When Chris (Daniel Kaluuya), a young African-American man, visits his white girlfriend's (Allison Williams) family estate, he becomes ensnared in the real, more sinister reason for the invitation.
I was really surprised to see such a clever parable about a phenomenon that I've truly hated for my entire life hidden within a modern American horror movie with such a simple concept. This is, of course, not the first time the subject has been treated in a similar way, using different groups as its subjects, but it is still not well enough understood as it really is a challenge to the narrow American view of the world.
What I am about to say may spoil certain plot points, so if you haven't seen it, consider this fair warning. I don't want to ruin it for you. Stop reading now if you'd rather be surprised.
I should also say that a lot of people are going to take offense at some of the things I'm going to say, but I encourage you to take a deep breath and think it over. I have a lot of things to take offence at living in this country and nobody seems to care. So I think you can handle it.
I should also say that a lot of people are going to take offense at some of the things I'm going to say, but I encourage you to take a deep breath and think it over. I have a lot of things to take offence at living in this country and nobody seems to care. So I think you can handle it.
The phenomenon I'm talking about is something I've personally called the "bless your heart" phenomenon. I don't know what other people call it, but that's what I call it. It's a thing that happens to people who live here, but come from cultural backgrounds that are not understood or, frankly, are not liked by the dominant culture in America. The simplest explanation of this phenomenon is to explain it from my own experience, which is from the perspective of a Catholic living in America. I also come from a family of Portuguese immigrants. I know it's not the same thing a black person experiences, but the two differing experiences are originating from the same catalist.
Something that has happened to me over and over again as a Catholic living in America is that hundreds of Americans who I would classify as New Protestants (meaning they aren't liturgical protestants, they are more of a uniquely American Protestant culture) have really sort of just demanded that I conform to their cultural point of view without trying to understand mine. I'm expected to act like them, talk like them, believe the same things they do, have certain political alignments and so on. At the heart of this experience is one particularly aggregious behavior that I have always kind of secretly raged against in my heart. It's this thing where they will kind of imply that you can still be a Catholic as long as you reject all the things that make a Catholic different from the average Americanist New Protestant.
They literally do this by saying things like, "Oh, that guy is one of the "good" Catholics. He doesn't worship Mary or pray the Rosary or do any of that weird idol worship crap that other Catholics do." It's literally like a pat on the head and an "aren't you excited that you are allowed to stay at our party? All you have to do is wear this mask that makes you look like what I think you should look like and then do a little jig for everybody that shows you don't have a will or an identity of your own! Isn't that wonderful? Oh bless his heart, he's doing the little jig and I can't see his real face. He's such a good little Catholic. Not like those terrible ones who have integrity and refuse to relinquish their identity or their deepest held beliefs."
This is done to Catholics here in many different ways and it gets progressively more embarrassing to the history of the nation the further back in time you go. Catholic Americans have had their ancient customs oppressed here since the beginning. Skipping past the fact that there were native Catholic settlements in America over a decade before the pilgrims landed and it was actually illegal to even be Catholic in many places in the early United States (public schools openly lie about this to American students), you find specific examples of this "bless your heart" phenomenon as I call it. For instance, Catholic Americans used to celebrate huge processions involving penetant brotherhoods. This is an ancient Catholic custom and it is still practiced throughout Europe, one of the most famous is depicted in the video below, but it was outlawed in America early on. About a hundred years after it was made illegal here in the states, the Anti-Catholic organization known as the KKK modeled their own costumes after those of the outlawed Catholic Penetant Brotherhoods as a way to mock us and further rob us of our identity. If you don't believe this has had a dramatic effect on our culture in this country, show any American Catholic a picture of a European Catholic Penitant Brother and they will likely be repulsed by it's resemblance to a KKK member. The American Catholic's identity is totally robbed from him. He fears his own culture because he's been told to by systemic Americanist Protestantism. Many of the people who do this to us, don't even know they are doing it because it's been done to them too. They've been purposely miseducated just like we have. A miseducation that is complete with a story about the Catholics being the much more brutal oppressors. A hilarious irony when the nation making that claim is bordered by a Catholic nation that is made up almost entirely of free indigenous people who happily still maintain their indigenous cultural identity while also being happily and devoutly Catholic.
I am, of course, also not saying that this is something that only happens to Catholics. It happens to anyone who doesn't fit the model. And each group and, indeed, each individual has a unique experience that matches his or her own unique background and identity. Native Americans, Jews, Blacks, women, homosexuals, Catholics, immigrants. In many cases, the victims belong to more than one of these groups. My point is merely to say, if this happens to a light skinned Catholic, imagine how much worse it is for someone who actually looks and talks and thinks in a way that is totally different than the average white American.
