“Get Out” (2017) is a Hollywood horror film directed and written by Jordan Peele, he of the comedy duo Key & Peele. In the fashion of “The Stepford Wives” (1975), it is a grim parody of White Liberal racism. Metaphors abound.
Unlike nearly all Hollywood horror films, this one has a Black hero: Chris Washington. His White girlfriend, Rose Armitage, wants them to spend the weekend with her parents out in the country. He agrees.
Her father tries to prove how “down” he is with Black people by saying he would have voted for Obama a third time and saying things like “my man” and “thang”. Ugh.
At a garden party full of old White people, they too try to prove how not-racist they are by saying nice things about Black people – all based on stereotypes: Blacks are good at sports, good in bed, etc. Peele shows how creepy “positive” racism can be.
So far this is just autobiography, not parody.
Good White Person: It is not just Chris who finds these remarks uncomfortable. So does Rose. She is the Good White Person of the film, the one White audiences can tell themselves they would be like.
The sunken place: Rose’s mother, Missy, is a psychiatrist. She hypnotizes Chris to cure his smoking habit. While hypnotized, Chris feels like he is falling down a dark hole. He screams but nothing comes out. Missy:
“Now you’re in the sunken place.”
Black people: All weekend Chris sees only three Black people: Georgina and Walter, the servants, and Logan, a party guest. They all act strange.
CHRIS: All I know is sometimes, if there are too many White people, I get nervous, you know?
GEORGINA: (stares, then tries not to cry, then smiles and laughs as a tear rolls down her face) Oh. Oh, no. No. No. No! No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Aren’t you something? That’s not my experience, not at all. The Armitages are so good to us. They treat us like family (smile).
It is like there are two persons inside her, the crying one a Black person trying to get out.
Gaslighting: Everyone plays down Chris’s concerns. Only when he calls Rod, his friend back in the city, does he hear the clear voice of reason.
The truth comes out: Chris tries to get out but Rose cannot find the car keys. Then her Good White Person mask slips from her face: she drew him out to the country to have him sold at auction. For a brain transplant. He would become a spectator in his own body as a White person’s brain took over.
Rose’s father – is a brain surgeon.
Georgina and Walter have the brains of Rose’s grandparents.
Chris tries to fight his way free but Rose’s mother already has him under her hypnotic control.
“Now you’re in the sunken place.”
Whew! A good thing in real life White people never try to control Black bodies or get inside their heads.
Thanks to Satanforce and Mary Burrell for suggesting this film.
– Abagond, 2017.
See also:
- Key & Peele: Negrotown
- White Liberals
- stereotype
- gaslighting
- internalized racism
- Frantz Fanon
- cultural appropriation
- wigger
- Rachel Dolezal
539
“Whew! A good thing in real life White people never try to control Black bodies or get inside their heads.”
HOLLY SARCASM BATMAN!!
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Hey Sondis
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Hiya, Mary ^_^
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She put this one on the tv, i kinda paid attention until he sunk into the floor, i do not recommend it whatsoever. He used an antler rack to kill someone? 1/2 point originality for that i suppose.
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the antler was symbolic. they hit a deer before their arrive at the house and it was a male deer and during slavery black males were referred to as bucks
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Abagond is about six months late on this one….isn’t he ?
The conspiracy theorist in me takes the movie title literally. GET OUT. Get out of the U.S. while you can
As to the movie if you are someone who turned a blind eye to how White people get down, and have always gotten down, then that movie really impressed you.
If you are someone who already knew, this movie was a time waster.
A lot of non-Black people I know were impressed and I’m like, did you really not know this was happening?
I’m glad Jeffrey Dahmer was mentioned by the friend in this movie.
Dahmer is white supremacy realized.
He literally consumed Black bodies he subconsciously thought were genetically superior to his own. And that’s what white supremacy essentially is.
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I thought it was a great movie. My favorite review had to be “Smug LIberals” at the NYT because the comment section was so overwhelmingly defensive, one poster said they would not go see the movie and another claimed that he just couldn’t “win” so why even try.
.https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/18/opinion/sunday/the-horror-of-smug-liberals.html
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@ vanishingpoint
Thanks for the link.
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Everyone should have a best ride or die friend like Rod who was the comedy relief by funny man Lil Rel Howery who the TSA dude who got things handled.
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Lots of brain dead house negros that love living in the sunken place, think black Trump supporters and other shills for white supremacy. All skin folks ain’t kin folks.
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“Whew! A good thing in real life White people never try to control Black bodies or get inside their heads.”
Abagond has a sense of humor! A TSA drone as hero? Strange story line choice.
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@sapphire ok. Again, it didn’t catch my eye overall.
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The movie “Get Out” was brilliantly directed by Jordan Peele. On the other hand, this same movie was brilliantly deconstructed by Dr. Umar Johnson.
Even in what may appear to be on the surface, the most innocent of interaction with white people, the dynamics of racism, control and the attempt to steer the mind of the kneegrow is always at work. We are in essence phantasmagorical objects of white people.
Dr. Umar Johnson’s breakdown of “Get Out” is long, but every second is worth watching.
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_WaQaRQqznE)
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@Sapphire Morningstar: Excellent observation about the antler horns and also the scene when Rose and Chris first arrive at her parents home, Rose makes mention of hitting a deer. The father responds “Good I hate them kill them all.” The deer as well as the antlers that we see are symbols for the pejorative word buck, that was used during slavery to describe a black man.
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@Sapphire Morningstar and Mary Burrell
Thank you both for unpacking the symbolism of the antlers.
If I recall, the father was gored to death with antlers in the final scenes when the hero, Chris was making his escape.
