Jordan Peele’s film Nope is one of those confounding films, so full of rich signifiers and symbolisms and yet also Peele not obviously connecting all of them. After four plus viewings now, I can’t honestly say I’ve connected every element in the film, but I think I have figured out the most important ones and a few more than that. More generally, I must say that after repeated viewings, I’ve concluded that Nope is Peele’s richest and deepest film to date. I don’t think that is obvious at first blush, but that is why repeat viewings are necessary for deep and complex films. That’s what it takes to peel back the many deep layers of a film and connect the pieces.
**Spoilers coming!**
“And Make You Spectacle”
To my mind, the key to fully understanding this film is that interesting Nahum quote that begins the film:
“I will cast abominable filth at you; make you vile; and make you spectacle.”
And the core of this quote is the Gordy’s Home! thread in the film. Gordy’s Home! is the quintessential “spectacle” show, a sitcom using not only animals as its entertainment focus, but chimpanzees, a highly intelligent and emotional (sentient) species that should never be used for anything and that includes not just for entertainment purposes but also for experimentation purposes. Gordy’s Home! echoes how the entertainment industry has done this again and again, use wild animals as a source for our entertainment, most conspicuously in the TV series Flipper and the Clint Eastwood films Every Which Way But Loose and its sequel Any Which Way You Can (using two other sentient species, dolphins and orangutans respectively). Of course, we can expand this to include how we have historically used animals for other forms of entertainment, circuses, theme parks, rodeos, bullfighting, dog and horse racing, and so on.
As we see with what we see of the Gordy’s Home! show, the exploitation of the chimpanzees (apparently they use more than one for this “Gordy” role) are truly horrifying, using them for laughs and not caring how such a use impacts them. In the one glimpse we get of the show, it is particularly interesting watching the actor who plays the daughter and sister Haley Houston/Mary Jo (Sophia Coto); she looks mightily uncomfortable in the role, perhaps her registering how disgusting it is to exploit a chimpanzee for profit (or perhaps more simply she knows what a dog of a series she is starring in!).
That the show was apparently popular – as the Clint Eastwood films and the Flipper show were – further signifies how a majority of people only care about their entertainment (“spectacle”) consumption, not caring about what immoralities (abuse of animals) might be implicated in it.
In this way, we see how people/studios who exploit animals for our entertainment – for “spectacle” – are in effect, going back to the Natum quote, “casting abominable filth” at us and “making [us] vile,” “making [us] spectacle.” This later part is important, for it implicates us as spectators in “spectacle,” a way to stress that the REAL of “spectacle” is “abominable filth” or the “vile” and that “spectacle” doesn’t exist without spectators, which means that we are implicated in creating “spectacle,” the “filth” and “vile” part of this stressing how such a way of thinking and being is deeply dehumanizing.
Jupe’s Office Space
In a key sequence, we see just how much “spectacle” rules our lives. In the scene when we first see OJ (Daniel Kaluuya) go to Ricky “Jupe” Park’s (Steven Yeun) office — to sell him another horse though apparently to discuss buying all the horses he has sold to him back — perhaps more so than any other sequence in the film, the sequence spells out just how dehumanizing “spectacle” can be.
Upon entering Jupe’s space, the first thing that we see is an advertisement of Jupe and his family in their reality show, tellingly called Jupiter’s Orbit. They are positioned in front of Jupe’s western town amusement park, the kids dressed up in western garb. As we see this, we hear Jupe’s wife Amber (Wrenn Schmidt) on the phone selling someone on their western town amusement park, especially a special show they are showing. We hear her say, “It does look like we were able to squeeze out a couple of extra press passes for the upcoming friends and family preview,” an obvious lie and sale job and marketing pitch, since as we see later, their special show doesn’t even come close to selling out. She then says something obviously exaggerated for effect: “This is in reference to the biggest, bestest, brand new live show we have coming up her at the park.” This marketing lie and the advertisement poster – where Jupe apparently has no hesitation exploiting his kids for profit in a reality TV show – begins our entryway into Jupe’s “orbit,” one of pure “spectacle,” where everything he (and his wife!) seem to live for is to create “spectacle” for fame and fortune however one gets that, and how it does make them “filth”/”vile.” The resonances to the real world are disturbingly transparent.
I should also touch on Jupe’s “wild west” town amusement park itself, a kind of spectacle creation, made not for anything substantive but purely for “spectacle” (superficial) entertainment. In terms of the “substantive” point, an authentic “western town” would at the very least be more historical and educational, while Jupe’s creation is purely about being built on western stereotypes or “spectacle” (think 1950s Hollywood westerns). (I know, I know, “historical and educational” sounds BORING, but I think there is a way to do such a “park” that could make “historical and educational” fun, e.g., something akin to what the touristy town of Tombstone does, mix “spectacle” with educating tourists on the REAL of Tombstone’s/wild west’s history.)
