Get Out has undoubtably been wildly successful. With a relatively unknown cast and first time director Jordan Peele, it has become at once iconic and classic. Unlike other horror movies, it doesn’t rely on jump scares to be scary. The horror of Get Out comes from a fear we all have deeply rooted inside of us: the fear of racism.
This fear presents itself in many ways throughout the film, but none more terrifying than “The Sunken Place”. Without giving too much away for those who have yet to see the movie, it is a place in your mind where you are essentially detached from your body. Think sleep paralysis, and you’re on the right track. In two tweets, Peele explained the significance of the Sunken Place and opened a world of analysis. “We’re all in the Sunken Place,” he said, later explaining, “The Sunken Place means we’re marginalized. No matter how hard we scream, the system silences us.” If that’s not enough to scare you, allow me to elaborate.
Although the victim and main character, Chris, is completely aware of his physical surroundings while in the Sunken Place, his consciousness is not present. Any physical movement Chris’ body experiences has been enacted on him by someone else, while his mind is still trapped inside of itself. He’s only a passenger in his own skin. In this aspect, people of color are in this state of riding along in life. The institutionalized racism that people of color continue to face holds us back while the country moves forward. To take it a step further, mass incarceration quite literally places us in the Sunken Place. From the moment someone is arrested, they lose almost all sense of agency; they have little to no control over their own future. Discrimination in our judicial system is placing people of color behind bars en masse, forcing them into a physical Sunken Place.
What’s worse about the Sunken Place is the fact that the people in power, his girlfriend’s family, placed him there to specifically use him for their gain. This goes without saying that the larger “system” Peele highlighted in his tweet have placed people of color in the situations they find themselves in today. Harking all the way back in colonization, Europeans and their descendants have built and played into the system that uses us and creates the hardships we face today. People of color feel trapped, victimized, and disillusioned with how America is treating them. We have been in the Sunken Place for generations.
It only takes a flash to bring someone out of the Sunken Place. In the movie, there is a scene where Chris takes a picture of a Ben Carson wannabe, bringing him out of the Sunken Place screaming “Get out of my fucking head!”. Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Freddy Gray, Sandra Bland and the hundreds of black men and women killed every year were the flashes that brought Black America out of the Sunken Place screaming and hollering that Black Lives Matter.
While I’m not an elite liberal white woman posing as a black teen, the messages Get Out carries shows a reality many of us face on a daily basis. Peele raises points on mental slavery, white privilege and liberal racism while also managing to scare the shit out of you. Look, I could probably go into infinite detail on each one of these points, but by then I’d probably have my I.S. finished. Just watch the movie. It’s more than worth it.
Desi LaPoole, a Contributing Writer for the Voice, can be reached for comment at DLaPoole20@wooster.edu.