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Why would respectable white people want to inhabit black bodies that would subject them to a lifetime of racist oppression? Did the white poor die out? It was an enjoyable little horror movie, but only if you don’t question its premise.
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“Why would respectable white people want to inhabit black bodies that would subject them to a lifetime of racist oppression?”
Ask Rachel Dolezal.
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I could see how some respectable white people would like to inhabit black bodies if they were not subject to a lifetime of racist oppression but subject to an artificial social environment governed by white liberal positively-perceived stereotypes about blacks and where inhabiting the black body carries some prestige (ie, the winners of the auction).
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“Origin
“Why would respectable white people want to inhabit black bodies that would subject them to a lifetime of racist oppression?”
Ask Rachel Dolezal.”
Cute but not commensurate.
Dolezal’s mimicry was a labor of love, not so for the whites in this movie.
Plenty white Syrians, Afghans, Eastern Europeans, etc. who could have been harvested instead of blacks, who carry a social stigma, that not even “white liberal positively-perceived stereotypes about blacks and where inhabiting the black body carries some prestige (ie, the winners of the auction).”, will wash away.
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Plenty of whites love to partake of the trappings of other cultures or aspects of the appearance of other people without the stigma associated with actually being them. Peele pushes it further in Get Out but in the context of the move it’s not all that unbelievable.
These are mosly wealthy older people who spend most of their time away from the larger society anyway, and the procedure is known to their social circle. Everyone at the party knew what was going to happen Chris and knew that Logan [IIRC, the guy kidnapped in the beginning] was really a white man in a black body. In that sense, they were known, to their social circle, to be REALLY white just as a white person with a really dark tan is still seen as white. They were just wearing a black person.
I think the choice was really for metaphorical reasons though. Literal body-snatching is the height of enslavement and the resulting being is the epitome of the oreo. The stiff black people were very creepy and “off”; it wouldn’t have worked if replaced by non-Anglo white people.
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“Plenty of whites love to partake of the trappings of other cultures or aspects of the appearance of other people without the stigma associated with actually being them.”
Partaking is not quite the same thing as being black, is it? What’s the point of changing one cage, old age and enfeeblement, for a skin color that makes you a potential target for every moron, when lots of young, healthy and desperate whites are available for next to nothing? How many white Syrians would refuse a passport to a leafy suburb in the USA?
I don’t buy the “…REALLY white just as a white person with a really dark tan is still seen as white.” claim. In my experience, whites with really dark tans are made aware of their difference from the norm with nicknames like “black Jack Bouvier”, as was the case for Jackie O’s father.
“I think the choice was really for metaphorical reasons though. Literal body-snatching is the height of enslavement and the resulting being is the epitome of the oreo. The stiff black people were very creepy and “off”; it wouldn’t have worked if replaced by non-Anglo white people.”
You make a valid point. Seen in that light, Sapphire Morningstar’s antler impalement explanation makes sense because it would be a blow struck in the war between buck vs bougie at the heart of the black community.
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I saw the Armitages as part of a cultish group. The whole operation would be illegal under any laws we have today so they were not mainstream white liberals. That was a facade and you can see how Rose changed the moment the ruse was no longer necessary. A secret brain transplant operation in the suburbs is pretty weird so I accepted any weirdness of the premise as consistent, in a sense.
The grandfather apparently had a lot to do with starting the “coagula” project and he was the one who’d lost out to Jesse Owens in qualifying for the Olympics. So in the context of the movie, there is an undertone of envy of perceived superior physicality that motivated him to want to possess a black body. That’s why there’s also the scene of, the now black, grandpa running around full speed at night for no reason and almost crashing into Chris.
However for all the literal weirdness, at the symbolic level the concepts are not that strange given actual history and that’s what makes it so creepy. Black bodies have been possessed as things [chattel slavery, human zoos] and they have been medically experimented on [J Marion Simms, Tuskeegee Study], while the minds have faced unrelenting white supremacist propaganda that tends to produce self-denial/hatred [like the preparatory hypnosis in Get Out]. Moreover, the black people in the movie who’ve achieved the “ideal” of having mostly white minds and being truly accepted (because they known to be white people inside) are portrayed as strange and horrifying to black people who haven’t.
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Ask Rachel Dolezal.”
Cute but not commensurate.
Uh, no. This comment was actually spot on. There is nothing cute about what Dolezal pretended to be and her performance of what she assumed to be blackness.
This article puts Dolezal’s little act sharply into perspective. There’s no way you can call what she did a “labor of love” after reading this:
The Heart of Whiteness: Ijeoma Oluo Interviews Rachel Dolezal, the White Woman Who Identifies as Black
http://www.thestranger.com/features/2017/04/19/25082450/the-heart-of-whiteness-ijeoma-oluo-interviews-rachel-dolezal-the-white-woman-who-identifies-as-black
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Uh, no. I never claimed that what Dolezal did was cute. What I found cute was Origin’s taking her mimicry as some kind of standard to counter my argument.
Fetishization is, like it or not, a form of love. Lots of light skinned blacks have felt the same ambivalence toward Blacks as a group that she expressed. The whole talented tenth thing is redolent of such attitude. Hell, some pretty dark skinned blacks aren’t exempt from ambivalence to the group either. Clarence Thomas, anyone?
Blacks are always telling themselves how much better things would be if only they had that white skin, some even bleach! The most contemptible creature, in the eyes of Blacks, is a white bum wasting all that good white skin, with which they could have gone so far, so, let’s have no more of this nonsense about some kind of monolithic view of what being black entails. I’d love to hear what “blackness” is, based on our experiences we all make different assumptions about what it is.
