Author: schmidt.1069

Text Review Assignment: Get Out

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Get Out Text Review Assignment

 

            Get Out, a motion picture by Jordan Peele is considered one of the most interesting and creative stories movie watchers have seen in the film industry in the 21st century.  This horror-thriller follows our main character Chris as he and his girlfriend, Rose, are meeting her parents for the first time in a weekend getaway to her parent’s house. Chris is nervous about meeting them due to their interracial relationship but as the weekend continues Chris soon discovers the truth on why Rose wants to bring him to her parents for the weekend. The film would go on do to excellent box office-wise and critically while winning an Oscar for best original screenplay for Jordan Peele’s first film. The film also does a phenomenal job of showcasing themes and ideas that have never been showcased in the film industry like this.

One of the main themes that Get Out does an excellent job of portraying throughout the entirety of the film is the idea of slavery and how Chris discovers the plan where the party that Rose’s parents through was actually was a ploy to sell off Chris’s body to one of Rose’s white friends because his body is getting old. Chris ends up getting captured when discovering this truth out and it is revealed to him that the people behind this operation view the African-American body as excellent and far superior to a white person’s body and also this man needed a new body to continue his life. This is very comparable to the Master-Slave dialogue that has been talked about a lot in the class where Caucasian people in this movie are the masters using the African Americans as a slave for just their bodies. The director and screenwriter, Jordan Peele, does an excellent job of showcasing slavery and this Master-Slave dynamic in the movie.

Another theme that is showcased throughout this movie is the othering as it works in a unique way that you don’t see too much with how othering is usually showcased. Othering in this movie is showcased by the Caucasian people at the party wanting the other who is Chris for his body because they find it superior. Chris is kind of shown outcast at the party and is ultimately the other and even when he finds another African-American he realizes that he is still the other because he realizes that he is actually a white person in an African-Americans body. The film is ultimately a depiction of slavery and how even these “white liberal parents” from Get Out could still play a really big factor at hand and you could have no idea about it. Peele is asking the audience to look around and see if you can see ideas of slavery in your everyday life because sometimes it is hard to notice when you aren’t looking. Peele does an excellent job of conveying this message in Get Out and highly recommend you watch it.

Systematic Injustice In Schools

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Plenty of us have seen systematic injustices throughout our daily lives from going to the grocery, to walking in the park, and many other situations that showcase systematic injustices being in our daily lives. The situation that stands out to me the most of seeing this systematic injustice is when going to high school. To give you background, I went to high school in a very country and rural part of Ohio where the demographic on race was probably 95% Caucasian and 5% every other race. Coming from this high school, behavior towards minorities and racism was expected as most kids grew up on these ideals being from this very rural part of Ohio. While in school, the behavior got better but still the treatment that I saw towards the minorities in the school was unacceptable. Many examples of this behavior from Caucasian students included saying the “n word” like it meant nothing, calling African Americans being called names, and other minorities also being called names at the school. Minorities were being treated differently than Caucasian students at the school. While this behavior came from students at the school, I still think that this is an example of a systematic injustice because this and issue that the top down need to enforce in schools. Teachers saw this type of behavior in school should report it and take the appropriate actions to to make it better for minority students going through this for a more productive school environment. This example from my school is also another good look at a theory we have gone through in class of de Beauvoir’s theory of othering. The theory applies to this example of an injustice because Caucasian students view themselves as the one while minorities as the other at the school making fun of them and trying to assert dominance due to their skin color. This impact of racism towards minorities at the school can have a troubling impact on a child’s life that sends them down a bad path. More awareness towards the issue would make a very monumental change in helping these kids succeed more in school because it would help these minority kids a ton with grades. Bringing more awareness towards this issue would cause pushback in circles in the community but for long term success in the school and for social rights would be the right move. If you would start awareness, maybe kids would be more open to the idea and become better human beings in the long run. The image below showcases how the school district is in a very rural area.

 

Subaltern History and Spivak’s Inspiring Anti-Inspiring Message Week 4 Blog Post

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“Historians who use this term take it from Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937), an Italian Marxist and Communist who was imprisoned for a long time by Mussolini’s police (from 1926) until his death at age 46. In prison, he wrote notebooks on politics and history and philosophy. He declared that the subaltern was the subjected underclass in a society on whom the dominant power exerts its hegemonic influence.” (Subaltern Studies). Subaltern is a fairly new term to the English language that has so much history behind it.
The major subaltern movement happened in India when major works of literature called Subaltern Studies Group where historians explored the history of the common person was explored more than political leaders at the time. The subaltern movement has a lot of its history in India where theorists would try to uncover this relationship between the subaltern and political leaders while also trying “to uncover the histories of groups that within the colonial and nationalist archives went largely shunted to the margins or undocumented altogether.”(Betek). India has very famous subaltern studies theorists Gayatri Spivak who has work unlike any other.
Spivak is an Indian scholar and theorist who had some of the most influential work regarding the subaltern studies. Her most famous work “Can the Subaltern Speak?” is a phenomenal look at the question in the title of her work as she takes a look at if a person can speak for themselves without being without being judged and looked down upon with those who are more powerful. Ultimately, the reading teaches us that the subaltern has a difficult time having a voice when a bigger force is in charge in a country. The bigger picture idea that Spivak is trying to convince is that it is important for these people to have voices when being colonized because they have history and culture that is so richening that colonizers are okay with throwing away. It would be impossible to run a working society without these people having a voice of somewhat because to them they are still outsiders and they have all this history to where a working civilization would never work. Spivak’s work is so inspirational even though the message is kinda anti-inspiring because when reading it, if you are in this subaltern place it makes you want to go out and change the world or your situation to make a difference in your life and others.

Works Cited
Betek , Bailey. “Subaltern Studies.” Postcolonial Studies, 13 Sept. 2020, scholarblogs.emory.edu/postcolonialstudies/2020/02/17/subaltern-studies/?utm_source=rss.

Subaltern Studies , California State University Library , web.csulb.edu/~ssayeghc/theory/subalternstudies.htm.