Interesting too to note that the previous attempt at this spectacle amusement park – ironically called “Gold Rush” – “went bankrupt,” perhaps even a dig at the whole conception of the “gold rush,” a morally “bankrupt” historical moment, e.g., it contributed heavily to the heinous genocide of Native Americans. That Jupe has apparently purchased the “wild west” amusement park and renamed it “Jupiter’s Claim,” still plays on this focus of the “gold rush,” the “Claim” part of the park’s title speaking to this, though the resonance of this signifier doubles as Jupe trying to use the amusement park as a way to get rich, or at least be the platform to keep his celebrity status alive. In this way, we can especially see the REAL within the false image of this “spectacle” western town amusement park, an amusement park that seems harmless enough but hides Jupe’s mercenary (capitalistic) interests, which ends up getting people killed, not unlike how the unhistorical “wild west” tropes in entertainment/media discourses (to make it fun and profitable) hide the REAL (a mercenary, predatory settler-colonialist time period that led to the genocide of Native Americans) just to have “spectacle.”
Once we are actually in Jupe’s office space, we immediately learn of a show that a very young Jupe starred in called Kid Sheriff, which, though now an adult, he continues to use as a prop to keep his fame intact, e.g., we see collectibles and photos and posters prominently displayed. This apparently works, since Em (Keke Palmer) recognizes the show and gets excited that she is in the same room with the actor who played “Lil Jupe.” That’s interesting in itself since Jupe has even taken the character name from the show as his nickname, which upon first viewing the film, one would think is his real name since that is what everyone calls him. But what is just so telling about this name change is that it speaks to how he even uses himself as a (dehumanizing) marketing tool, as a kind of living embodiment of “spectacle.” Punctuating this even more is that giant balloon image of his “Lil Jupe” image, yet another way to see how Jupe sees himself or wants to be seen, in this aggrandized (dehumanized) image (see below).
Then we get in this scene some of the most telling “spectacle” signifiers in the film, Jupe exploiting the exploitation of the Gordy’s Home! “incident.” Our first reference to this is a cover of Mad Magazine, with the chimpanzee who played Gordy on the cover (drawn in the Mad Magazine style), a caricature of his meltdown, which included disfiguring Mary Jo, the actress who played the daughter, and attacking the actor who played the father. I don’t think it’s clear that the chimp actually killed anyone, but it certainly is possible that he did.
As Jupe begins:
“So, Gordy’s Home! is a short-lived but fabled sitcom I starred in in ’96 after Kid Sheriff blew up.”
Then he opens up the hidden door the Mad Magazine cover is on (see above), which opens up to a whole space devoted to the “Gordy’s Home! incident.” Jupe invites them in even though, tellingly, he usually charges a “fee” for people to enter this space.
A couple of thoughts on Jupe in effect “hiding” this facet of his “spectacle” history, perhaps him knowing on some level of thought that this part of his “spectacle” history is not family friendly and thus needing to be kept in a hidden space or perhaps him just creating a different kind of marketing device, adding to the “forbidden” desire to see what is behind the closed door, the darker side of not just sitcoms/entertainment shows but the darker side of the human (mercenary-capitalistic) condition. Interesting to think of the symbolism of this macabre space. Yes Jupe is using it for a darker form of exploitative “spectacle” entertainment, but we could also see it as a kind of “return of the repressed” or the REAL of sitcoms/entertainment arenas, the hidden dehumanizing side of them, which doesn’t just include the exploitation of animals but also young people (more on this below), not to mention that these type of “spectacle” sitcoms are made purely to feed our stimulation-consumption appetites, another form of dehumanization.
Upon entering this space we see the room littered with references to the show Gordy’s Home! Most tellingly, at one point, Jupe says this:
“So, as I was saying, uh, Gordy’s Home! began airing in the fall of ’96 and it was an immediate hit. Uh, ratings were huge. Pretty good reviews. Just really took off. Then, uh, one day, we were shooting an episode in season two entitled, uh, ‘Gordy’s Birthday,’ and, uh, boom. One of the chimps that played Gordy just—just hit his limit. And it was six minutes and 13 seconds of havoc. Network tried to bury it, but it was a spectacle.”
This last line, where Peele puts in the word “spectacle,” is just so important for understanding his overall project in the film, where the most desired “spectacle” discourses are “reality” “spectacle” discourses, probably why “reality shows” have been and still are so popular. In this context, the more REAL and sensationalistic (violent, graphic, shocking, titillating, melodramatic), the more disturbingly drawn to it people are, a symptom of something fundamentally wrong with us as a species, that baser part of ourselves (our Id or primal selves) that is only more inflamed by capitalistic-consumerist spectacles we feed on daily. (This facet of this issue of “spectacle” deserves more research and exploration but is an extremely complex issue and would take me too far afield for the scope of this blog post! For now, here are three pieces that get at the complexity of this issue: “Why We Love Violence: The Dark Psychology Behind Our Social Urge to Win, Control, and Punish,” “A Fascination With Violence: Appetitive Aggression in Males and Females,” “Emotional and Physiological Desensitization to Real-Life and Movie Violence.”)