All of this is disturbingly well summed up in the tagline of Jordan Peele's GET OUT:
"Just because you are invited, doesn't mean you are welcome."
Now, I am, of course, not going to say that Catholic people have never been guilty of the same thing. But absorbing, baptizing and preserving the culture and customs of the indigenous peoples who convert to Catholicism and ensuring that they are freely expressed by the people to whom they belong is intrinsically part of Catholic Tradition. This is provable throughout history, even in spite of the times we've failed at it. An example of one of those struggles would be when we had trouble bringing Catholicism to asia because European philosophy had become so intertwined with Catholic culture in certain parts of the world that some of us failed to imagine a Catholicism built upon Eastern philosophy. But you know what? We figured it out. I think what I'm really trying to say here is that I don't really think this country is figuring it out. The more people resist having their cultural identities stripped away, the more hostility there is from the culturally and spiritually bankrupt society that regards itself as the moral gatekeeper of this nation. I personally believe that, under the surface, this place isn't actually as different from what it was two hundred years ago as you might think it is.
"Just because you are invited, doesn't mean you are welcome."
Now, I am, of course, not going to say that Catholic people have never been guilty of the same thing. But absorbing, baptizing and preserving the culture and customs of the indigenous peoples who convert to Catholicism and ensuring that they are freely expressed by the people to whom they belong is intrinsically part of Catholic Tradition. This is provable throughout history, even in spite of the times we've failed at it. An example of one of those struggles would be when we had trouble bringing Catholicism to asia because European philosophy had become so intertwined with Catholic culture in certain parts of the world that some of us failed to imagine a Catholicism built upon Eastern philosophy. But you know what? We figured it out. I think what I'm really trying to say here is that I don't really think this country is figuring it out. The more people resist having their cultural identities stripped away, the more hostility there is from the culturally and spiritually bankrupt society that regards itself as the moral gatekeeper of this nation. I personally believe that, under the surface, this place isn't actually as different from what it was two hundred years ago as you might think it is.
I am, of course, also not saying that this is something that only happens to Catholics. It happens to anyone who doesn't fit the model. And each group and, indeed, each individual has a unique experience that matches his or her own unique background and identity. Native Americans, Jews, Blacks, women, homosexuals, Catholics, immigrants. In many cases, the victims belong to more than one of these groups. My point is merely to say, if this happens to a light skinned Catholic, imagine how much worse it is for someone who actually looks and talks and thinks in a way that is totally different than the average white American.
Jordan Peele's film, GET OUT, deftly illustrates this phenomenon through a simple parable in which black people are lured to a house where rich white people go out of their way to tell them how much they like black people. But there is something off about the whole thing. It isn't that they like black people, it's that they seem like what a black person could be if they just acted like white people. Or, worse still, they literally want to place a self entitled, rich, white, American's personality into a black person's body. We discover that the black people lured to this house are eventually hypnotized, their consciousness suppressed so that the majority of their brains can be replaced with the brain of a white person who won them in a silent auction. This is essentially presented as something of a favor, though the victim doesn't have a choice in the matter. The physical attributes of a black person are combined with the mind of a white person. The true identity of the black person will be suppressed to the position of a mere observer and passenger, unable to make decisions or act for themselves, only able to watch what the white mind does with his body. The sick part is that his identity is still there. Burried in a place where it cannot act. A conflicting and unreasoning and maybe just a primordial and instinctive remnant of a forgotten identity that sometimes slips out and causes mayhem for the imposed dominant personality who does not know anything about that part of itself or why it can be such a problem. They see it simply as an animal to keep caged.
At the end of the day, it's a pretty simple movie, not my favorite kind of movie, maybe not even masterfully executed, but I want more works of art like this. More GET OUTs and less garbage corporate action movies that tell us we need to "do what's right" but never want to take a stand for exactly what the right thing is. Art that entertains, but actually says something to you, something that plants a seed that grows and grows until maybe some day it's a lot more than just another movie. More art that pulls the veil off the world. More art that shows you the Matrix you are trapped in.
I want art that tells the truth even if it makes people a little uncomfortable.
But that's just me, I guess.
At the end of the day, it's a pretty simple movie, not my favorite kind of movie, maybe not even masterfully executed, but I want more works of art like this. More GET OUTs and less garbage corporate action movies that tell us we need to "do what's right" but never want to take a stand for exactly what the right thing is. Art that entertains, but actually says something to you, something that plants a seed that grows and grows until maybe some day it's a lot more than just another movie. More art that pulls the veil off the world. More art that shows you the Matrix you are trapped in.
I want art that tells the truth even if it makes people a little uncomfortable.
But that's just me, I guess.
