Race is often an idea that writers play around with and how it is usually represented in the media is different from how it is in real life. Black people were the kind of people you wouldn’t see around in the entertainment industries, whether it be in the actor, director or writers role. In fact seeing a black creator in the early times was very rare; and the black people had to struggle through their times to get where they are now. Many people were quoting Marx’s ideas and that would be the start of struggles for Black people on standing on their own and getting their respect as humans. Nicole Rousseau revised Black Feminism in three phases, one of them ‘shows how Black women have been historically contextualized as instruments of production’( Belkhir, 2). Though this doesn’t specifically talk about the slavery in the fields, it is insinuated that it is talking about slavery in all of the areas of production. Fetishization of Black people started during the slavery times where white people were interested in certain qualities of the Black people and continued on to this day. The movie Get Out, a psychological horror, is a perfect example of how white people fetishize Black people and the lengths they go for their obsession. Race, especially the black race, is fetishized within the community both now and in the past and is also depicted in the movie ‘Get Out’.
Racism might have gotten unnoticeable over time but unfortunately it never disappeared. Racism technically started in the slavery times where white people took people from their own homes and took them to foreign lands; where black people were forced to work in the fields for the white people to do all the labor. It is good to say that the importance of race has developed over the years but it doesn’t mean it disappeared overnight. Black people fought for their freedom across the globe and though they got their freedom, there was a lot of segregation happening in the United States. One of the people who were fighting for the segregation to end was Martin Luther King Jr, and he was unfortunately assassinated. However, the outcome for the movement against segregation was the Brown v Board of Education and on the 44th anniversary of this event, the American anthropologists came out with a statement on race (Lightfoot, 3). This document entailed the anthropologists positions on race and how some of them were giving the movement support as early as the late 18th century to early 20th century. Nicole Rousseau also worked part of the struggle but specifically for the Black feminism and going against women being used ‘as an instrument of production.’ Both Black women and men suffer from the stereotypes that are held against them; where black women would always be the stay at home with a husband that can’t make the means or the the Black woman who is the maid for the white family and her husband is the lazy man that expects the woman to bring in the income. While some stereotypes depict the reality that some black households have, it doesn’t show everything, rather it is more of a humiliating thing.
The film ‘Get Out’, a psychological horror film, was released in 2017 and it was co-produced and directed by Jordan Peele who also produced great psychological movies like ‘Us’. He is known for his film and television work in both comedy and horror films. The movie Get Out’s opening scene is a black guy walking on the sidewalk of a suburban neighborhood talking to his girlfriend and down the road goes a white 1983 Porsche 944 on the opposite way of where he was going. The guy noticed the car after his girlfriend was trying to direct to where the house is and he made a joke about being in a white suburban neighborhood. The camera shows that the car did a u-turn and started slowing down, which then caused the guy to be suspicious so he turns around to leave but he realizes that the door to the car is open and that nobody is inside; next thing that happens is a guy checking and the guy being thrown in the trunk. The next scene starts with a white girl, Rose, buying pastries and visiting her Black boyfriend, Chris; they leave to visit Rose’s family for the weekend. There were red flags or things that were obviously suspicious; starting from Chris’s arrival and how overly accommodating Rose’s family were acting (Moiz). The father was saying weird things to seem welcoming towards Chris but was only coming out in a way that would seem that they were trying so hard to seem accepting white liberals. Continuing in their conversation, the family would make weird comments about Chris’s skin color and he was even asked at some point if he liked Tiger Woods, however the film shows how the ‘ignorance and racist stereotypes micro-aggression are enacted’ which only creates uncomfortable racist situations (Moiz). Rose’s family were all making racist comments towards and even at some point Chris’s body is fetishized by a woman Lisa and asked Rose ‘if it’s better’ and another couple saying that black ‘is in fashion’. First Rose’s father was trying to be the liberal white accepting father by making such comments that would make him seem like he is very accepting of Black people. However, as later seen Rose gets with Black boyfriends and brings them back to her parents house where they get hypnotized and get their own consciousness locked away. Chris realizes the truth much later when he sees all of the black boyfriends and a girlfriend she had; two of them being the housekeeper and the garden keeper. Rose’s family would lure Black men and women and would lock their consciousness away and was being fetishisd even at some saying that ‘Black in is fashion’ (Moiz). This shows that all Rose’s family was focusing on was the black people’s bodies.
Even though racism is depicted in the movie, it could be only said that Jordan Peele was inspired from real life events. Racism is one of the ideas that was always talked about and movements were created, the most recent one being the Black Lives Matter Movement that was created after George Flloyd. He died of gun violence and gun violence has always been a problem against the black people. Racism didn’t even start from here; going back to the early times, it started from the slavery. During slavery, a lot of people were taken from their homeland only to be put into work on the field and one of them was Sara Baartman. Sara was a South African woman and she was turned into an exhibition for her big buttocks (Gassam Asare). She became a tourist attraction in the most dehumanizing ways and it was without her consent; which in turn validated every abuse that the white people were doing against the black people. Compared to Chris’s story, both of their bodies were fetishized against their consent; the white people were fascinated with their body. The movie shows the new slavery where they capture the Black people because they believed that black people can’t exist without their help. This is the epitome of the white savior mindset; Black people are nothing without the white people or the white are the saviors of the rest of humanity. A lot of people might say “but it’s just a film, who said that what happens in the film actually happens in real life?” Films are most of the time a depiction of the real world. Racism exists and whether the truthfulness of the movie is doubted or not; the truth is there are so many people who still to this day experience racism in some way or another. The latest being George Flloyd and all of the people who suffered from Gun violence and died because of it, so no, racism has not disappeared it comes in waves. Jordan Peele himself said that this movie was inspired by real life horrors and racism in daily life, that should make it known that racism still exists and Get Out was just a depiction of what racism could cause and what the Black people have to go through everyday.