This titillating desire for (reality) “spectacle” is especially affirmed by what comes next, when Jupe goes on to say that “people are just obsessed” with the show now and that “There’s a growing Gordy’s Home! fan base out there now” and, most disturbingly, how a “Dutch couple paid [Jupe] 50K to come in here and spend the night.” The former point speaks to how people now watch the show because of the “spectacle” violence that happened (perhaps looking for signs of the violence that was to come or perhaps just to wallow in the specter of this violence), while the latter more disturbingly speaks to how people are drawn to the most sensational of (reality) “spectacle,” a way for them to bizarrely relive or associate themselves with this violent “spectacle.”
The next cut cuts to that interesting shoe that was peculiarly and unnaturally vertical, key symbolism that I will come back to.
Then we get the most disturbing part of this scene, when Jupe narrates a Saturday Night Live skit on the Gordy’s Show! incident, which Peele tellingly highlights, intercutting a key flashback insert:
What is just so fascinating about this moment is that flashback insert, the image of Jupe having seen such a traumatic incident and the feeling in the moment that his own life was at risk. This Peele insert belies the coolness of his recitation of the SNL skit. That is, Jupe wants us to think that this traumatic incident didn’t affect him at all, but the flashback insert tells us that it very much did, reinforced by the shot immediately after this insert, that brief lost look we will see again. The question then is what are the deeper implications of this seeming contradiction in Jupe’s demeanor and tone as he recites the SNL skit?
Jupe’s Trauma and Pathology
What is just so interesting about this thread is how Peele both interrogates the “spectacle” element with this thread (intersecting with how we exploit animals — especially sentient animals — for consumption purposes), but also how he at least touches on the deeper implications of child actors in general.
Jupe was a “child star” who apparently found some fame with two shows, Kid Sheriff and Gordy’s Home! In terms of the Gordy’s Home! sitcom, as touched on above, the fame that came from this show extends beyond the show to Jupe being part of this horrific violent chimpanzee incident. In the flashback sequences, we see just how horrifying and traumatic this experience with one of the chimps going crazy must have been for Jupe, his look of terror as he hides and watches the bloodbath of what the chimp does telling us all we need to know about how this incident impacted him. And then as the chimp sees him and approaches him, Peele gives us Jupe’s point of view of the approaching bloody chimp. From our placement in this horrific moment, we can at least get a sense of just how unbelievably traumatic this moment must have been for Jupe.
Peele punctuates this trauma by giving us a kind of inside look into Jupe’s psyche, conspicuous inserts like the above one I touch on and the flashbacks and Jupe’s pensive looks.
But what’s insane is that because this traumatizing incident experienced by Jupe has become a “spectacle” in itself, Jupe, who clearly wants to maintain his “celebrity” status, embraces this disturbing facet of his “celebrity” status, a bizarre form of masochistic behavior. That is, instead of moving on and healing from this traumatic experience, Jupe’s need to maintain his celebrity status means in effect to embrace it, which, in turn, means to put signifiers of that trauma around him, what amounts to triggers all around him, perpetually relive it. And that I think is the deeper implication of this thread, how, like Jupe, people will do (self) destructive things just to get the “spectacle” that gives them the fame and fortune they so desire, a telling reason for why “spectacle” makes us “vile” (dehumanized).
That gets to the other facet that I think this film at least touches on, the psychological issues that come with being a child actor. There have been many studies on the many issues that child actors have had to endure during their time acting, but for my focus here — the focus of the film I think — I want to touch on just two of them. First, according to clinical psychologist Zeynep Yasar, is how child actors “are still in the process of forming their own identities and managing their emotions” and thus “the ability to separate who they are and what they feel from the characters they play can be especially challenging.” We clearly see this with Jupe in how he takes on his Kid Sheriff name (“Jupe”) and image (the balloon/western image of “Lil Jupe”), though it is interesting to think about how Jupe’s penchant for doing whatever it takes to keep his fame and fortune being not just because of his desire to sustain his celebrity status but perhaps because of how at least his Gordy’s Home! character didn’t question exploiting (abusing) an animal/chimpanzee for entertainment purposes (there is never an expression of remorse or guilt by him for the chimps). Of course, this would also be about Jupe the child actor accepting this exploitation, but when he was performing with “Gordy the chimp” in the show, there may have been a normalization of doing this by his character that he internalized into adulthood, suppressing what this abuse actually did to the chimpanzees (or other people for that matter) that were used for the show.
Second, I think the film may also be exploring the fleeting fame for child actors and/or how child actors have a difficult time letting go of the fame they get as a child actor. As psychologist Donna Rockwell sums up: “When a person becomes famous, there’s so much attention on the famous person that, neurologically, they forget how to tune back out — in other words, how to have appropriate and healthy empathy for other people.” Further, “for the most grounded of people, getting swept up into the spotlight of fame is very difficult to withstand, to stay grounded. So for a child, it’s 10 times more difficult. It’s exponentially more challenging because they haven’t even developed a full self yet.” As Rachel E. Greenspan sums it up: “For children and teens, identity can easily morph and become lost in fame, with their notoriety becoming an engrained part of their personality.”
