To be blunt, Get Out is a movie about racism. More specifically, Get Out only really seems to challenge one tenant of the dominant ideology of white patriarchal capitalism: whiteness. Patriarchy is upheld, as male characters seem to be leading most scenes, and the movie doesn’t even pass the Bechdel Test. Capitalism seems to be uncontested, as class appears to be almost entirely invisible. From a casting perspective, whiteness isn’t held higher, however: the main character, Chris, appears to be African American, and while a large portion of the cast is white, black characters, or at the very least black bodies, make up what I would consider to be a significant, near-majority portion of the cast. Get Out goes much further than this, however, in challenging white supremacy, and in this paper I am going to use scenes from this film to argue that it is using form and content to create empathy and help viewers understand the existence—and prevalence—of subliminal racism in our society, challenging the hegemonic ideology that works to make people believe it doesn’t exist and that racism is no longer an issue.
In watching this film, one element stood out to me more than anything else: the continual appearance of deer. In the first few minutes of the movie, as Rose and Chris are traveling to Rose’s parents’ house, a jump scare provides the first appearance: seemingly out of nowhere, a deer collides with their car. It seems to be as startling to the viewer as it is to the characters. As soon as they pull over, the first thing Chris does is go after the deer, checking if it’s still alive, seeing if there’s anything he can do for it. As we later find out, Chris’s mother was killed in a hit-and-run when he was a child, and in the hours between when she goes missing and authorities come across her, Chris does nothing, only later realizing he might’ve been able to save her life if only he’d acted. This seems to be the motive for Chris’s actions: the deer was also “hit,” and this past trauma inclines him to make sure nothing can be done. At the end of the film, Chris hits the housekeeper/grandmother Georgina with a car while trying to escape, and his guilt forces him to pull over and pick her up, making sure that he can save her in the way he didn’t for his mother, despite putting himself through more risk.
But back to the deer: after he checks on the dying deer, and after a stressful encounter with a cop (for me, at least), Chris and Rose arrive at her parents’ house, and in conversing with them, Rose mentions that they hit a deer. In response, Rose’s dad says the following:
Well you know what I say? I say one down, a couple hundred thousand to go. … No—I don’t mean to get on my high horse, but I’m telling you, I do not like the deer. I’m sick of it. They’re taking over. They’re like rats. They’re destroying the ecosystem. I see a dead deer on the side of the road, I think to myself, ‘That’s a start.’ … I’m just saying—you know what? I am grateful for what you’ve done today. I don’t like ‘em. (Peele, 2017)
In watching this movie for the first time, this came off as nothing more than a bit odd, if not slightly hateful. Afterwards, however, this scene felt glaringly different: Rose and her family are what I can only describe as the highest form of white supremacists, and this desire of the dad’s to exterminate all deer isn’t really about the deer, but instead mirrors his desires for black people as a group. Whether it be trying not to spook Chris, or adhering to public societal expectations, Rose’s family is using a facade of neoliberal progressivism to hide an ugly core of racist hatred. When not in private, this is only detectable when it seeps out in the form of weird outbursts. To Rose’s dad, the deer population is no different from black people, or, possibly, all humans who aren’t white like them.
In being part of a non-dominant group, you learn to read people and situations for distaste through the tiniest of crumbs, and this scene is an excellent example of this: to most primarily dominant people, a rant like this about deer might seem innocuous. But if you’ve lived your whole life being forced to use signs like this to determine exactly what kind of a group you’re in, this might really stand out, and the polite-smile-plus-“What’s your deal?”-nod Chris gives in this moment seems to be indicative of this. I hate to compare oppression, but as a white, male-presenting gay guy, I feel that my use of these tactics is quite trivial compared to even the most dominant black man’s requirement for them: I’m worrying about people turning off their so-called ally-ship in the presence of certain people or scenarios, or searching for signs of alienation in conversations with family members. But as the existence of groups such as Black Lives Matter seem to indicate, however, a significant number of people of color have to at least occasionally deal with literal, credible threats to their lives, and this tactic of skepticism acts as a first line of defense. In this scene, along with the two scenes with police, and that moment where everyone falls silent as soon as Chris walks upstairs, this idea of being constantly on alert became much more clear to me, particularly as a white person with little experience with it.
Going back to deer symbolism: the final major use of this takes place at the beginning of the final stretch of the movie, when Chris wakes up in the education/waiting/game room. The room is upholstered from floor to ceiling in dark, expensive wood, and surrounded with table games, Chris sits in the center of the room, shackled to a lounge chair. The mise-en-scène, the scene’s visual design, combined with actor placement and cinematography choices, make it feel especially stifling: what appears to be a complete lack of windows or doors; fluorescent lighting reminiscent of a basement; and shots taken from the ceiling, as if you’re looking down into a small pet’s cage, push this. Above these, a gigantic, antler-strewn deer head sits on the wall. Its placement high up on the ceiling both makes the walls feel taller and Chris appear smaller. As the scene goes on, though, much of the set seems to fade away as we officially learn Chris’s fate, with the exception of the deer head: it makes its way into many of the shots, its significance being confirmed by a sequence in which Chris stares fearfully at the deer for what feels like forever, and the deer seems to return the look, staring back down at him for an equal amount of time. It’s in this moment that the deer’s significance is cemented: not only do deer mirror the family’s hatred for black people, but it also matches the way they want black people to exist in their world. They admire the beauty of the body of the deer, but they hate its life. If it were up to them, deer wouldn’t exist except for as hallow corpses on their walls: no autonomy, no life, no brain at all: nothing more than a thing they can look at, a thing that is just a thing. Their wants for black people are the same: they admire their beauty and strength, but abhor their minds to the point of replacing them with their own, supposedly superior brains. They want to appropriate black bodies for themselves, literally removing the humanity from these people, stripping any “dangerous” ideals from them until they’re not just watered down but only water, so that they can use them as a vessel for themselves.
The path of the deer in this film represents the trajectory of their racism, as well: what seems to be insignificant quirks that aren’t indicative of anything slowly spiral out, revealing more and more until you have uncovered a plot to replace all black minds with white ones in black bodies, what could ultimately become a mind genocide. For the deer, this goes from hallow wants to kill all the deer to murdering them and turning their corpses into a decoration on the wall. This says that what might seem to be insignificant hints of racism in our society are anything but insignificant, as they lead the way down a tunnel that ends in genocide: no amount of racism is acceptable, as tiny as it may seem.
For context, Get Out has been granted many awards, including the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay (IMDB). This is significant, but more important is the cultural context of this movie. According to The Guardian in 2015, young black men are killed by police at a rate five times higher than white men of the same age. Every day it feels like another unarmed black child is killed by police, just as has been going on for years. The form of racism that causes this is subtle and nowhere near being only present in many police officers. When Jordan Peele wrote this movie in the time leading up to 2017, I think these statistics where at least a part of what drove him. This movie feels like it was made for this exact time because it addresses the exact, seemingly nonexistent racism that fills our world right now. I think this was Peele’s intention for this movie.