To conclude, racism started from the slavery times and still to this day continues on affecting many young people especially with the gun violence in the US. Black people struggled to keep their freedom within the US and not that they were enslaved again, but the segregation, the violence could be considered as an imprisonment of the mind. The segregation between the white and the Black people was what caused Martin Luther to start his movement back and what caused everyone to start the Black Lives Matter Movement after George Flloyd. It can be seen in the movie Get Out that Rose’s family are fetishizing the fact that Chris is black, one even asking if ‘it is better’ maybe comparing to all other black people that Rose tricked into their demise. Those white people were fetishizing their skin just like they were doing it to Sara Baartman. The South African lady that was turned into an exhibition and a tourist attraction because of her buttocks. This shows the behaviors and the struggle that Black people have always gone through.
Annotated Bibliography
Belkhir, Jean Ait, and Christiane Charlemaine. “Introduction: Race, Gender and Class and Social Movement, Environmental Justice, Gender, Ethnicity, Culture of Poverty Issues.” Race, Gender & Class, vol. 20, no. 3/4, 2013, pp. 167–70. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/43496939. Accessed 9 Nov. 2023.
The authors talk about the distinct realities of class, race and gender questions that were not answered by the marxists. Marx’s idea was that of the class division and class struggles and how the oppressed would at last be starting to revolt and build up a new society. They also talk about three different articles that focus on social change and they analyze each of them; “Counter-revolutions in the name of emancipation: the Regressive character of Gender and Race Progress.” and other articles. These articles touch on the different social changes that were taken and led by other people; especially the one that was led by the black woman where they revisioned the Black Feminist Thought.
I will use these sources in the body paragraphs as a way to explain how race and class have progressed over the years and the effort that has been put in. I would also like to use it as a way to explain how Marx’s idea has impacted race and class and if impacted it negatively or positively. I am then going to connect it to the movie Get out 2017 and delve deeper into how this movie tackles racism in an interesting way, demonstrating that even liberals are capable of holding racist views by dominating and managing Black people compulsively.
Gassam Asare, Janice. “What Is Fetishization And How Does It Contribute To Racism?” Forbes, 7 Feb. 2021, www.forbes.com/sites/janicegassam/2021/02/07/what-is-fetishization-and-how-does-it-contribute-to-racism/?sh=4cea16d16e39.
This article talks about fetishization and how it contributes to racism. It discusses the different races and how they were fetishized for specific things that relate to their race; for example a research has found that men were more into dating an asian woman than other races on dating apps due to the ‘yellow fever’ stigma that surrounds them. The author also talks about Sara Baartman, the south african lady that faced dehumanization because of her buttocks where the white colonizer men made her a tourist attraction in Europe. They continue talking about the fetishization of light skinned people and how it happens differently to children and adults.
I will use this article as a comparison between how racism happens in real life and I will compare it to how it happens in the movie.
Lightfoot, Jonathan. “Race, Class, Gender, Intelligence, and Religion Perspectives.” Race, Gender & Class, vol. 17, no. 1/2, 2010, pp. 31–38. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/41674721. Accessed 9 Nov. 2023.
Lightfoot mainly talks about and investigates opinions on education, society, and humanity’s nature that he defines as being influenced by race, class, gender, IQ, and religion. According to him, the classification systems are all the product of social and political construction. He goes on to compare how each of the race, class, gender and etc perspectives are different and similar. For example, in the race perspective he talks about how anthropologists first made statements about race and how after so many years the racial hierarchy and racial ideology was developed when it came to associating their differences. He continues on top and delves deeper into the other topics too.
This paper talks about a lot of topics but the only topics that I am interested in and that would help my paper are the class and the race perspectives. I think it would be interesting if I used this as a background information on the history of class and race. How was race and class classified in the early times and how it changed over time? It will make more sense if I use it in the introduction and maybe first paragraph and introduce how it is relevant to my topic.
Moiz, Abdul. Get Out Film Analysis- Negrophilia, Race-Relation and the New Dynamic., medium.com/@abdulmoiz168/get-out-film-analysis-negrophilia-race-relation-and-the-new-dynamic-b64f6ed8095f.
This source is an analysis of the film ‘Get Out’ released in 2017. This movie has a heavy message behind it as it talks about racism and how the white liberals try to undermine their racism towards the black people. The author uses direct quotations from the movie in which he explains deeply about the racism depicted and how black are fantasized. Chris, who is the main male character, goes to his white girlfriend’s house where he senses that something is extremely wrong. He goes through a lot of things emotionally and he finds out the truth about the girlfriend’s family at last.
-This source will be a good source to help my analysis of the film. I will use my own analysis but most likely will use the direct quotes that are used in the article. I will use this in the body paragraphs. I believe this source will help organize my thoughts on what I want to say and will lead me in the right direction when it comes to my analysis. It was going on deep analysis on why the white people had these obsessions with the black people and how their daughter would trick men and bring them to her family’s house.
Comments are closed, but trackbacks and pingbacks are open.