Tell me these black beauties aren’t repellent. He’s yo president, he’s yo president. Lol. https://twitter.com/DiamondandSilk/status/933701853359099906
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gro jo on Thursday November 30th 2017 at 08:02:18
Uh, no. I never claimed that what Dolezal did was cute. What I found cute was Origin’s taking her mimicry as some kind of standard to counter my argument.
Fetishization is, like it or not, a form of love.
First things first, Please understand that I’m doing this on my phone so I was aiming for brevity but I understood the context of your comment completely.
Fetishism, like rape, is never about love but about power and control. There is no love in forcing someone to be what you perceive and remain that way. Healthy perceptions of life and reality did never be taken lightly.
You should really read that article I linked to. Dolezal’s foray into claiming blackness is called out for the insulting parody that it is. That she made this parody her entire life is at least extreme narcissism and at worst may indicate mental illness.
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“Fetishism, like rape, is never about love but about power and control. There is no love in forcing someone to be what you perceive and remain that way. Healthy perceptions of life and reality did(sic) never be taken lightly.”
Love excludes power and control? Have you ever dealt with children you love? Did you refuse to exercise power and control over them? Did your parents refrain from the same practice while raising you? If they did you are the rare exception. Love, like everything else, exists within a range that goes from platonic friendship to fetishization and other perversions. I can only quote something I wrote on the Roy Moore thread to make my point:
“https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedda_Nussbaum
Read this and tell me again that power and dominance have nothing to do with some peoples’ libidos. Nonsense, People are weird and some quite sick.”
You seem to be the big expert on what’s ‘black’, so tell me how she managed to pull off her imposture? She was ‘validated’ by people, NAACP, whose job was to champion black rights! If ‘Black” identity is as fixed as your comments imply, it would have been impossible for her to do as she did for as long as she did. The author of the article you link to didn’t even try to explain that fact, instead, she rolls out all the academic verbiage about intersectionality, white privilege, etc. These types of arguments leave me cold, since they explain nothing, in my opinion.
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@ gro jo
I wonder who pays Diamond and Silk to do their blackface on black skin parody?
Will they be spared by the Alt-Right when they storm into Black neighborhoods intent on mayhem? Will chanting “He’s yo president, he’s yo president” act as a get out of jail free card then?
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You know their twitter account, why not ask them? I suspect your question to be of the rhetorical kind. I’ll give them credit for coming up with a thoroughly annoying but catchy meme.
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I wouldn’t worry, white people are on track to be a minority by what, 2040 now? And completely extinct by 2100.
Won’t have to put up with them much longer!
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I actually saw this film right before my big 10 day break.
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@ Pete
“…white people are on track to be a minority by what, 2040 now? And completely extinct by 2100.”
Those talking points are false. They are designed to produce panic, anger and a sense of false victimhood in European-Americans. In short, they are in incitement to violence.
Which tells me a lot about your motivation for repeating those lies.
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Betty Gabriel who played Georgina was excellent.
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I have not seen the film yet, but I went through over a dozen clips (adding up to about 1/3 of the movie) to get an idea of the scenes.
It also reminds me of Ghost and Silence of the Lambs, ie, the idea of wearing or inhabiting someone else’s body and the police not believing it. It is not a far stretch to extend that to the idea of wearing a black body as a fashion statement.
It is a turn on the premise of a black person finding themselves up sh!t creek, as those are almost all white saviour tropes. In this film, all of the white people are evil (and they are not evil characters that happen to be white, but their whiteness
I am a bit confused as to why Peele added a Japanese character. Obviously he is elderly and in on the scheme, but he also participates in the Bingo game. I did not get what his role or plot device is. Is he also hoping to win the lottery to get transferred into Chris’s body? And unlike the other men there, he did not seem to have a wife or family.
At least they did not use Yellowface, but I did notice that they selected a Japanese character, and a foreign one at that. So, it does “validate” the stereotype that Asians in the USA are foreign, but using foreign Japanese as tokens seems like a trope from the late 1980s, not the late 2010s.
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Did your parents refrain from the same practice while raising you? If they did you are the rare exception. Love, like everything else, exists within a range that goes from platonic friendship to fetishization and other perversions.
I feel like you’re arguing get the same of argument it that you truly believe Dolezal’s parody of black people had to do with a great love for black people. But the interview I linked to and excerpts from her book are more than proof, to me, that her fetishism of black people is less than healthy.
Which brings me to your comparison of parental love to fetishism. There may be parallels but the main difference being what I pointed out. Parental dominance and control combined with love is simply healthy discipline. Fetishising ones children, taken too far, could wind up expressed as emotional abuse.
Again, one is healthy, the other is not.
What Dolezal did is not healthy. And get motives are not benign either. That she took her parody so far speaks to the acceptance of the people around her, not necessarily to the idea that she was right to do what she did. I firmly believe she was not.
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filial love is not supposed to be a peer-to-peer relationship (or close)
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Jefe said and then asked: “I am a bit confused as to why Peele added a Japanese character. Obviously he is elderly and in on the scheme, but he also participates in the Bingo game. I did not get what his role or plot device is. Is he also hoping to win the lottery to get transferred into Chris’s body? And unlike the other men there, he did not seem to have a wife or family.”
I don’t know why this is such a mystery to you jefe. Most of us are well aware of some Asians participating in the anti-Black phenomenon. Of course it’s never been on the same level of evil perpetrated by whites, nonetheless, the hands some Asians have never been squeaky clean either.
