The Genealogy of Jordan Peele's Get Out: Racial Surrogacy, the Disguised Femme Fatale, and the Modern-day White Militia

Abstract

Jordan Peele's 2017 horror film Get Out exposes the lingering racism black people face in our nation. Within this film, Peele incorporates many "easter eggs," or references to hidden meanings that appear in the present and can be traced back historically. Upon taking the class Women and Film, I was captivated by Get Out; this progressive film allows the audience to identify with a black man as he prepares to meet his white girlfriend's liberal parents. As I approached the summer of my senior year, every day it became more apparent how relevant the events in Get Out are in our nation. Peele wrote Get Out three years before the deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor; however, his narrative continues to exploit the white liberal facade along with the corrupt criminal justice system occurring in the backdrop of our society. What is the meaning behind the racial surrogacy within the film? Where did racial surrogacy stem from? What is the film trying to say about the police state and mass incarceration in the U.S.? What is the film trying to tell us about the "innocent" and "vulnerable" white women? To uncover the answers to these questions, I will create a genealogy of Get Out that includes texts such as Within Our Gates, The Birth of a Nation, Mandingo, and Absalom, Absalom! Additionally, I will be including secondary sources that discuss real-life incidents such as the lynching of Emmett Till, the black birder incident in New York City, and the death of George Floyd. Along with these real-life secondary articles, I will include sources such as Moynihan Report and The New Jim Crow to help make sense of these injustices.