6
Get Out -- The Phone Camera Flashes Are More Significant Than You Might Think
Get Out is an amazing film about how the greatest possible horror movie monster is just "white people." The story finds a creepy white family kidnapping and Being John Malkovich-ing black guests at their country estate -- as in, they steal young black dudes' bodies and reprogram them with old rich white farts' memories and personalities. In the end, our hero, Chris, realizes that the only way to temporarily de-program the parasite personality is with a camera flash, probably because old people's brains historically go on the fritz when confronted with newfangled phones.
Universal Pictures
Universal Pictures
As you know if you've attempted to teach your grandpa how to take a selfie.
While the internet was quick to point out that this plot twist is reminiscent of the "Itchy & Scratchy Land" episode of The Simpsons, it isn't just a gimmick -- it's the entire thesis of the movie. In Get Out, the only way to put a dent in the unjust incarceration/killing of black people is through a camera phone ... and isn't that what's actually happening in the world right now? Camera phones are being utilized to document police violence against African Americans. These ubiquitous cameras may discombobulate whatever hypno-brain surgery is going on in this movie, but they're also one of the few real defenses against systemic racism.
And it doesn't end there; the whole film is chock-full of heavily symbolic doo-dads. The trigger for Chris' hypnotic imprisonment is a silver spoon -- that is, a metaphor for wealth and privilege.
Universal Pictures
Universal Pictures
It's also a metaphor for cats and cradles and Little Boy Blue and The Man in the Moon.
Also, Chris resists the hypnotism by fashioning earplugs out of cotton he picks out of a chair. This is obviously a reference to slavery, but in a way it reverses that iconography by making the cotton an instrument of achieving freedom. This foreshadows what happens next: Chris proceeds to kill off his captors by weaponizing what director Jordan Peele calls "little pieces of whiteness," like Bocce and a taxidermy.
Universal Pictures
Universal Pictures
Universal Pictures
The original draft had the Bocce balls filled with mayo.