Last week I watched Jordan Peele’s Get Out. The movie about…y’know I probably don’t need to tell you. I’m so far behind on movies that Jordan Peele’s subsequent movie is in the theaters right now. It takes me longer to watch them that it takes him to make them. That’s the difference between me and someone who is successful.
Anyway, there’s a huge plot hole in Get Out. Lemme tell you about it.
Chris, who plays the role of Get Out, is at a party with a bunch of white people who are acting oddly. And a handful of black people who are even weirder.
While at the party, Chris decides to snap a picture of one of the strange black people. Which gives said strange dude a bloody nose and sort of breaks him psychologically. This is a turning point in the movie, for sure.
Something you need to know about Chris is that he’s a professional photographer. That plays a very minor but very present point in the movie.
Something you need to know about me is that I am not a professional photographer. I suck at picture. Pretty hard.
That said, I know a couple things. For example, I disabled the flash on my phone. Because there’s no point. You’ll never get a good picture with the flash on.
A dark photo can look like blurry garbage or flashed garbage, and blurry garbage is better. Also, you can do some things to take a steady pic in the dark and get decent quality. The flash always, always wrecks the whole thing.
At worst, I’d put my flash on Auto mode. Which lets my phone make the decision. If it’s bright, like let’s say I’m at a garden party where not only is it daylight, but it’s filled with white people so white that anyone in the sunscreen industry had half a boner watching that scene, if it’s that bright, the flash will probably not happen.
It must have been fairly bright as Chris was taking photos earlier with a fancy camera, and he didn’t use the flash.
When Chris takes a photo on his phone in broad daylight, and the flash deploys, the only explanation is that Chris’ phone is set to force flash. The flash ALWAYS happens. That’s how he wants it. It certainly doesn’t seem like Chris is purposely using the flash as that would totally blow his cover when it comes to taking a sneak photo.
How am I supposed to believe that a pro photographer would have the flash forced on his phone? This movie about black people being hypnotized and brain-surgeried into being white people was pretty believable excepting that point. I really feel a line has been crossed here. I don’t know what Jordan Peele was trying to say at that moment, but I have a theory:
I think Jordan Peele was saying that Chris was only a successful photographer because of his race. Because an art gallery can sell Chris’ work more easily because it’s, as they put it in the movie, “raw and gritty,” which are clearly code words for Chris’ race.
See, Peele is making a point about artists and identity. In the current era, the identity of the artist is as important as the art. A beautiful photograph done by a awful person is an irrelevant, bad piece of art. However, a mediocre photograph taken by someone from an underrepresented identity who also happens to be a saint of a man, has a different commoditized value. Peele is saying that we all want to consume art based on how we feel about the artist. The art is secondary to so many factors that the meaning of good and bad art has lost its meaning in the larger discussion of what makes good and bad people.
Jordan Peele recognizes, before his movie even comes out, that he will be praised for it, and he sees that there is a trap here: Are they praising his movie for what it is, or are they praising his movie because of who he is and who they assume he represents? Peele is in the same situation as a very wealthy CEO who meets someone new. Do they love me for who I am or because I’m wealthy? It’s impossible to really ever know.
This small moment is Jordan Peele’s lament. His cry from the “through the floor” place in the movie. Most viewers would never notice it, but the movie becomes a much richer experience when you do. You’re welcome. You’re very lucky to have a genius viewer of FILM who can tell you what movies are really about. Support my Patreon.
Thank you for reading Not Takes. Not Takes is a column in which Pete invents a stupid stance on something and then fleshes it out for the purpose of demonstrating that hot takes are a crap form of journalism and are pretty easy to create. I hope you’ve enjoyed this entry. Stay tuned for our next installment.