Y’all. I finally had the opportunity to see Get Out and let me tell you, I was ready to bag up my edges and send them to Peele because yes, yes, 1000 times yes. Get Out was truly a masterpiece. Now for those of you who might not have seen it, don’t read this article, because I don’t want to spoil the experience for you. For the rest of you that have seen it, “sink”.
From the initial opening for Blumhouse Enterprises, we see a literal foreshadowing of the movie (i.e. the heavy breathing, the room spinning, etc.) to the actual music that’s in the title sequence. The music was of a tribal nature, very heavy on the drums, but it also had dissonance in one of the chords. Dissonance, in music, is when a chord clashes, but eventually resolves, which perhaps could have been used to foreshadow the story line even more. The music was also in a minor key, featuring what is called the “devil’s interval” which can be a combination of either A & D#/Eb*, A#/Bb & E, B & F, C & F/Gb, C#/Db & G or D & Ab/G# (note that the ‘b’ is being used as the flat symbol and notes like A#/Bb are the exact same note, it just depends on which direction you’re going. Music is weird, I know.) The interesting thing with the devil’s interval is that it’s not actually a demonic thing, however in Christian renaissance music it was banned because there were so many ways it could be made up. It was actually named “diablus in musica” which is Latin for “devil in music”. I think that Jordan Peele does an excellent job of using this chord to sort of, create the suspense that surrounds the movie.
The next aspect of the movie that I found incredibly interesting was the lack of color (no pun intended). For the entirety of the movie, except for maybe two or three frames, everyone and everything was in muted hues, typically blues, grays, blacks and whites. These colors are actually most commonly associated with sadness. I also noticed that the majority of the film was shot at night, tying into Chris’ deepest darkest secret about his mothers’ death. I think the way that Peele plays with the psychological aspect of the colors and the time of day is really profound.
The family function that Rose’s grandfather held every year? Can we discuss the fact that everyone came to the party dressed in black and white like it was…a funeral? This part, in my opinion, was SO important, not only because all of the attendees were acting weird and making a plethora of underhanded comments like “black is in fashion” and “with your body, I could…” but because of the game of “bingo” that was being held. That game of bingo was so crucial to the movie as a whole. It was not an ordinary game of bingo. It really resembled an auction…a slave auction. Chris’ picture was being displayed, and in a sense, Chris was on display. It took me a while to really understand what Hudson (the blind art dealer…yeah, life happens fast) meant when he said he “didn’t have the eye for photography” and it didn’t dawn on me until he’s seen explicitly stating that he wanted Chris’s eyes. There’s a whole market based off of black bodies. That’s what Rose’s family was into and that’s why it was so weird when people made comments on Chris’s body, because they weren’t just doing a general assessment, they were seeing if he was a good candidate to harvest.
Lastly, the scene in which the “transplant surgery” was taking place was so slept on, I feel. Aside from the fact that Dean literally was cracking skulls in his basement, there are candles set up, like for a ceremony of some sort…perhaps a ritual, like that of a secret society hint, hint, “the coagula”. Now I’m not saying that Rose’s family was just Manson family times four, but what I am going to do is call a spade a spade. They was trippin’. I mean, come on y’all their slogan was “Welcome to the family” and what did they do? Trick people and bring them into their (beautiful) dark, twisted fantasy (Sorry. I couldn’t stop myself with that one). It really doesn’t get any more blatant than that.
Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed Get Out, and I know that there are so many more layers that have yet to be uncovered within this movie, but I can’t wait to see what Peele has planned for us next.
