What is not real can be felt into being
Affective threat in Jordan Peele’s Get Out
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 21783352 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Emma Train (0000-0001-7899-0073, The University of Texas at Austin, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2021 |
| Volume | 19 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 439-461 |
| Publication date | 2021-10-02 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | New Review of Film and Television Studies (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1740-0309 • E-ISSN: 1740-7923 |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/17400309.2021.1919481 |
| OpenAlex | W3163632205 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 16 |
Jordan Peele’s (2017) Get Out presents a political critique of American post-racial discourse. Using Brian Massumi’s concept of affective fact, I articulate how the film navigates a post-race perception of racially motivated threat as solely affective and immaterial in relation to the actual enactment of violence onto the racialized body in contemporary America. I locate this film in the theoretical lineage of contemporary Black radical thought, with particular emphasis on Saidiya Hartman’s concept of fungibility and Stefano Harney’s and Fred Moten’s concept of fugitivity. By analyzing scenes that inaugurate the film’s study of threat, surveillance, and state-mandated control, I argue that Get Out reveals how apparatuses of racial violence intertwine with what Harney and Moten call state-thought. I conclude that Get Out should be read as a commentary on Black cinema and Black aesthetics, particularly how Black aesthetics forms itself against, within, and around neoliberal political discourse
Aesthetics · Art · Epistemology · Literature · Movie theater · Perception · Political science · Politics · Racial politics · Sociology · Cinema and Media Studies · Gender Studies · Law · Philosophy · Race, History, and American Society · South Asian Cinema and Culture
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |