The Get Out movie trailer was one that made the hairs on people’s backs, legs and heads stand up straight. It plays on one’s curiosity, as it appears to be a horror movie based on a topical and important social issue: racism.
It shows Chris, an African American in an interracial relationship with Rose Armitage, a Caucasian introducing her boyfriend to her family for the first time. What ensued was one hell of a visit that ended with a whole family’s dark secret being exposed.
Jordan Peele’s Get Out is a biting satire on racism in the United States.
This subject matter of racism is so sensitive that it becomes an unacceptable, uncomfortable topic to talk about. Get Out pushes those boundaries and uses the genre of horror to demonstrate the horror of racism.
In the film, the Armitage family kidnaps African American people, sells them and uses them for their own personal benefits. It seemed like a high-definition form of slavery.
Although there are currently no people switching brains to preserve personality, there is a realistic horror of racism present in the movie that can be likened to reality. The fear that someone could hate you or think less of you because you’re a little darker than he/she is is ridiculous. But this is a reality for many people today. This is why a movie like Get Out is important.
The movie should make you feel uncomfortable regardless of your skin color, because you have a heart. It is a form of awareness to let people know that: “Hey, I am uncomfortable because you automatically judge me to be worthless, animalistic, uneducated, just because of my skin color.” Racism is experienced in all races and it still happens today in our jobs, schools and everyday life. That is an unfortunate truth.
But we have the power to change that. We should change that. Because we all have one brain, one heart, one body—we are the same, so why do we hate?
More movies like Get Out are bound to come out to make people more culturally aware. They will become social commentaries. Granted, there are exaggerations for the thrill, but there will always be a message “there is a problem, and we need to fix it”. #racialequality.