This latter point connects to the previous point, in that it may not just be that Jupe wants to sustain his celebrity status, it may be that this is all that Jupe knows. In other words, Jupe grew up being a child star/”Lil Jupe” and because his cognition was still developing, now he knows no other way of thinking and being. Most disturbingly, Rockwell says that because child actors get so much attention — because they may think of themselves as all that matters — that can affect their ability to empathize with others, which here I would include animals. That of course also seems to fit Jupe perfectly, as he seems to not care about others, including the horses he is feeding to the extraterrestrial creature and the spectators, workers, and even his family he is putting in jeopardy.
In this way, we can see how Peele is collapsing both the exploitation/abuse of animals with the exploitation/abuse of child actors, all just to create “spectacle” shows for our entertainment.
And, again, that’s the damage that spectacle/consumerism/capitalism can do to people, make their very identity synonymous with “spectacle”/celebrity status, make it so an individual with this fixation will do anything to get it, even if it means living with trauma and risking one’s life and the lives of Others to get it. I’ve explored this particular idea in-depth in two of my pieces on two anti-consumerism films, The Bling Ring and American Psycho.
Though the Gordy/Jupe thread is the core supporting thread for this “spectacle” focus, the film is replete with other elements that support this focus.
The “Oprah/Money Shot”
For one thing, we get OJ and Em fixated on getting “the Oprah Shot” or “the “Money Shot,” even if it means risking their lives and the lives of their horses. We get this amplified by a thousand when the TMZ guy shows up and will do anything to get a “money shot,” presumably because it will make him famous and rich. Indeed, despite his injuries and still possible risks to his life (which ends up being the case as he becomes food for the creature), he keeps insisting on OJ giving him his “camera” and getting it on film (“Did you get that on camera?” “Where’s my camera?” “I need my camera.” “Why aren’t you filming this?” “Take a picture first.”) In a telling shot, at one point, we get a distorted reflection of OJ on the helmet of the TMZ guy (see below), suggesting perhaps that at least in some capacity, OJ – and by extension Em – are the mirror image of the TMZ guy, it just being a question of degree.
Antlers’ “Impossible Shot”
We may also get this spectacle focus with cinematographer Antlers Holst, though perhaps in a complicated way. Antlers is a fascinating character, one who is kind of hard to read. On the one hand, I kind of read him as the opposite of the obvious “spectacle” guy, the TMZ guy. I say this, because early on he is referred to as a “legendary cinematographer,” which suggests that he isn’t just doing “spectacle” consumerism. Also, he says something interesting to Em: “Horse girl, this dream you’re chasing, the one where you end up at the top of the mountain, all eyes on you….it’s the dream you never wake up from.” As I read it, this key quote seems to be Antlers saying that he has been to “the top of the mountain, all eyes on [him]” — since he is a “legendary cinematographer,” that would seem to follow anyway — but he isn’t there anymore, now just a “dream [he] never wakes up from,” e.g., once you’re on top, you never want to be anywhere else, but no one stays on top forever. (One could perhaps make the inference that Antlers is no longer at the top because he is now making commercials — another form of “spectacle” consumption — but many of the best real world cinematographers do commercials for the quick and easy monetary return. Antlers says at one point that he does “one for them, one for me,” which would also suggest that doing commercials lets him do projects that mean more for him. Of course, just the fact that great filmmaking artists must do commercials is egregious in itself!)
What suggests to me that the Antlers thread also informs this “spectacle” thread are a few signifiers:
For one thing, Antlers’ stress on “all eyes on you” seems to suggest that he too wants, well, at least fame, “all” eyes on him. The other element that I think suggests that the Antlers thread is also about “spectacle” is the footage we see him editing together early in the film, footage of wild animals attacking each other, getting devoured, or, in other words, sensationalistic (nature snuff) footage that one sees created for more spectacle nature projects.
And then there is the interesting “impossible shot” thread in the film.
When I first watched the film, I thought it was Antlers who first brings up the “impossible shot” but it is actually Em who first mentions it. When Em first calls Antlers, he only seems to be half listening to her, but when she tries to sell him by saying that she wanted him because only he could get the “impossible shot” (apparently he has a reputation that suggests this) that mention seems to get his full attention.
