It “perfectly captures the terrifying truth about white women,” according to the title of an essay in Cosmopolitan by Kendra James, who
wrote, “American history is littered with the bodies of black men jailed, beaten and killed due to the simple words of white women.”
An article in The Atlantic theorized that the crucial role of photography in the movie may evoke “how important camera phones
and video recordings have been for many African-Americans experiencing police violence.”
An article in Vox pondered the “benevolent racism” of “Get Out,” while one in The Muse observed:
“The real horror, exemplified many times over, is the weapon of white privilege and pretense.”
A BuzzFeed list of “22 secrets” hidden in the movie even noted that Froot Loops cereal in one scene could be symbolic of miscegenation.
The ingeniously plotted details of “Get Out” — not just what’s in the movie, but what’s left out — gather and distill complaints
that black activists, writers and intellectuals have brought to the fore over recent years: the objectification and violation of black bodies; white people’s appropriation of black culture; the trope of the white savior.
He said that “Get Out” meant so much to him because it “shows the dangers of racism from white liberals”
and because white audiences were embracing it even though “it rejected the oldest horror movie formula of the black person dying first.”
That white audience is a notably young one: Exit polls revealed
that nearly half of all the people who saw “Get Out” when it opened on the last weekend in February were under the age of 25.
Peele, who is half the TV comedy sketch duo “Key & Peele,” has set a precedent with “Get Out,”
becoming the first black writer-director whose debut movie hit that $100 million mark.
