Run, Rabbits, Run: Post-Racialism, Modern Slavery, and Slow Violence in Jordan Peele's Get Out

Abstract

When George A. Romero’s cult horror film Night of the Living Dead was released in 1968, many were shocked at seeing that the main character was played by an African American actor. The film performed extremely well at the box office, becoming one of the most culturally relevant horror films ever produced. Almost 50 years later, African American filmmaker Jordan Peele would once again shake the foundations of traditional horror cinema. His directorial debut, the low-budget Get Out (2017), was a major critical and commercial success, winning the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay and getting nominations for Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Actor. The psychological horror film explores racism against African Americans in a middle-class, white liberal context, which makes its revision even more unsettling. This chapter analyzes the ways in which Peele’s film rewrites the conventions of horror films in order to unveil the fallacy of a post-racial, color-blind United States, which hides an ongoing structural racism and violence against Blacks.