There is another moment in the film that perhaps gives us some insight into Antlers:
When I first watched this “Flying Purple People Eater” scene above, I didn’t give it much thought, just an amusing scene to add some quirky color to both the character Antlers and this moment in the film. However, after really analyzing the Antlers thread, I think there may be more to this sequence than meets the eye. The sequence begins with Angel sincerely believing that what they are doing is more than just pursuing “fame and fortune” — or “spectacle” — almost pleading with the others to affirm that there is something also purposeful and meaningful in what they are doing. But then we get Antlers’ response to this (the silence of Em and OJ also speaks volumes I think), first his conspicuous “chuckle,” that in itself utterly negating what Angel just said, Antlers thinking this thought by Angel silly. And then we get an even more telling response, Antlers’ recitation of one of the most silly bubblegum pop songs of all time, “Flying Purple People Eater,” his way of in effect negating Angel’s desire, another way of saying just how silly Angel’s view is, that reaction speaking volumes about Antlers’ own self-interested motivations. In other words, this seems to be an affirmation that while there is something deeper about Antlers, he really is just in this undertaking for the “spectacle” of it, for the same “fame and fortune” — or at least for him, to get back to the “top of [his proverbial] mountain — that the other three are principally interested in. I should add that, in this context, the song could in itself be considered a “spectacle” song, making light of a creature that eats people, though what is ironic here is that I suspect this could be what will happen with the real extraterrestrial creature, people more interested in sensationalizing the creature than its tragic victims!
Antlers’ Suicidal Gesture
And then we get the other telling moment when Antlers seems to get suicidal as he literally feeds himself to the extraterrestrial creature. This moment is when Antlers’ meaning gets really complex.
Before Antlers in effect feeds himself to the creature, he says two things, something about the “light” in the sky and how it is getting “magical,” the suggestion being that perhaps there is an even better “impossible” shot to be had or perhaps that he knows he hasn’t really gotten an “impossible shot.” And then he says something inexplicable: “We don’t deserve the impossible.”
As I say above, there seems to be a distinction between what Em, OJ, Angel and the TMZ guy want and what Antlers wants, Antlers seeming to not care so much about the shallow version of “fame and fortune” but rather the “impossible shot” that will get him back to “the top of the mountain, all eyes on [him].” He never reduces the “impossible shot” to the “money shot,” because it means more to him than it does to others, his artistic eye making his desire more than just about fame and fortune, more about achieving something that will feed into his iconic “legendary cinematographer” status. In this way, his last words that “we don’t deserve the impossible” make sense, in that for him the “impossible” equates to the sublime while for most people, it equates to the “money shot,” or fame and fortune, a kind of contamination of what Antlers thinks it should represent, which, in turn, is why “we don’t deserve it,” because we want it for the wrong reasons. Indeed, when he uses the collective “we” pronoun, he seems to be including himself, though that he has this self-awareness of what is “deserved” or not would seem to put him above the others.
In other words, when Antlers actually does get the creature on film — in effect, what would seem to be the “impossible shot” — it rings hollow for him, almost as if he has done what anyone could do, making the shot not so “impossible” after all, not to mention that he really has just gotten the “money shot” that everyone else wants, a kind of contamination of what he wants. And so that is why he realizes that for him, he hasn’t yet really got the “impossible shot,” the one that no one else can get. As I read it, that’s why Antlers goes out to film the creature head-on, to get what no one but him could get. Having said that, going back to that moment when Peele pauses Antlers response to Em above — the moment when I think we can see just how much consternation being at the “top of the mountain” is for him — I suspect that Antlers realizes that this need to feed his “legendary” status will forever traumatize him, the suicidal gesture than perhaps also acting as a way for him to end his pathology. (Moments before this, he pops a couple of pills, which some take to perhaps suggest that he has a literal end-life disease, and so going out getting a true “impossible shot” makes literal sense, since he may be dying anyway.) And that may be the final deeper implication of the Antlers thread, that while Antlers’ desire is something deeper, it still stems from the same root cause desire as the pursuit of superficial consumerist “spectacle,” Antlers reducing himself to his “legendary cinematographer” objectifying icon never being able to let go of this dehumanizing (superficial) pursuit for “all eyes on [him].”
Haywood Hollywood Horses
Even the “Haywood Hollywood Horses” business that Em and OJ’s father started speaks to this “spectacle” focus. We see that at least OJ cares about the horses, but I’m not so sure about his father feeling the same way. At one point, referencing Ghost, the father says of the horse that he is “all territorial” and that “some animals ain’t fit to be trained.” The deeper implication of this moment seems to suggest that the father cares more about the business than the horses themselves. Or, in other words, he too is in it for the “spectacle” of the film business, playing the game to get his horses into films/TV shows/commercials. Of course, that is how he makes his living and so it is understandable why it would be important for him to get any studio’s business, but this line seems to suggest that is all he cares about, not really caring about his horses. We also see this sensibility when Em shares an anecdote about how a horse named “Jean Jacket” was given to her to train, but then the father ends up using the horse for his business anyway – Em says that this experience traumatized her – the suggestion again being that the father’s business comes first for him, even before his own child, which is the essence of a capitalistic mindset, putting (more and more and more) profit or fame and fortune before all else, the epitome of dehumanizing one’s self.
And this would also fit with the “animal” thread in the film in general, again, the chimpanzees used for the Gordy’s Home! being the obvious example of how animals are used for “spectacle,” but then we also get this horse thread, not only how the father and then his children use the horses for “spectacle” (films like The Scorpion King, referenced in the film) but also how Jupe buys horses from OJ to feed to the creature for his “spectacle” show, another way of saying how animals are “fed” to “spectacle.”