In any event, allow me to disabuse you of what appears to be your deep level of confusion. There are many other instances of anti-Black incidents committed by Asian-Americans, however, I’ll stick to the movie for now.
Below is an excerpt from Ray’s article of review concerning the movie, “Get Out.”
“Get Out” tackles the terrifying experiences of being Black in racist white America, and the inclusion of the Asian man reveals that, while Asians may not play a lead role in white supremacy, our willingness to participate in anti-blackness makes us a supporting character.” – Ray Maningding, Asian American
https://nextshark.com/get-out-film-asian-character-racism-llag/
As far as Bingo being played in the movie, it was symbolic of bidding for Chris, sort of like bidding for a black body as property at the slave auction. Remember, this movie was chalk full of cinematic symbolism throwing punches at Amerika’s deep seated, but permanent fixture racism.
Feel free to ask me a question or two more, if you still find yourself in need of further clarification. Don’t be shy!
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I wasted my time replying to you since you refuse to seriously engage my arguments. That’s it for me, this is my last word on the subject to you until you make an effort to take seriously what I wrote.
“Which brings me to your comparison of parental love to fetishism. There may be parallels but the main difference being what I pointed out. Parental dominance and control combined with love is simply healthy discipline. Fetishising ones children, taken too far, could wind up expressed as emotional abuse.
Again, one is healthy, the other is not.”
Duh, how’s that counter to what I wrote? Did you fail to see these words, “…fetishization and other perversions.”?
You have the annoying habit of distorting what I wrote to fit your agenda. I don’t care to play that game with you. Brevity is no excuse for distorting what I wrote.
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“Those talking points are false…In short, they are in incitement to violence.”
Violence from who lol…? Old, fat, weak white dudes? Ain’t gonna be no violence from those panzies. They will lie down and die quietly, don’t worry.
We’re looking at a Zimbabwe/South Africa outcome in a couple decades and it’s gonna be GREAT!
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@ Pete
” Violence from who lol…Old, fat, weak white dudes? Ain’t gonna be no violence from those panzies. They will lie down and die quietly, don’t worry.”
You may not be worried, but I am.
Violence is the master plan for far Right paramilitary types who have been menacing people and getting away with their crimes. One group, the Rise Above Movement (RAM) has been practicing their thuggery in California for the past few years.
The investigative journalism site, ProPublica did an in-depth article about this group. They also use “victim” language to describe White people in the US. This is just a sample:
https://www.propublica.org/article/white-hate-group-campaign-of-menace-rise-above-movement
White victim language is just another tool used by White supremacists to justify their violence against other people.
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“the main difference being what I pointed out. Parental dominance and control combined with love is simply healthy discipline.”
Another difference is that parental dominance and control lessen as the child grows up. In a healthy relationship, adult children are not dominated by or controlled by their parents.
The expression of parental love changes over time as the child becomes increasingly autonomous.
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Just reading this review sends chills down my spine, and most horror movies I’ve watched don’t do that.
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“The expression of parental love changes over time as the child becomes increasingly autonomous.”
Right, because in all parent child relationships love is all that gets expressed. Then how do you account for the cases when parents torture and kill their kids?
What’s with the hangup about healthy relationships? My comment took in the full range of the expression of “love”. “Love, like everything else, exists within a range that goes from platonic friendship to fetishization and other perversions.”
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@ gro jo
I don’t define that as true love. People who abuse or kill their children aren’t acting out of love.
I also draw a distinction between love and lust. Fetishes have more to do with lust, in my view.
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@ gro jo
“because in all parent child relationships love is all that gets expressed.”
I never said that. You’re the one who’s been trying to equate love and abuse, not me or anyone else so far in this thread.
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@ gro jo
“What’s with the hangup about healthy relationships?”
How is it a “hangup” exactly?
Would you prefer to emulate and lionize unhealthy, abusive relationships that result in physical and/or emotional injury?
Give me one good reason why healthy relationships should not be the norm we aspire to reach.
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i was told a few years back .za has like common armored car robberies etc, does everyone have a gun on them in general? black or white etc.
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“You’re the one who’s been trying to equate love and abuse, not me or anyone else so far in this thread.”
Right, because pointing out that these feelings exist and can be all mixed up in a relationship is equating them. Did all abusive relationships start as such? If no, what caused them to degenerate?
“Give me one good reason why healthy relationships should not be the norm we aspire to reach.”
as soon as you show where I claimed they shouldn’t I’ll answer your question.
“How is it a “hangup” exactly?”
It’s a hangup because you assume that they are the norm. Even relationships that start out well can end up badly.
“I never said that. You’re the one who’s been trying to equate love and abuse, not me or anyone else so far in this thread.”
I never said you did. I only pointed out that people have been known to harm their love ones. Susan Smith drowned her sons, and blamed a magic black man, because they got in the way of her romance, can you absolutely assert that she did not love them?
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The director / writer, a biracial black American married to a white woman, may have a good or maybe even unique perspective (different from most whites and even many blacks) to describe the racial hypocrisy of white American liberalism and the creepiness of extending black cultural appropriation over to wearing their bodies. It is a twist on the concept of being a “wigger”.
(BTW, Abagond, you might want to have links about this too.)
However, the insertion of a cardboard stereotyped asexual elderly “foreign” Asian male character is something else altogether. Its purpose could not have anything to do directly with the racial hypocrisy of white liberalism (except to present this stereotype). What is does do, is present a perception (perhaps held by many blacks, and also some liberal whites, eg, The Young Turks) is that Asian-Americans are complicit in white liberal racial hypocrisy.
It is important to know that this stereotype is widely held by both blacks and whites.
