Jordan Peele's "Get Out" Speaks Out Against Modern Racism

The recent buzz centered around Jordan Peele's debut film Get Out (2017) has opened up a lot of conversation about the prevalence of racism in today's time.

The movie is a comedy horror which follows the life of Chris Washington, a young African-American male photographer who is dating a white girl named Rose. The couple set out for a weekend trip to Rose's summer home in order for Chris to meet her parents. He's initially worried because Rose never told her parents that she was dating a black man. 

They arrive at a fancy mansion in the middle of the woods and Chris meets meets her parents, Dean and Missy, as well as her younger brother Jeremy. Dean is neurosurgeon and Missy is a psychiatrist/hypnotist who hypnotizes Chris into quitting smoking. 

I won't get too far into the plot, but essentially Missy hypnotized Chris more than into quitting smoking. She can now snap him into paralysis or, as she calls it,"the sunken place" at any moment she wants to. Chris, among a few other black characters, are victims of Rose's family who auctions off black people to rich white people. Black people are just vessels for these old people to spend their time in. With Missy's hypnotism and Dean's neurosurgeon skills, the two make a lot of money off of these illegal and immoral body transplants. 

At one point in the movie, Chris asks them "why black people?" And they basically respond with "black is the new fad." 

This movie does a good job illustrating modern day racism in that black people are suddenly novelties. They're taller, quicker, more agile, fashionable. These traits appeal to the old white people looking to inhabit their bodies. 

It's a pretty messed up way of addressing modern racism, but there is some truth to behold from Peele's film. People often pander to black people as to avoid seeming racist. In the very beginning of the film, Rose calls out the police officer's racism when he asks Chris for identification even though he wasn't driving. Again we see it when Chris meets Dean for the first time, who retorts "I would've totally voted for Obama a third term if I could."

Chris, like most black people, seems pretty annoyed by everyone treating him differently instead of as an equal. That, I think, is the bigger point Peele was trying to make with this movie and is a sentiment relative to the current activism in black culture today.