And this seeing horses as disposable (to be consumed) resonates the whole use of horses in film and TV, this history being a grim one, with many horses being maimed and killed just to get “the (spectacle) shot” in a film. For more on this grim history of the cruel mistreatment of both horses and other animals, see this nice summing up short YouTube video “Silent Whinnies: The Abuse of Horses on Film.”
In terms of this exploitation of animals, we see how Peele creates this connection between how the chimpanzees are exploited for the sitcom and how Jupe again tries to exploit the extraterrestrial creature to again create a “spectacle” that will bring him fame and fortune. It doesn’t matter that he may be risking the lives of tourists and family (forget about him actually caring about the horses!), it only matters that he again achieves the fame and fortune he had as a kid. Indeed, Peele even creates a connection between all of the animals in the film, using horse names (Ghost, Clover, Lucky) and the chimpanzees’ TV name (“Gordy”) and the name of the creature (“Jean Jacket”) as chapter titles, explicitly linking them all as exploited animals used for “spectacle.”
Interesting too how Peele cements this focus with a seeming toss-off line by Antlers, who, after OJ says “That was Jupe. He got caught up trying to tame a predator,” a big time no-no, Antlers punctuates this observation when he responds: “Ask Siegfried and Roy,” a reference to the famous incident when after years of using big cats in their shows, a tiger mauls Roy Horn, leaving him severely injured and partially paralyzed.
The Root Cause of Spectacle
As I’ve touched on above, the common denominator for all of the above is capitalism, that which drives this need for “spectacle”/consumerism or, in other words, this drive for fame and fortune. Or, even if we say that isn’t the case with OJ and Em, or maybe just OJ – that they are doing this more to offset their failing business and slipping into pure survival mode – that too is capitalism, financial insecurity stemming from a capitalistic mode of being. In other words, capitalism is wholly about more and more and more economic growth and profit and wealth accumulation. This incessant mode of being – a mercenary, predatory, put profit and wealth accumulation before people and animals (and the planet!) way of thinking and being – ripples to individuals, turning people into mercenary individuals, which, in turn, is what drives creating superficial “spectacle,” even though that is a dehumanizing mode of being for all the reasons Nope and this blog post gets at.
We explicitly get this when OJ says this: “…you know people gonna come and do what they always do: Try and take it all for themselves.” This quote suggests that OJ’s time in the industry has jaded him, because he has seen for himself how in his experience, the world is a dog-eat-dog place where people trying to get fame and fortune will do whatever they have to do to get it, including “take if all for themselves.” Again, the root cause of this mercenary, predatory way of thinking and being is capitalism.
Symbolic Signifiers:
The Extraterrestrial Creature (“Jean Jacket”)
The extraterrestrial creature, dubbed “Jean Jacket” by OJ, is more interesting than typical horror film monsters.
For one thing, the way that it changes shape so dramatically late in the film is both interesting and perplexing. In its initial guise, it looks like a typical “UFO” or “UAP,” saucer shaped, and it flies around like we have seen UFOs/UAPs fly in other sci-fi films. It might be that Peele just wanted to fool us, create a twist, us first thinking it is a typical UFO/UAP film (which creates real initial tension when it seems that OJ has confronted real extraterrestrial humanoids!) but then revealing it is something else entirely.
Realistically thinking, as many writers have noted, the creature may choose this saucer shape because it is a better way to hide itself and move quickly. Later, when the jig is up so to speak and it knows that its secret has been discovered, it seems to revert to perhaps its normal shape, a very elaborate and aesthetically pleasing (the very definition of “dangerous beauty”) or even ostentatious shape though this latter description might be anthropomorphizing the creature (giving a non-human species human characteristics). Indeed, one could say that it looks more like a beautiful sculpture than a living creature. As some have also noted, again, realistically speaking, perhaps this is just the creature attempting to intimidate its adversaries or perhaps just flaunt its being, something akin to what a peacock does when it spreads its feathers to attract a mate. But symbolically, by creating this spectacular (ostentatious?) image of itself, it is almost as if it is making itself “spectacle,” putting on a show so to speak. And I’m not saying that’s necessarily the intention of the creature (though maybe!), but it may be that’s how we can make it a symbolic entity.
Further, if we say that the creature comes to represent the “the Oprah/money shot,” that last shot of it (see below) making it the epitome of “spectacle,” then “Jean Jacket” at least represents “spectacle,” at least in terms of being represented in those terms for humans. That is, like the “Gordy” chimpanzee’s meltdown and harming of humans getting exploited by “spectacle” driven media discourses, that lone shot by Em will be plastered on covers all over the world, becoming the epitome of the “Oprah/money shot” that Em and OJ covet. Indeed, as I suggest above, “Jean Jacket” actually eating people would be seen more as “spectacle” fodder (like the “Gordy” chimps mauling of people) than a tragedy, the sensationalism aspect of “Jean Jacket” just ripe for mass “spectacle” coverage, and I’m sure we can all imagine what that would look like, “spectacle” media discourses and probably more respected media discourses going crazy with this story, making it perhaps the most “spectacle” story ever. And we do already get a taste of this, as a feeding frenzy had already begun over the disappearance of the people at Jupe’s show, the stress seeming to be fame and fortune hunters more interested in the sensationalistic aspect of this story than that so many people tragically lost their lives.
