Image © Universal Pictures (Distributor's film page: https://www.universalpictures.com/movies/get-out/posters) by Kyna Morgan
Following the recent completion of my master's dissertation in which I looked at writer-director Jordan Peele's 'social thriller' (as Peele himself calls it), Black horror film Get Out (2017), I wanted to delve into some specific aspects of the film, some of which I wasn't able to include in my dissertation. (This first piece will be general and function as a brief overview of some points of interest.) Titled 'Woke Horror: Sociopolitics, Genre, and Blackness in Get Out (2017)', my dissertation explored the film's place in sociopolitical horror film history, how it addresses Blackness as an integral part of creating horror, and also its postmodernist status (the state of being postmodern, a point that Lisa Guerrero has made, is a reality inherent to lived Black experience). The film has often been covered in reviews and articles as mainly a 'social thriller', one that was inspired by (as Peele has often discussed) other horror films such as Night of the Living Dead (1968), Rosemary's Baby (1968), The Stepford Wives (1975), and Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978), but also, and specifically, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967) about an interracial couple (a White woman and Black man played by Katharine Houghton and Sidney Poitier, respectively) who visit her parents, introducing them to her fiancé. Peele's film makes stylistic reference to 1980s horror slashers like Friday the 13th (1980, with series continuing for decades) and, even more recently, 1990s slashers like Scream (1996, with subsequent films into the 2000s), through its visual aesthetic and haptic sensibility.
Following the recent completion of my master's dissertation in which I looked at writer-director Jordan Peele's 'social thriller' (as Peele himself calls it), Black horror film Get Out (2017), I wanted to delve into some specific aspects of the film, some of which I wasn't able to include in my dissertation. (This first piece will be general and function as a brief overview of some points of interest.) Titled 'Woke Horror: Sociopolitics, Genre, and Blackness in Get Out (2017)', my dissertation explored the film's place in sociopolitical horror film history, how it addresses Blackness as an integral part of creating horror, and also its postmodernist status (the state of being postmodern, a point that Lisa Guerrero has made, is a reality inherent to lived Black experience). The film has often been covered in reviews and articles as mainly a 'social thriller', one that was inspired by (as Peele has often discussed) other horror films such as Night of the Living Dead (1968), Rosemary's Baby (1968), The Stepford Wives (1975), and Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978), but also, and specifically, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967) about an interracial couple (a White woman and Black man played by Katharine Houghton and Sidney Poitier, respectively) who visit her parents, introducing them to her fiancé. Peele's film makes stylistic reference to 1980s horror slashers like Friday the 13th (1980, with series continuing for decades) and, even more recently, 1990s slashers like Scream (1996, with subsequent films into the 2000s), through its visual aesthetic and haptic sensibility.
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