(BTW, I was fully aware of this idea well in advance of my prior posting – no one needs to “educate” me about this perception. That is not my confusion. My comment was more about the idea of using a cardboard stereotyped character to do this (ie, to confirm this bias). The writer / director should know better about the problem of using cardboard stereotypes.)
However, the character is actually participating in the auction, suggesting that elderly Asian “foreign” men also would like to appropriate black culture by wearing a black body. Yet, it is a character without a wife and family, and who speaks with a Japanese accent. What value does wearing a young black male body have for him?
Using cardboard characters does harm by reinforcing stereotypes, eg
– Asian men are asexual, or do not have romantic or family relationships
– Asian Americans are foreigners
– Asians are complicit in white racial hypocrisy (while this may indeed exist, it may not serve the purpose of the writer/director to reinforce this stereotype, especially in a film that seeks to expose the hypocrisy of stereotypes held by whites.)
The cringetastic aspect for me is the general depiction of elderly Asian men as without a wife or family, and remaining a foreigner in the USA for many decades. It harks back to the period of the Chinese Exclusion Act and the period following it when Chinatowns were full of elderly “bachelor” men who never had the chance to get married or form a family. I still have some recollection of this kind of community from my early childhood. Is wearing a black body going to fix that somehow?
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“Did all abusive relationships start as such?”
Generally, yes. Abusers have a pattern, and the warning signs are there from the beginning for those who know what to look for.
The reason those abusive relationships appear to begin well and then degenerate has to do with that pattern. Abusers don’t hit someone on the first date. Instead, in the early stages of a relationship, they use charm, love-bombing, and a rush to commitment to create a facsimile of true affection. They are very good at manipulation and deception.
“Susan Smith drowned her sons, and blamed a magic black man, because they got in the way of her romance, can you absolutely assert that she did not love them?”
It certainly appears that she never loved them. She seems to have regarded them as objects that reflected on her self-image. As long as she received positive reinforcement for projecting the persona of a loving, caring mother, she played that role. But as soon as she saw her children as obstacles to something she wanted, she killed them.
If I saw any evidence to suggest Susan Smith was in the grips of a delusion when she killed them — if she had schizophrenia or was experiencing a post-partum psychosis, for example — then I would say it was possible that she did truly love them and only killed them due to irrational thinking caused by mental illness. But I’ve never seen any evidence which indicates that.
“I only pointed out that people have been known to harm their love ones.”
You’ve been using the examples of psychopaths like Susan Smith and Joel Stein to argue that love can be about power and control.
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“Asian men are asexual, or do not have romantic or family relationships”
Hmm, I never thought twice about the fact that the Asian man was there alone in Get Out and never knew of the single Asian as a stereotype. You learn something new every day.
I have a few older bachelors and bachelorettes in my family. I don’t this is necessarily “problematic” unless they are involuntarily so and unhappy. Often they’re happy and are part of an extended family “glue” with their married siblings and their children.
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Added links for wigger and Rachel Dolezal.
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re: Origin
OMG, even since before Mr. Yunioshi in Breakfast at Tiffany’s, this is one of the longest reigning Hollywood tropes there is.
Shouldn’t say “single” exactly, but asexual.
How many films / TV shows can you think of where an Asian male character had a love life, romantic interest, or even a relationship? I saw more relationship expression and romantic interest between Black men / black male bodies and white women (even older upper middle aged white women) in “Get Out” than I have seen with Asian males (with women or even other men) over many years of TV and movies out of Hollywood. The writer / director of “Get Out” has simple inserted the cardboard “foreign” Asian male stereotype into his film, and I want to know what purpose it serves.
(Of course I know that one of the purposes is to demonstrate the perception that Asians in the US are often complicit in White Liberal Racial Hypocrisy, but not only was that confirmation bias inserted into the film, but so was the cardboard stereotype. That means in the course of exposing white liberal racial hypocrisy, another racially hypocritical trope was used.Why was there any need to do that?)
Maybe, if an Asian man could wear a black man’s body, he would have a chance to have a relationship or a love life? I don’t think the writer / director thought that far.
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^ I haven’t even seen “Get Out” yet. That is just from a dozen plus clips.
If I saw the full movie, maybe there are more examples in it.
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“Generally, yes. Abusers have a pattern, and the warning signs are there from the beginning for those who know what to look for.”
Really? You’re getting this from what source? How come there are no public service announcements publicizing such information? You might want to consider forming such group. Nothing wrong with doing well while doing good.
“It certainly appears that she never loved them. She seems to have regarded them as objects that reflected on her self-image.”
Wow, your capacity to read minds is truly impressive. Do I detect a note of caution in the use of qualifiers such as “appears” and “seems”? Nah, why would you have any doubts about her feelings for her kids, after all she only took good care of them for only 99.9% of their lives!
“You’ve been using the examples of psychopaths like Susan Smith and Joel Stein to argue that love can be about power and control.”
Tell me, what’s the psychopathic way of looking after children, how do you differentiate it from the non-psychopathic way?
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@abagond
May also need to add this one:
The Wigger Fallacy
And how this movie turns this assertion on its head:
Maybe being black (or anything for that matter) still requires something beyond having just a black (or other relevant) skin. How we learn our racial identity depends on many factors.
I think a racial identity still has to be learned.
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@grojo driving into a lake with them strapped in?
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That was 0.1% of her interaction with them, what about the other 99.9%? She was a 23 year old idiot with fantasies of an ideal life with her new lover, that took priority over what she felt for the kids. People do have conflicting urges you know?
