NOPE: Making a Spectacle Out of Trauma

 

Jordan Peele's latest is both a love letter and cautionary tale about the power of spectacle. (!!!MAJOR SPOILERS!!!)

By: Josh McCormack

For as much as I like to deconstruct films and film genres that I love, there’s always a question I can’t stand; “Why do people love horror films?”

It’s a question I am often confronted with when talking to someone in an academic setting or horror convention and it’s a psychoanalytic inquiry that I dread. I’ve heard all of the answers before, the most popular one of which seems to be that it’s a “way of dealing with our own mortality without the danger of imminent death” or something. To me, I just think horror movies are rad. Monsters are cool, and it’s the only mainstream genre that actually encourages some form of innovation. 

But really what bothers me about this question is that it’s the wrong thing to be asking. It’s too specific. The real question should be, “Why do people love films in general?” Or maybe even, “Why do we love to be entertained by anything?”

It’s that latter question that I believe lies at the heart of Jordan Peele’s third directorial feature, Nope. It’s also a question that I would expect to be tackled by a seasoned veteran of the filmmaking industry and not a relatively young man with only five years of feature filmmaking experience at his belt. However, since 2017, Peele has skyrocketed through the industry outside of just the director’s chair. The sketch comic turned auteur director/ “master of horror” has had his name on everything from the latest Candyman reboot to Spike Lee’s Oscar-nominated BlackKklansman. I’m sure these experiences have forced him to “grow up”--in a sense–faster than most of his horror film contemporaries in the movie business.

Whatever the reason may be for Peele to already offer a loving, but often critical, deconstruction of the entertainment industry, the final product is his most idiosyncratic, layered, and divisive movie yet. A thrilling but frightening sci-fi/horror hybrid that posits the theory that spectacle– and the entertainment provided by a spectacle– is the only way humanity can attempt processing their collective traumas.

Our lead characters, siblings O.J. (Daniel Kaluuya) and Emerald Haywood (Keke Palmer), have now inherited their father’s horse ranch, which is said in the film to be the only black-owned horse ranch in Hollywood, where horses are rented out for big Hollywood productions. The two’s father, Otis (Keith David), died from incredibly odd circumstances when a quarter–as well as other small objects–mysteriously rained down from the sky at the speed of a bullet and struck him. As the film progresses we find out that this event is not an isolated one. And that, sure enough, it’s the result of a UFO.

What really struck me about the two leads in Nope is the speed at which they choose to not alert authorities or (to quote a Peele classic) get out of their old home the second they see a UFO. Rather, Palmer’s Emerald makes it seem as if the natural reaction to hearing her brother has seen a flying saucer is to go out the next morning and buy equipment to capture the aliens on film.  It’s as if it’s a no-brainer. Yet, when the whole viewing experience began to wash over me (as Peele’s films are ought to do) with all of the details converging at a certain point–one that is probably different for me, you, and each filmgoer– it began to dawn on me that O.J. and Emerald haven’t really discussed their father’s death. Outside of one scene where they drink and briefly reminisce about a moment of their childhood.

It is this lack of discussion and the insistence on capturing this alien on camera that is key to the relationship of the two siblings and the key to my personal understanding of Nope. These are people who want to make a spectacle (one that’s “Oprah worthy”) out of what caused their father’s death as a way of coming to terms with it, as opposed to talking through it or seeking help in order to more efficiently deal with their grieving process. While it’s an opportunity for the two disparate siblings to finally come together, we also see the side effects of trying to turn personal grief and trauma into a commodity through Steven Yeun’s character.

So, I guess that means we gotta bring up the chimpanzee in the room.

In just the short time it's been in theaters, I have already seen many of the core criticisms of Nope being lodged at the seemingly “unimportant” flashback scenes of a monkey going absolutely haywire on the set of a family sitcom. Focusing on a character who is undoubtedly a small supporting player in the film (while still being played wonderfully by Steven Yeun), it is understandable why many viewers might be a little baffled as to why this not only starts the film, but takes up a significant amount of the film’s runtime later on.

However, despite one’s personal disdain for this narrative detour the film takes, it’s essential to the themes of processing trauma through entertainment. Aside from being a genuinely terrifying sequence, the way in which the character of Ricky deals with the brutal murders of his fellow cast and crewmembers is quite chilling. What is initially set up in the film as something Ricky might carry with him as a dark moment of his life that he never really talks about, he instead opens up about the experience to our lead characters in the film’s first 15 minutes. But as opposed to describing the pain and trauma he felt, he instead gives O.J. and Emerald the rundown of the Saturday Night Live parody of the event with a smile on his face (prompting the amazing line, “Chris Kattan crushed it”). 

Ricky is a man who has processed the terrifying events through the sensationalism of spectacle. It is how he has managed to live his whole life (even renting out a room devoted to the cursed sitcom to strange enthusiasts) and it proves to be his undoing when encountering the alien terror later in the film. Trying to turn the unknown and dangerous into a sort of spookshow for those who attend his ego-fueled theme park, he and the audience he has gathered are killed in another terrifying sequence when the creature sucks them into the sky and feasts on each and every one of them. 

Nope has been criticized for having a concept that is less easy to grasp than something like Get Out (which still remains Peele’s masterpiece). But I only think this is because it’s not as pronounced as the deeper meaning of that film and it doesn’t take any side on the issue, necessarily. Nope is a thrill ride through and through, but it also looks at the effects of relying on thrill rides as the only form of an emotional outlet for both good and bad. 

I think it says a lot about the film that Keke Palmer’s attention in the final moments of the film is not on the photographic proof of aliens she secured, but instead her brother who she was so fearful she just lost. 

Why do people love horror movies? Why do people love spectacle? Because it provides us with an emotional outlet to project our whole lives–good and bad onto. But we shouldn’t turn it into a substitute for human connection.