Bourge-wise Cat

I suppose it's redundant to reiterate how ingenious it was for director Peele to select the
vehicle of a horror/thriller to transport racially existential themes. In hindsight, it's an
obvious, intuitive genre to use. But it turns out that Peele had the foresight to pinpoint the
horrors of white supremacy and elaborate on them in a stylized cinematic way.
Genre gimmicks abound in “Get Out” - zombified characters, caricatured archetypes,
suspenseful plot points, carefully calculated missteps, violent crescendo, trick ending.
There is a Hitchcockian sense of suspense and tension throughout the movie, but also
nods and allusions to B movies, slasher films, 80s teen horror flicks – and yet the movie
never seems cheap or derivative. Rather, it’s an elevated and cerebral psychological
horror on par with Poe. It takes the thriller genre to a new zenith by infusing a plausible
plot and refusing to showcase gratuitous gore. Rather, aggressive actions arise
organically and are legitimized by context. All elements germane to the genre work in
service to propel the plot of “Get Out” in an imaginative, if terrifying way.
For what we are dealing with in "Get Out" is an evocation of modern-day slavery via
hypnosis and a vicious eugenics. Peele is urging us to see how all we are all subtly but
forcefully mesmerized by white supremacy and its myriad connotations and
reverberations. He is laying bare all of our preposterous "post-racial" claims and turning
them inside out to reveal a seedy, sleazy underside.
I have long wrangled with the dilemma of how American society can disentangle itself
from the dastardly web it's spun itself into regarding racial relations. And Jordan Peele's
movie seems to reinforce my fears - that we are so deeply enmeshed in the maze of racial
dysfunctions that we're better off just cutting loose from the labyrinth and starting over
completely.
But how do we dismantle white supremacy? By eradicating Caucasians? Obviously that's
not possible or desirable. By further segregating the races? That’s already happening.
We’ve been regressing for quite some time, as neighborhoods and schools self-segregate
along racial lines. It would almost be justifiable if the situation did not always result in
further suffering by people of color.
The situation is urgent. Jordan Peele's movie is a clarion call (a cacophonous clarion call)
to action. His movie suggests that we should be more aware of our own deep-seeded
prejudices and the actions we and others take that might be loaded with sinister intention,
even if superficially we think we are acting from an impetus of self-awareness and
benevolence.
For example, we might think that the justice system will ultimately "rehabilitate" the
staggering number of black men caught up in it, without realizing that it's the system
itself that caters to a white supremacist philosophy that deliberately thwarts black
ascendancy.
Lynching is no longer necessary when you have prison cages that will stifle the soul. The
KKK’s fashion apparel is rendered anachronistic because the enforcers of Anglo