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I have been looking for some commentary about the Asian character’s purpose in this movie, and found one article that had links to others with different points of view:
Why The Asian Character In ‘Get Out’ Matters So Much
https://www.bustle.com/p/why-the-asian-character-in-get-out-matters-so-much-42569
Each of the links has a different take on the reason, but some things stand out.
— it was deliberate
(Peele wanted that character to be in there, and be like that, and did an actor search specifically to fill that role)
— the depiction of him being single or asexual and having a foreign accent was deliberate
— Each question asked by each guest had a specific purpose – they were trying to gauge their personal interest in being inserted into Chris’s body.
eg,
– does he play golf?
– Is he good in bed?
etc.
So the Asian man’s question regarding the advantages and disadvantages of being African-American had a very specific purpose unique to him. Unlike the white people there, he recognized that there may be disadvantages in being black.
All the white people seem to be of the mind that “black” is the new fashion statement and as a fashion statement, they were already interested in being inserted in his body (there was no disadvantage in that). They were interested in the other things – his athletic ability, his sexual prowess, his eyesight.
But the Asian character specifically pointed out there are advantages and disadvantages in being black, and his question was aimed to gauge whether it would be worth it or valuable to him to be black in America. The flip side of the question would to question if it would be better to stay Asian in America. That is his choice, which is different from the white people.
yet obviously, he decided to join the auction.
So, after reading the comments on the links and taking this into account, I think that the character was not specifically inserted to demonstrate that Asians are complicit in Liberal White Racial Hypocrisy (but Peele wanted to show that they support it on some level, as they are participating in a white activity that is anti-black). The issue for the Asian character was to gauge if it is better to face being a perpetual foreigner and a single, emasculated, asexual Asian man in America, or have a chance to escape all that and become a black man (albeit with other disadvantages). His wearing a black body is not a fashion statement, like it is for the white people, but a chance to live in America with a different set of advantages and disadvantages.
So Peele has actually raised a debate with no specific answer — the advantages and disadvantages of being a black man v. an Asian man in America. And the Asian man apparently decided that he would like to try being black.
His character may actually have another purpose other than confirmation bias that Asians are complicit in White Liberal Racial Hypocrisy.
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I really do not understand jefe or Kiwi for that matter. Both of you continually push this passive, but very questionable ideology that Black folks in Amerika somehow hold an advantage over those of Asian descent socially and politically. But yet, neither one of you are capable of providing enumerated proof of this being the case.
Personally, I believe both of you to a certain extent are on the cusp of exhibiting persecutory delusional behaviour. I will continue to believe this to be the case until either one of you can produce proof to the contrary.
Here, I would delve into this issue even deeper but it’s the weekend and I have things to do. However, I wish both of you good luck in your searches to prove that Blacks in Amerika have some type of advantages over Asians.
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Oh Dear, dear,
Peele specifically phrased the question posed by each character. They are like interview questions.
A lot of places have analyzed it and have come up with different answers. It was very informative to go through the articles and the comments. People should read all of them to try to find out their blind spots.
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@jefe: Watch the film I would be interested in your take on the film.
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“A lot of places have analyzed it and have come up with different answers. It was very informative to go through the articles and the comments. People should read all of them to try to find out their blind spots.” – jefe
You could’ve just as easily posted the link here so that everyone could be privy to them as well in order to further argue your point. What’s preventing you from doing this?
Nonetheless, I still believe that it’s a mental health issue to a certain extent for someone wanting to inhabit the space of another person or supplant another group of people because one oppressed group of people or person believe that it’s better to be in the space of another group people who are still reeling from slavery, psyche ache and many other intergenerational ills.
To me, the equivalent would be me, as a so-called African American desperately wanting to be a subject of the “Untouchables” of India because I incorrectly calculated or failed to properly consider how unbeneficial or troublesome that would be to my detriment.
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Exactly what is “The Sunken Place”? Since the inception of Get Out the film has generated lots of conversation about what “The Sunken Place” is or probably isn’t. What does it symbolize? Is it a metaphor of systemic oppression externally and internally? There is even a class being taught at UCLA by on Horror Films and Race by one of my favorite black horror writers Tananarive Due. The term “The Sunken Place” has been used in a plethora or internet memes and gifs in black social media spaces, I honestly did not care for the comedy of Peele & Key they were to annoyingly hipster for my taste. But after viewing Get Out and listening to Jordan Peele talk about the creative process and his thoughts on race relations in America and his own interracial marriage, I developed a different perspective of him. I have to say after I viewed this film in this past Spring I was impressed with his talent as a film director. Get Out was an interesting piece of art for the culture especially in this age of Trump.
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White Liberal white men especially in the film “I vote for Obama twice” as though that makes them not racist. I remember rolling my eyes at this scene in the film.
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In the “sunken place” they were spectators in their own bodies watching events around them unfold. It seemed a bit like sleep paralysis in terms of the kind of panic that would be involved since they would be aware but would be unable to respond physically.
The hypnosis was preparatory. Once the actual procedure was complete that would be their permanent state of existence. They key features of that state would be disempowerment and loss of agency. It’s how Georgina and the other black victims would have existed. The “sunken place”, could be seen as a metaphor, yes. There are a number of parallels that could be made with real life under oppressive systems.
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@ GroJo
Google it if you seriously want to know. I don’t have time to do it for you, and I suspect at this point you just want to argue because you enjoy arguing.
Yes, people have conflicting desires, but there are other ways to deal with that conflict which don’t involve murder.
You’re also assuming Susan Smith was a good mother up until the murder. From what we know of her history, she was a very troubled person with a traumatic childhood and a volatile marriage, which makes it unlikely she was June Cleaver with her children.
