screenplay, for which he won an Oscar. It is intelligent and fresh despite similarities to Rosemary’s Baby (1968) and The Stepford Wives (1975). It is worth a look for the horror aspect alone. Of course, one will wonder if there is more to it than the plot and the awkwardness of upper class whites with blacks. Since I’ve never been good at deciphering hidden messages in films or literary fiction, I ran a search and found an interesting article by Mark Harris on his ideas about the flick. All were plausible, although I was disappointed at what he believes it is saying. Although race relations seem to be at a nadir currently in America, Harris apparently believes it is exclusively a white problem. Here’s a link to the piece, which is about a ten-minute read and should be read only by those who have already seen the movie, as it amounts to an extensive spoiler. It diminished my enjoyment of the flick:
https://www.thethings.com/15-mind-blowing-secret-messages-hidden-in-the-movie-get-out/
377,000+ users at Amazon have rated Get Out, forging to a consensus of 7.7 on a scale of ten. It was nominated for three other Academy Awards besides the aforementioned: Best Picture, Director, and Actor for Daniel Kaluuya. It runs 1:44. There is intense violence, but it’s intelligently staged, avoiding the graphic depictions of similar fare. There is a lot of profanity. There’s a bit of politics. At one point the protagonist agrees with a comment that Obama is best the president of his lifetime, which is likely to grate on those who believe the opposite, as it did on me. The fair-minded among his supporters would admit that race relations did not improve during his watch and may have even gotten worse. Whatever. Get Out was a box office smash. Made on a budget of five million, it returned more than $255 million worldwide, a mega-impressive big screen debut for Peele, whose second feature, Us, has just been released. It will be interesting to see where he goes from here. Here’s a still of Kaluuya and Allison Williams. The article points out that the shirts may be symbolic of the stars and stripes:
The mainstream media that dubbed John McCain a racist when he was running against Obama are now horrified by President Trump’s comments about him. The two have hated each other for decades. McCain took his revenge by promoting the phony Russian dossier that enabled the special counsel’s witchhunt, and by voting against the repeal of Obamacare after promising the opposite during his final and toughest senate campaign. He betrayed his constituents to get in a last shot at Trump.
As it has so often in the past, the Chase bank at Bay Parkway and 85th provided a barrier against the furious wind, enabling the floating book shop to open. I had only one buyer today, a young Latino who for some reason was attracted to Present and Past. Gracias, senor.
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