Spilling the Hypnotic Tea: A Reflection on Get Out 5 Years Later

I remember first watching Jordan Peele's breakout horror film Get Out on its premiere night in February 2017. The date was the dawn of my 17th birthday, and as an almost-17-year-old and long time lover (or nerd) of all that is horror and gore, I went into the experience simply feeling excited to employ the last of my teen angst in sneaking into a Rated R movie before actually being old enough to watch them according to the MPAA and theater policies. To say that the trailer of the movie alone was intriguing is an understatement for me, as it more accurately captivated me and opened new doors to the horror that I had never considered or known to exist. Still, my young age and the fun of watching a midnight showing of a horror movie on a school night with friends was what I was focused on entering the theater. 

There’s this hilarious and ongoing meme that I've seen on TikTok and Twitter where people talk about how they walk out of the movie theater and feel like a completely changed person every time a movie ends, and that was truly felt for me with Get Out-but in a lasting and very real way. The movie showed me what horror really was and the lengths that it extends to, existing as much more than demons, monsters, and scary but fantasy masked people with weapons. Get Out showed me how horror is and has always been real, for my people and I had never looked at the genre as an extension of history. The movie was inspiring to me as a fan of horror and as a black person who hated the sheer lack of or the offensive, caricature representation of Black people in the genre. Even more specifically, like Peele, as a mixed person with a white mom, I  knew both sides of the narrative all too well and experienced many of the themes from the movie from my own white family members- appropriation/coveting Black bodies, isolation and the need to assimilate, frequent microaggressions and especially the hypocrisies of liberal racism. Was my life a horror film?

I walked out of the theater feeling ready to change the world, which sounds very funny but the movie was truly that impactful and above all else eye-opening to my young eyes and the shielded perspective that was blinded by my built-up tolerance for what seemed like normal, white people behavior. I didn't want to just deal with it anymore and ignore it because “Oh that's just Grandma! You know her!” and I certainly didn't want to be complicit in their behavior anymore. Letting it slide was horror and would continue to be for me if I didn’t wake up and get out of the mixed-race sunken place. I could write a novel about the complete mental shift that took place at this impressionable age, post-Get Out, but the most important thing to mention was that it became my favorite horror movie and remains #1 to this day. I never thought that I would have the opportunity to continue this Black horror awakening at UCLA through this class and I expect to continue writing about the ways that I feel like a “brand new person” when I walk out of Professor Tananarive Due’s Sunken Place classroom even when the quarter ends.