You don’t have any proof she was a good mother except that she kept her children alive (up until the point that she didn’t) and that the state hadn’t taken her children away from her — which signifies nothing.
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@ Jefe
In light of what you just posted about Peele’s intentions, do you think he would have made the same point as effectively if he’d written the character as a non-stereotypical U.S.-born Asian American with a family?
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An elderly white woman salaciously rubs Chris bicep saying “Is it true?” White women believing the myth of sexual prowess of black males.
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At the end when Rose dies Chris facial expression reminds me of Othello as he kills Desdemona he loves her even after learning the truth of her betrayal.
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@ blakksage
“because I incorrectly calculated or failed to properly consider how unbeneficial or troublesome that would be to my detriment.”
Isn’t that part of the point of the movie? The white people have stereotypical ideas about the advantages and/or coolness of being a black man, without fully seeing the disadvantages. But those disadvantages don’t really matter to them, because once they get done playing at being black, they can discard the body and go back to being white.
Those same white people don’t see anything cool about being an Asian American man. And the Asian American character is more aware of the white perspective than any other. He’s trying to be part of this white circle where they see being black as trendy but they don’t see being Asian as cool.
If he were to take a step back away from the white people’s perspective, he might more clearly see the troublesome and detrimental aspects to being black. And he might also see that he himself has been wedged into a harmful stereotype. But he is too used to viewing U.S. society through the white lens.
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@ Solitaire: You gave the best explanation of what the Asian man’s presence was among the group of whites that made sense to me.
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@Solitaire, whom do think you’re playing with and why are you intentionally misquoting me or taking my point out of context? That’s not what I wrote, stupid sh%t!
Oh .. my bad, it”s white people’s nature to do petty things like this.
It was a passionate conversation between me and jefe without misquoting each other. Move on with your BS!
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“Google it if you seriously want to know. I don’t have time to do it for you, and I suspect at this point you just want to argue because you enjoy arguing.”
Translated from Solitairespeak it means that I can’t backup my claims.
“Yes, people have conflicting desires, but there are other ways to deal with that conflict which don’t involve murder.”
Please tell me something I didn’t already know.
“You’re also assuming Susan Smith was a good mother up until the murder…You don’t have any proof she was a good mother except that she kept her children alive (up until the point that she didn’t) and that the state hadn’t taken her children away from her — which signifies nothing.”
It signified that she did what was expected of women similarly situated. Such conduct is routinely ascribed to motherly love. It also shows that you had zero basis to claim: “It certainly appears that she never loved them. She seems to have regarded them as objects that reflected on her self-image.”
“I suspect at this point you just want to argue because you enjoy arguing.”
My dear lady, let me remind you that I was arguing with thatdeborahgirl and you chose to jump in. I don’t have a problem with that but spare me the ‘victim’ act. Yes I do enjoy arguing with you and I suspect you enjoy arguing with me. We’re adults and entitled to our guilty pleasures.
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“Translated from Solitairespeak it means that I can’t backup my claims.”
It means you want me to jump through your hoops instead of searching yourself for something that’s been widely written about. It’s a way for you to keep the argument going.
“let me remind you that I was arguing with thatdeborahgirl and you chose to jump in.”
I replied to thatdeborahgirl, not to you. I would have much rather had a discussion with her, if she had felt so inclined.
“I suspect you enjoy arguing with me.”
Your inference is incorrect. That’s why I’m stopping now.
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“I replied to thatdeborahgirl, not to you. I would have much rather had a discussion with her, if she had felt so inclined.”
Please, you could have steered clear of the conversation, since it had very little to do with the topic of this post, but no, you just had to butt in. I feel no shame in admitting that I enjoy arguing with you, you can butt in anytime you want.
“Your inference is incorrect. That’s why I’m stopping now.”
Ok.
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@ gro jo
“…but no, you just had to butt in.”
This is a semi-public forum. You have no reasonable expectation of exclusive dialogue with other commenters. There are negative and positive aspects of that fact, as you well know.
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Why, oh why do people think they have the right to create straw men to argue with?
The full sentence was: “Please, you could have steered clear of the conversation, since it had very little to do with the topic of this post, but no, you just had to butt in. I feel no shame in admitting that I enjoy arguing with you, you can butt in anytime you want.”
Where is there any “expectation of exclusive dialogue” on my part? If anybody had that expectation, it was Solitaire because she felt she could butt in but I had no right to reply to her. Direct your accusation at her, not me!
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@ gro jo
You’re pretty good at straw men yourself. I never said you had no right to reply to me. Of course you do.
What I said was that my initial comment was in response to thatdeborahgirl, not to you. I only pointed this out because you claimed I engaged with you first.
I also said I would have enjoyed talking with her more than arguing with you. But that doesn’t mean I felt you had no right to reply.
You can say whatever you d@mn well please as long as Abagond allows it. ☺
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@ Afrofem
To be fair, he did conclude with this: “you can butt in anytime you want.”
Gro Jo’s just bored tonight and can’t find anyone to play battle-of-the-mind with him. 😆
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“Gro Jo’s just bored tonight and can’t find anyone to play battle-of-the-mind with him. 😆”
Why do you keep denying the obvious, you enjoy this as much as I do.
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@grojo although there is a fantastic vector to potentially be exploited a la ‘cat and mouse’ that is not my intention; my point is merely ‘what a difference a day makes,’ and society is always going to weigh certain things more than others, for example i’ve been a ‘good guy’ for hmmm 80+% of my life but i’m pretty much always going to be an ex-con.
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@Solitaire
That is a good question, and I think that it would be less effective.
