Modern Media and Ralph Ellison

     There was a quick moment during one of our discussions where Mr. Mitchell mentioned the parallels between Invisible Man and some modern horror works that are metaphors for the racism in society. One of the most prolific examples of this kind of work, in my opinion, is Jordan Peele and his films Get Out and Us, both excellent examples of Twilight Zone-esque narratives that are still intrinsically tied to metaphors about race. 

(SPOILERS FOR GET OUT AND US, IN CASE YOU HAVEN'T SEEN THEM YET FOR SOME REASON. I will put a marker before a sentence where there's a major spoiler :))

    The style of all three works are very similar: While Invisible Man is tangential to horror, occasionally dipping into it during particularly intense scenes, Peele's films are outright horror movies. However, all three contain extremely surreal, metaphorical, and almost Lovecraftian imagery: The battle royale scene and the scene at Liberty Paints are prime examples of this kind of feverish nightmare, where everything seems to fall apart with the smallest gust of wind, and always with the narrator at the eye of the hurricane. Both of Peele's films encapsulate this feeling well. In Get Out, Chris, the main character, goes to his girlfriend's house to meet her parents, only to find that (SPOILER) the rich white members of the society she is a part of are secretly taking black men and using them as replacement bodies, because black people are, as one of the clients states, "trendy." This is perfect Ellison: absolutely bonkers and completely disgusting, but unfortunately not too hard to imagine. And, of course, utterly steeped in racial commentary: rap music and """urban""" fashion (things that were heavily popularized by black people), as well as the normalized use of AAVE by nonblack people, are all things that have come into popularity in the past decade, and are considered the "hot new thing", so Peele, in his film, asks the not unreasonable question "what's next?" And, in a way, the Brotherhood was doing the same thing; adding inclusivity to their organization because they think that's the best way to expand their market and win brownie points, while behind the scenes they make no real effort to improve society.

    Us (At least in my opinion) is a little more difficult to untangle: in it, Adelaide, a girl haunted by the memory seeing a doppleganger of herself in her childhood, and her family are suddenly hunted by alternate versions of themselves, each one more deranged and violent than their counterparts. Later in the film (SPOILER) we find out that the Tethered, as they're called, are actually failed government experiments that were abandoned and forced to live underground, forever mimicking the movements of their aboveground selves. As well as that, (MAJOR SPOILER) Adelaide was not only confronted by her Tethered self in her childhood, but was replaced, and the one aboveground is actually the Tethered persona. Again, the symbolism in Us is less clear-cut than Get Out, but the point is still important: in my opinion, the film is about our blindness towards our own privilege, and how we continue to defend our positions in society even when we are directly confronted by those who have not been as blessed. There is a continuous theme throughout the movie of Hands Across America, a real government-funded attempt in 1986 to form a line of people holding hands across the contiguous US. That, as well as the Tethered in the movie being supplied shirts promoting that campaign, are a nod to the fact that even within America, there are unfair predetermined social and financial classes. And those on the lowest rung of the ladder are constantly halfheartedly reminded of the "unity" of America, even though they have been completely forgotten. The Tethered could also be an allusion to the demonization of black people, and how those stereotypes are still linked to black people in modern society even though they are not and never were accurate. This is something Ellison liked talking about as well: the entire scene with him trying to throw away the bank, for example, is basically the exact same point, just being made in a different way.

Both of these films are directly comparable to Invisible Man in terms of style and metaphorical impact, and they have more nuanced points of similarity as well. For example, both Get Out and Us have a group of white people who are clearly attempting to appeal to black culture because they think it's cool, and the awkwardness during the scenes in which they interact with the main characters really make the point clear. It is a group of white people, in a traditionally white environment (A mostly white gated community in Get Out, and a neighborhood of expensive vacation homes in Us), desperately trying to put the black main characters at ease while also hamfistedly ignoring the racial aspects of the experience. If your brain is hearing "Brotherhood" right now, it would be correct; and that's not even mentioning the literal cult in Get Out, who has a very similar vibe to the Brotherhood, what with its forced inclusivity and complete ignorance of how history affects modern society.