So the movie Get Out has been out for almost a month now. It's not "new" anymore, but I get the feeling a lot of people who should see the film have not or will not see it.

I remember my assumptions when I first the trailer for the movie. If you’ve seen the trailer, you probably remember your own assumptions as well. I mean, when the trailer first started running, there was a lot of talk and even controversy about it. In a nutshell, it looked like a horror/dark comedy movie where the protagonist is a Black man and all the White people are evil. Without even seeing the film, many of us drew our conclusions right off the bat. Some of us concluded that the film would only add fuel the fires of racism and prejudice in America. Others concluded that the film would be an ode to the Black Lives Matter movement. I saw some even hail the film as anti-White propaganda.

Again, this is all BEFORE the flick was even released. Jordan Peele's debut as a director was making waves months before the opening credits scrolled across a single silver screen in America. Fast forward to now, and a lot of the assumptions people had about the movie are still there. I get the sense, based on a handful of reviews I have looked at about the film, that a lot of people went to see the film with preconceived notions, and thus only saw what they wanted to see. But when I watched it I tried to the best of my ability to view it as objectively as I could. I won't pretend like it was the easiest thing in the world because I'm a Black guy. Nevertheless, as best as I could, I dropped my assumptions, both good and bad, and just tried to watch and make mental notes.

Here's the conclusion I came to.

Without spoiling the movie for those who still want to see it, Get Out offers a unique and in my opinion, very well framed perspective of a real life situation in modern America. That issue is NOT just racism by the way. It goes further than that. I believe the film addresses something much more difficult and even scary for people to talk about, but that's the cool thing about the film. Jordan Peele takes a situation that people are scared to talk about and literally turns into a scary movie.

“So...what situation does the film address?”

I’m glad you asked. The film gives us a look at what it's like when we develop an infatuation with a particular ethnic culture or a particular part of that culture without genuinely engaging with the people who belong to that ethnic group and/or culture in a way that validates their humanity. We often develop these "culture crushes" or “ethnic fetishes” without actually loving the people of that culture. We may not see the harm in this, but in reality, it tends to lead us to patronize and even objectify people in a subtle, but still very detrimental way. When we begin to see people as anything less than people, we tend to treat them as less than people, and that is no small problem, friends. Again, I think Peele does an excellent job of taking the real life situation I just described and hyperbolizing it in such a way that makes it very creepy and unsettling.

I will gladly admit that this review is far from professional. I’m just a guy who likes to watch a well told story told on film. If you are the same way, get out and see Get Out.

Get Out...And See 'Get Out'