In this context, then, “Jean Jacket” becomes synonymous with “spectacle,” its ostentatious presentation of itself adding to this “spectacle” symbolism.
One could even make the case that Peele is explicitly making the creature a mirror image of us. That is, whether OJ, Em, and Angel are anthropomorphizing the creature or whether the creature actually has human-like characteristics, it does come to be humanized and so symbolically we can say that the creature “mirrors” humanity. In terms of the latter (“human-like characteristics”), for one thing, just calling it “Jean Jacket” immediately associates it with humans. Further, in many ways, “Jean Jacket” seems to exhibit human characteristics, e.g., it hides, it gets angry, it reciprocates by expelling its waste on Em and OJ’s house, and, again, it at least seems to put on a show of itself so to speak.
In this context, the “return of the repressed” symbolism of the creature could register something about humanity itself. That is, if we think about how the extraterrestrial creature represents our own repressed/suppressed part of ourselves, then the symbolism of the creature becomes clear. However, because it is an “alien” entity, it represents that part of ourselves that is also “alien” so to speak, or, in other words, the extraterrestrial represents that part of ourselves we can say is dehumanized.
Of course, we aren’t eating humans, but we are in effect consuming Others, and here I’m including animals to the “Other” category. We can think about this is a couple of ways. First, in line with the focus of the film and this blog post, is the whole “spectacle” element in the film, which I’ve discussed at length above, e.g., in short, how “spectacle” is informed by a (capitalistic) mercenary, predatory way of thinking and being, which we see with the exploitation of animals (chimpanzees, horses) and children and Jupe using his own family for a reality (“spectacle”) show, feeding horses to “Jean Jacket” and putting the lives of spectators and his family at risk by exposing them to the creature, who do end up getting eaten.
This latter situation (Jupe willing to put his family and spectators at risk to satisfy his own “spectacle”/consumerist appetites) also gets at the second deeper implication, how humanity, like “Jean Jacket,” does this again and again, make humans disposable so as to fulfill its (moneyed interests/capitalistic/ideological) appetites and the examples of this are too numerous to list though would of course include sweat shop labor, human/sex trafficking, climate change and other ecological catastrophes (for one thing, literally making parts of the planet uninhabitable), and mass incarcerations (the prison industrial complex).
Most obviously, thinking in terms of how Peele creates a focus on the exploitation and abuse of animals (chimpanzees, horses), he is also in effect turning the tables on us as humans, putting us in the place of the animals we make disposable for our own consumption appetites, making us in effect experience what we do to animals, whether that be exploiting them for our entertainment or literally eat them. In other words, Peele is doing in a micro fashion what many have wondered if an advanced extraterrestrial species came to Earth and saw humans in the same (low) way that we see animals, perhaps exploiting us and even consuming us. In this context, Peele forces us to rethink our relationship with animals, especially sentient animals.
Sentient?
Just as an aside, I think it is fascinating to think about whether this creature is just some lower (predatory) life form, living to consume and not much else, or whether it is sentient, a higher thinking life form. I don’t think there is a lot to go on for this line of thought but there are a few interesting signifiers that might give us a clue. For one thing, as I touch on above, the much discussed scene where the creature seems to almost deposit its waste from the humans it just ate right over OJ and Em’s house seems to suggest purposeful intention, as if it knows that Em, OJ, and Angel have discovered it but dumps its waste intentionally on their home as a way of expressing itself in some way to them.
Further, at one point, having fooled the creature into “eating” a fake horse, OJ says that they have made it angry. Again, that may be entirely something else, humans often anthropomorphizing animals, giving them human characteristics that aren’t relevant to their nature, something that was done to the chimps for Gordy’s Home! But, if the creature is indeed sentient and even sapient, then the dumping of its waste on the house could indeed be a sign of its anger at them.
Interesting too to think of Jupe’s show for the extraterrestrial creature, how the creature almost seems to go along with Jupe misguidedly thinking it could “train” the creature, the creature perhaps even going along until (more?) people showed up. Of course this too is what links the chimps and the creature, this long known misnomer that humans can safely “train” wild (sentient!) animals for their entertainment.
The one thing that makes me question this notion that the creature is sentient and perhaps even sapient, is that it again gets fooled into eating the large balloon cowboy/Jupe figure. If it was so intelligent, how in the world could it be fooled into such an easily seen through trick?!?
The Vertical Shoe
Perhaps the most perplexing symbolic signifier in the film is the strange vertical shoe we see after the horrific attack by the “Gordy” chimpanzee. The shoe is Mary Jo’s shoe, the actress getting the brunt of the chimpanzee’s attack, the chimpanzee mauling her face, leaving it permanently disfigured. We later see her at Jupe’s “spectacle” show, where she, like everyone else at the show, gets victimized again, this time getting consumed by the creature (Peele brilliantly creating these links to otherwise seemingly unconnected threads in the film), perhaps a way to punctuate just how dehumanizing “spectacle” (consumerism/capitalism) is, first victimized by the consequences of the Gordy’s Home! spectacle and then the consequences of the spectacle of Jupe’s even more insane attempt at turning the predatory extraterrestrial creature into a “spectacle” show.