If the Asian character had been a US-born Asian American man with a wife, esp. a man with a white accent and recognizable “American” interests (eg, a big Super Bowl fan) then the point would have been lost. At that point, he would have appeared to be no different from the other white couples in their white liberal racial hypocrisy, a white liberal with an Asian face.
It might have worked if the US-born Asian male had had his character developed further (for example, not promoted at work as his boss treats him as a foreigner, not accepted to be the local football or basketball boys’ team coach as he is not masculine enough, rejected by women at a bar for being an Asian male, etc.), so that the audience understood why he would ask such a question.
Peele decided to spend seconds to develop a character, so the only choice is to pick a cardboard stereotype.
By making him a cardboard stereotype, then his interview question then takes on a relevance. The character asked his question because apparently he himself had wondered about it, ie, the advantages and disadvantages of being African-American. His advantages and disadvantages of being who he is needs to be gauged against that, so if Peele only has seconds to develop his character, it has to be exactly what he did – the perpetual foreigner and asexual Asian male stereotype (and his willingness to socialize with white liberals) – whatever can be done in a matter of seconds.
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@Solitaire
Isn’t that insertion into the black body a permanent thing? They no longer have their original body, so are they not stuck in the black body?
I do get the impression from the film after the brain transfer, they can still retain their white identity in the black body.
yes, that message is communicated also. I suppose that is somehow an advantage of being black over Asian, ie, white people find being black cool, but not Asian.
does that include seeing Black as cool and Asian as not?
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@MB,
Yeah, I know, I am making all these comments about the film without actually having seen it, but I found about 15 different clips (including the beginning scene of Andre’s abduction and the ending with his TSA friend) which, when added together, must be at least 30-35 mins. of the film (About 1/3 of the total film). Then I read a dozen different reviews and commentaries, plus several different synopses, so somehow I feel I know what it is about. One clip had the single line of the Asian man, then I read in some reviews that he only had one line — so then I know that was it.
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If the Armitage’s are racist why would they put the white people’s brains in black bodies still has me confused?
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After all this discussion, I am a bit curious that Abagond did not mention in his blog post anything about the insertion of the Asian male cardboard character, and what it might mean.
The movie is only about 98 mins, so everything Peele included in the film and did not edit out must have been a very deliberate act. And the Asian character appears to be a key feature of the movie, especially since it led to that event with Andre revealing himself briefly overtaking Logan’s character, as well as the perception from the guests that being black is cool, Asian is not.
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@Mary Burrell
I think the point is that they see themselves as post-racial.
I think Peele wanted to show that white liberal post-racialism is itself, another expression of racism.
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“for example i’ve been a ‘good guy’ for hmmm 80+% of my life but i’m pretty much always going to be an ex-con.”
What caused you to be a ‘bad guy’ (100%-(80+%)) of the time? From the looks of you, I’d guess it was the quest to get high. Like Susan Smith, your criminal behavior was motivated by a pressing need for pleasure, you, drugs, her, the hope of a new life with her new lover. Society punishes such behaviors because of their costs to other people. So, it’s not outrageous that you should be an ex-con an she a murderess.
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@jefe: Or the white brains in black bodies could symbolize cultural appropriation, i.e. The buttocks of a black woman on a Kardashian’s or the natural hair of a black woman like a Rachel Dozeal or Bo Derrick.
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@MB
I think appropriation of blackness (whether cultural or physical) without negative repercussions is a symbol of white liberal post-racialism, not too unlike wiggerism.
I guess from their point of view, there also would be nothing wrong with blacks straightening or dying their hair or wearing colored contact lenses.
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@ Jefe
“Isn’t that insertion into the black body a permanent thing? They no longer have their original body, so are they not stuck in the black body?”
I was working on the assumption that their brain could be transferred yet again, into a new white body.
“does that include seeing Black as cool and Asian as not?”
Yes, I would say that’s from a white lens. It doesn’t seem to be coming from an Asian lens since it involves a negative self-image of Asians. And the view of black as “cool” is also a stereotype which of course we see in real life among white people who fetishize black culture and black bodies.
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@ gro jo well mostly the alcohol, i have 5 duis, very antisocial and harrassment tickets (summary) in PA abound, (not just women! i will tell a patrolman or probably a seargeant nowadays just how i feel) i got on in a restraining order hearing in Reading, PA! the felony is over 0.3g of coke (simple possession) in NJ, i believe all surrounding states would be a misdemeanor in IE MD, DE, PA, NY. quest. to get high, eh not exactly, more like the default?
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*one in
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(sp) sargeant the three point stripes mabe a white shirt
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@gro jo lol that was more the ‘crafting side’ ie drinking cheap beer and goin to the villager job (in a car), rinse repeat ding
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re: Solitaire
That means a white person would have to be abducted for the same thing (another brain transplant), and when the brain is transferred, what would happen to the original remnant of the black person’s brain?
I guess the sequel could take this kind of plot twist, but I envision Chris and his TSA friend going back to try to rescue their friend Andre.
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@Abagond,
Sorry to keep on suggesting other posts to add to the links, but the premise of this movie led me to think about the Tuskegee Experiment, where whites did experiments on black male bodies without telling the males anything, or tricking them into participating, and which had fatal consequences on the males and their families.
So, there are actual recent historical precedents of whites deceiving blacks to get access to their bodies to perform fatal scientific experiments.
The Tuskegee Experiment
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Abagond. I’m surprised that you could have been so on the money with The Wire, gotten West’s critique of Coates, yet have missed the Key and Peele Media Complex. Get Out is exactly the type of White Liberal love-fest that should be avoided like the plague.
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