The Shining is a unique horror film; it
is so widely understood as having subtext not usually associated with
the Horror genre that a documentary titled Room 237 explores both
acknowledged and ridiculed theories of subtextual content. The most
well-known and acknowledged subtext is that The Shining is a
commentary on the Native American genocide. While for over a decade
that context was ridiculed as well, it is now considered obvious.
Also some people do not view The
Shining as scary, even if they admit to its superbly cinematic
construction, and interesting and oblique subtext(s). If one is not
in the mood to receive The Shining as a horror film, it can be
laughable; that does not diminish its greatness nor ability to
horrify when in the “right mood,” nor its success of
communicating ideas beyond the surface narrative. The relevance of
The Shining will become clear as I discuss Jordan Peele's Us, but Us
is best understood with an underpinning of Get Out, his previous
film.
In the first few seconds of Get Out, in
the first few lines of dialog, a character says, “It's like a
fucking hedge maze out here.” I assert that no well-read filmmaker
(and Peele is certainly cinematically well-read) would reference a hedge maze
without the deliberate intention of invoking The Shining; the hedge
maze is uniquely iconic to
that film.
Us is a vastly different movie from Get
Out, but maintains a lineage with the first movie, and continues the
lineage from The Shining. The most obvious linkage with Get Out,
because it is entirely separate from either the text or any subtexts
of Us, is when a Frisbee lands on a spotted towel on the beach. It is
given visual importance but is entirely unexplained, until one
remembers the significance of Bingo cards in Get Out.
And while one might dismiss a line of
dialog in Us which says, “Get out!” because it is a valid line of
plot-necessary dialog, one would be less justified dismissing “Get
Out” painted on the trees to either side of the mirror funhouse. Of
further interest is that the mirror funhouse is renamed “Merlin's
Forest” in subsequent scenes, but in the first scene it is “The
Shaman's Vision Quest”, which due to lineage we can appropriately
infer refers to The Shining. As other articles have posited, it can
refer to many other and equally compelling ideas.
In the Shaman's realm, we hear
something vague about spiders over the speaker. "Itsy-bitsy spider" is whistled. Spiders appear later (a toy tarantula with a
live spider beneath it), as does a web-like crack in glass, and one
might be reminded of Chief Seattle's quote: “This we know the earth
does not belong to man, man belongs to the earth. All things are
connected like the blood that unites us all. Man did not weave the
web of life, he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the
web, he does to himself.” It would be well to come back to this paragraph after reading the end of this blog.
Peele's mise en scene is
meticulous. Every painting, child's toy, book, or drawing (and
literally every other prop) has a utility beyond set dressing. The
baseball bat used as a weapon is the RX 9000, indeed a curative
prescription. The ambulance toy used to block a door open mirrors the
ambulance the in which the family ultimately escapes. The videotapes
flanking the TV in an early shot include C.H.U.D. (Cannibalistic
Humanoid Underground Dwellers), The Man With Two Brains, and
Nightmare on Elm Street. The direct analogy with CHUD needs no
explanation. In a movie all about mirroring and doppelgangers, TMWTB
is equally obvious. And when a character describes her cold metal
toys cutting her fingers, Freddy Krueger's glove of revenge is a
useful image. Absolutely every element of every frame has import, to
a degree rarely found in even the most erudite art house film.
These multitudinous references are not
merely gimmicks or games; they illuminate and then support
powerful subtexts. But first: Subtexts are completely different from
text. To use The Shining to illustrate: The text is that a man goes
crazy and attempts to murder his family, and this holds together
narratively. The subtext of Native American genocide is something
like, “Colonial America (specifically white people) murdered almost
everyone in North America (specifically Native Americans).” This
does not hold together narratively; no white person murders a Native
American. It is suggested by signs and symbols and must be inferred.
A river of blood pouring from an elevator did not happen during the
Trail of Tears, but that does not mean it is erroneous to suggest
perhaps that is one valid interpretation of that elevator scene. In
subtexts, direct linear correlation is not necessary or even desired.
So when it appears that one subtext of Us is a discussion of American
slavery, it does not hinder the subtext that nobody in the film is
actually a slave as described in US history.
But before investigating the slavery
subtext, let's look at another subtext, more illustrative of the
actual text. Doppelgangers are out to murder their “originals.”
In horror movies, death is very often deserved, a retribution or
punishment or karma. In the simplest incarnation, kids who
participate in drugs or premarital sex or who otherwise “sin”
are killed. But what have the originals in Us done wrong? One
subtextual possibility revolves around materialism. Our protagonist
family is well-off; we are shown immediately that they drive a
Mercedes-Benz, they have a summer home, and they've just purchased a
boat, the quintessential American icon of economic prosperity.
However, they are unsatisfied, “spoiled” in a direct quote from
the father, even as he is invested in keeping up with his neighbor's
prosperity.
Further, they have failed to help
others; Hands Across America did not solve any problems, and as
explicitly stated at the end, one character escaped from the
underground and “into the light” at the expense of another. Some
characters had “sunlight and freedom” while pursuing their
materialism, at the expense of an entire group of “others.” This
is one view of why they're being punished. There is text that
explains this, and subtext that supports it. The set design of the
Underground and the behavior of the “shadows” is also reminiscent
of Romero's Dawn Of The Dead, which itself contains a subtextual condemnation
of American consumer culture. Peele knows his cinema.
There is no textual reference to
slavery, but it is illustrated in subtext. There are four legible
books on the shelves: two travelogues (one on Mexico, the other maybe on
the Philippines) and two on slavery: Roots and The History of Slavery
(or something close to that, many clues are fleeting and the bookshelves are not in focus). The chains used to bind characters are icons of
slavery. When one character describes the connection between those
underground and those above, it can clearly be read as a description
of slave/owner dynamics. Does this mean the Shadows are literal
slaves? No, and that does not damage the subtextual discussion.
Neither does the fact that our main family is Black, and clearly are
not implicated in slave ownership; the critique of America and the
discussion of slavery is still valid, and can even be seen to
dovetail with the materialism subtext. The movie ceases to be a
horror movie and becomes a thought experiment on the human condition.
Is it possible, that so many years after slavery, that we all are
still culpable? If we failed with Hands Across America, is it success
that the Shadows have come into the light and performed (one
character calls it “performance art”) their own Hands Across
America? Who are the monsters? Is it... Us?
There are volumes of additional
material to discuss, but one final symbol that may require a unique
perspective to decode: In the first ten minutes of the movie there
are three Black Flag t-shirts, an obvious symbol due to the
repetition, but of what? There is nothing in the movie to suggest a
reference to the actual band, or punk music. So what else is invoked
by “black flag”? Pirates? Perhaps, because there are sail ships
anchored off the Santa Cruz shore, but those may be more
appropriately seen as slave ships. What other black flags are there?
Perhaps this one, described to me by a Black classmate in 4th
grade: “Do you know about the Black flag? Black, red, and green?
Black for the color of our skin, red for the color of our blood, and
green for the color of the land we will one day take back from our
oppressors.” Subtext indeed.