Unlike most filmmakers/artists, Peele seems okay with telling us what he intended for at least some symbolism he uses in his films. In the case of the strange vertical shoe, he says this:
“The shoe represents a moment of where we check out of a trauma. And Jupe, he zones in on this little shoe, that’s Mary Jo’s shoe, that has landed in a precarious, odd situation. And this is the moment that he disassociates. So the shoe for me is in essence, in one way it’s the impossible shot. That’s an impossible moment.”
If I’m getting what Peele is getting at here correctly, the vertical standing shoe becomes Jupe’s way to alternatively shift his register from not only the horror of what the chimp is doing, but also what the chimp may do to him. In other words, despite the trauma of what is happening to Jupe, he can still fix his attention on the crazy (unnatural, unreal) positioning of the shoe, thus “disassociating” himself from the trauma he is experiencing.
More symbolically, the vertical standing shoe also informs the “spectacle” focus of the film. Elsewhere in the film, the “impossible shot” has been equated with “spectacle” (at least from Em’s perspective) and so, as Peele says above, the vertical shoe represents that as well. That is, Jupe focusing on the shoe may have been more than just disassociation, maybe him seeing spectacle even in this traumatic moment. As we see above, he puts the shoe in the glass case, making it more than a shoe. Of course, because the shoe lands in such an “impossible” position, as people will do, they will make something more of it than it is, because of their hunger for spectacle. In other words, while the shoe landing in the way it does is crazy, unlikely, it isn’t an “impossible” way for it to land. But that doesn’t matter, since people want the weird, bizarre, preternatural (“spectacle”) explanation, not the scientific one. (I really wish Peele had pushed this point more, perhaps putting the shoe on the cover of a magazine, stressing how people jumped on this weird vertical shoe, punctuating more how it is also a symbol of “spectacle”!)
In this way, like the “Gordy” chimp attack and like we can imagine will happen with the photo of the extraterrestrial creature — in both cases, people are or will be more interested in the “spectacle” of these unnatural incidents than that people were harmed or killed — the vertical shoe too is highlighted more so than the victims, e.g., we see the vertical shoe in Jupe’s macabre “spectacle” museum, not images of the victims more prominently placed.
Interesting to note too the single drop of blood on the shoe, which, for me, again (see above), speaks to this glossy surface/REAL binary. That is, if the shoe represents the artifice of this spectacle/exploitation show, then the drop of blood rupturing that glossy surface speaks to the always latent (figurative/literal) violence of such forms of representations.
The Race Element
Early in the film we learn that the horse jockey riding a horse in the famous very first moving image (“The Horse in Motion”) was a Black man and apparently related to the Hayward family (Peele taking some liberties here, since apparently the actual man who rode that horse is either unknown or an individual by the name of Gilbert Domm). The reference seems to be about how African Americans throughout history have been part of history but obscured or even elided from important historical moments. Even in watching the image, the horse jockey is in effect darkened out so his race cannot be determined. It is the perfect symbolism of how Blacks in history have been erased from it. Later in the film, OJ makes the point that his father “changed the industry,” which I take it to mean that his father created a Black owned horse riding business (in her pitch to the film crew, Em says as much, saying “That’s why back at the Haywood Ranch, as the only Black-owned horse trainers in Hollywood”) getting the (Hollywood) industry to use horses from a Black owned business, the stereotype of African Americans is that they were NOT “cowboys” and thus did NOT ride horses, much less train them. In this way, Peele is reflecting on an important part of history that has been elided, African Americans’ important part in both the wild west era and Hollywood.
The Wild West Symbolism
In a fascinating ending symbolism, Em and OJ have defeated “Jean Jacket” and we get interesting visual (“wild west”) signifiers that perhaps register deeper meaning. First, we get the loop recording of the “wild west” theme park saying conspicuously in this moment, “It’s time to ride off into the sunset,” which is further punctuated by the “Sheriff” signifier right next to Em. Then we get a cut to a “Out Yonder” gateway framing (see below) and the smoke clears revealing OJ on his horse, still alive yes, but also looking like a typical mythical western hero, the “finger” from the gateway framing even seeming to point to him, as if punctuating his importance. In my reading of these interesting, provocative signifiers, here again Peele is punctuating the place that Blacks have in history. In this case, Em and OJ (and Angel, a Latino man) have saved the day, defeated “Jean Jacket,” cemented their place in the mythos of a history of heroes, the echo here being what I say above, that Blacks have always done this – including during the wild west – but their place in history is typically erased. In this way, Peele is substituting the artifice/”spectacle” of Jupe’s “wild west” amusement park for the REAL of history and a progressing humanity.
