Disclaimer: This article contains major spoilers for Us (2019) as well as minor spoilers for Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) and The Purge: Election Year (2016).
You would be pressed to find a Bay Area resident who’s never made their way down to Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk on a sunny day. The glittering ocean, the warm sand, the classic roller coaster screams, the rush after winning a carnival game, the taste of sticky cotton candy and salty popcorn. For just a few hours, the picturesque views and joyful crowds make life seem almost perfect.
That is, until a pair of hands that look suspiciously like yours grab you in the hall of mirrors.
Two years after the release of his Academy Award-winning film Get Out (2017), actor-director Jordan Peele returned with a sophomore piece that marries horror, dark comedy, and social commentary. Us (2019) follows Adelaide Thomas (Lupita Nyong’o), her husband Gabe Wilson, and their children Zora and Jason as they flee a vengeful family of doppelgängers. The “Tethered” are a failed attempt at cloning by the US government that left it with soulless copies of bodies. Unable to use these inhuman beings as pawns to control its citizens, the government abandoned the experiment, leaving the millions to rot underground.
Politics has always had its place in fictional media, and the genre of horror is no exception. As writers, composers, and filmmakers are faced with the horrors of modernity, they inevitably adapt these real-life monsters into dramatized fictional ones.
Perhaps one of the earliest instances of this is Don Siegel’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956). Based on a 1954 novel by Jack Finney, the film centers on the residents of Santa Mira, California as they resist an alien invasion. These extraterrestrial “pod people” masquerade as identical copies of the townspeople, only they are completely devoid of emotion. Beyond being celebrated as a chilling horror classic, Invasion of the Body Snatchers lies at the core of ideological debates over its supposed allegorical references to the Cold War and the Red Scare. Some characterize Finney’s story as a critique of communism, “personified by the pods who take you over, robbing you of your individuality for the good of the whole.” Still, others see the film as a critique of the era’s “conservative conformity” born from the political repression of McCarthyism. In either case, widespread fear about a particular form of government (whether it be communist or conservative) becomes the lens through which people interpret their fear of what’s on the screen.
In the same vein, some of the best-known horror films place their protagonists at odds with the will of a dystopian government. The Purge: Election Year (2016) follows Charlene “Charlie” Roan, the sole survivor of a home invasion during the annual Purge (a 12-hour period where all crime is legal) that leaves her family dead. As an adult, Senator Roan channels this pain into her Presidential campaign against the candidate representing the “New Founding Fathers of America.” Though characterized by the expected action sequences and gore, The Purge: Election Year is the first of the saga to highlight a character’s fight for justice over a vicious, unethical regime rather than merely their fight for survival. The film’s tagline “Keep America Great” brought it back into the spotlight during the 2020 US presidential election, suggesting that even the most exaggerated of horror films are not completely divorced from our modern political realm.
In recent years, there has been a resurgence in the use of the term “social thriller” to describe this genre of film; one that can certainly be attributed to Peele. He defines the term as a “thriller/horror [movie] where the ultimate villain is society.” The phrase succinctly captures how horror film has been and continues to be an avenue for commentary on race, gender, class, government, and so much more. Yet, it also begs an important question. What does horror do for political and social commentary that no other genre can?
To put it simply, fear makes things stick. In a 2022 study conducted by neuroscientists at Tulane and Tufts University, researchers posited that the human brain processes fear through the secretion of norepinephrine, a neurotransmitter that is also responsible for the body’s fight or flight response. Furthermore, they found that these neurons generate electrical discharges that arouse the amygdala, the part of the brain that processes emotions and allows for the creation of “fear memories.” A 2016 study published in the American Physiological Society Journal found that “fear learning gives rise to some of the strongest, most detailed, and longer-lasting memories because… there is a high degree of emotional arousal that is known to enhance memory consolidation.” We tend to remember the things we see in horror movies, and in the case of political and social commentary, we are thus able to sit with and further consider these ideas long after the film’s end.
Another interesting aspect of horror is its power to subvert our expectations, and in doing so, cause us to question what we think we know. It forces us to turn on our lights even though we know there is nothing at the end of the dark hallway, just to be sure. It compels us to peel back our shower curtains so we can be absolutely certain nothing is hiding in the tub. The genre has a unique way of turning what is familiar into something foreign.
Us is no exception. The film takes the beautiful beaches of Santa Cruz and the carefreeness of a family vacation and corrupts it with home invasion, gory murder, and a lurking fear of what lies below your feet. It takes the symbol of the pure bunny and forces us to picture it as a slab of raw meat. A writer for Esquire magazine suggests that “…after this movie, you’ll never hear ‘I Got 5 on It’ the same way again.,” The remix of the song that underscores the entire film is filled with fraught screeches and haunting strings, entirely divorced from the upbeat classic. This dissonance between expectation and reality incites an unease so powerful that we are forced to dwell upon it.
The film’s critique of class is structured in the same fashion. In an interview with Universal Pictures, Peele reveals that “one of the central themes in Us is that we do a good job of ignoring the ramifications of privilege…” The Wilsons and their friends (the Tylers) represent the stereotype of the American upper-middle-class family, each complete with their own summer home and boat to take out onto the lake. When the doppelgängers first invade the Wilsons’ home, Gabe offers them everything he can think of: his wallet, his boat, and a trip to the ATM. He is so familiar with his own life of comfort that he cannot fathom they would be looking for anything but money. However, that’s not what the Tethered seek.
When asked who they are, Red, Adelaide’s doppelgänger, simply responds: “We’re Americans,” a statement that echoes throughout the rest of her monologue. She tells Adelaide that they are the same. Yet while Adelaide had access to warmth, she was relegated to a place where everything was cold and sharp. While Adelaide got the chance to eat warm meals, to dance on a stage, to have a safe C-section, Red was forced to follow Adelaide’s lead, but in a world and under a government that only offered her pain. In Peele’s words, “…those who suffer and those who prosper are two sides of the same coin.” The film disrupts an image of the United States that the world has grown accustomed to, the espousement of an “American Dream” where anyone can claw their way up from the underground if they work hard enough. Ironically, even if they rise up as the Tethered do, the “happy ending” is one in which they are forced back down.
Jordan Peele has never been a stranger to political commentary. For years, he was known (among other things) for his weirdly accurate impersonation of Barack Obama on the comedy sketch show Key and Peele. However, his foray into horror opened up a new realm of possibilities for this commentary. Political horror keeps our eyes glued to the screen because we are too frightened to look away, which allows us to see things in ways we would never consider otherwise, and impels us to dwell on these long after the credits roll.
And perhaps this isn’t a bad thing. After all, the reform of political and social institutions requires the discomfort of its most privileged spectators. It is this discomfort that sparks action.
Featured Image Source: Vanity Fair, Courtesy of Universal Pictures
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