Get Out and A Quiet Place: The New Social Thrillers (PART 2)

TO EXPERIENCE SOMETHING TOGETHER

 

I recently experienced how watching a film together turns on the “communing” and “empathy” and “fun” factor when I improvised an “otherness” double feature for my film students at the University of Puerto Rico-Mayaguez. First, we watched Night of the Living Dead and throughout the show in one class section there was intense silence coupled with nervous jumpiness while in another section there was near-constant loud cheering on of the main character, Ben, played by African-American Duane Jones. So all fun!

 

But the ending was a bad let down for all: When Ben gets unceremoniously shot, and the still photos depicting his body being treated as meat start to come one after another, I could feel the communal shock in both of my classes. One of my students asked empathetically, “Is that it?” Implying: “But he’s the hero, the leader, he worked so hard to survive. The movie can’t possibly end this way.” Well it can, because Romero being himself an “outsider” (he was of Cuban-Lithuanian descent) was reflecting in his casting of Duane Jones and the film’s ending the real-life situation of African-Americans in the 1960s who still lived under the threat of mob lynchings. It’s a part of American history that only now is being revisited in a significant way via this month’s inauguration of The National Memorial for Peace and Justice.

 

 

For Get Out, Peele chose a very different ending from Romero, a final scene of empowerment. And much of the source of this power is to be found in the unlikely character Rod Williams, played with impeccable timing by Milton “Lil Rel” Howery. Rod is a caring person: He feeds and pampers Sid the dog who suffers from digestive issues and constantly warns his friend, Chris Washington, to leave his girlfriend’s family house.

 

Moreover, Rod uses his intelligence and training as a TSA agent, to find and rescue the hero. And Rod achieves all this without ever throwing a punch or shooting someone. In fact, Rod is never even mean to anyone. He is a good guy who humbly goes about his work, but he is empathetic and resourceful and chooses to act, and I would argue, the film’s true hero.