Jordan Peele's 'Us': Black Movies Matter

The Oscars are over and our worst fears have come true: Green Book won Best Picture. This win was disappointing on many levels, including the controversies, of various degrees, surrounding writer Nick Vallelonga, director Peter Farrelly and lead actor Viggo Mortensen. But more importantly, it marked a huge step back for the Academy.

Green Book is a pandering White Saviour film, designed to make white people feel comfortable about racism and to undermine the experiences of black people. The very fact that the film is ostensibly about Dr. Don Shirley and yet he is the supporting character in the film, and the writers and directors failed to even acknowledge Shirley in their Oscar acceptance speeches, shows how much black experiences can be deprioritised and underappreciated in Hollywood, both on and offscreen.

It also marks a return to the Academy rewarding films that perpetuate damaging ideas around race – a move we all thought had been left behind after the similarly ham-fisted Crash won Best Picture over Brokeback Mountain in 2004. Hell, the Academy couldn’t even give the Best Picture award to Moonlight without first giving it to La La Land, the film that claims that white people invented jazz. And the genuinely shocking omission of Barry Jenkin’s sublime If Beale Street Could Talk from most of this year’s major categories shows that black excellence onscreen still struggles to be recognised.

So let’s all thank our lucky stars that Jordan Peele exists and that this month sees the release of his new film, Us. Peele made his name as a comedy actor and writer, teaming up with Keegan Michael Key on their sketch show Key and Peele. But Peele is now a ground-breaking writer, director and producer who is transforming black representation onscreen.

Peele is currently producing remakes of Twilight Zone and Candyman. But Peele also created a new genre of ‘social horror’ with his record-breaking Get Out, a hugely entertaining and wickedly smart examination of racism in America. The film was a well-deserved box office sensation, as its whip-smart writing, fantastic performances, shocking twist and layer of dark humour allowed audiences to absorb its vital and intelligent themes. Peele became just the fifth black director to get an Oscar nomination and became only the third person to receive Oscar nominations for Best Picture, Best Director, and Screenplay for his debut feature film – and the only one to have written an original screenplay.

When the 2018 Oscar nominations were announced, Peele recognised what a monumental moment it was for black people in cinema, saying “I realise in sort of receiving this honour that it’s not all about me. For me, what makes it particularly magical is the idea that there might be young people of colour who may doubt themselves and what they can do in the industry. I’m getting emotional now. I was inspired by Whoopi Goldberg winning her Oscar. And sort of paying it forward to the next generation, the idea that people could be inspired, is crazy.”

He was also happy that Get Out, a social horror that addresses racism in America, has started so many conversations and been received so well by audiences. “People need to have help talking about these things,” he says. “Get Out is a piece of entertainment, but it’s also a cry for justice.”

Us hit Irish cinemas on March 22 and is yet another social horror film. Starring Lupita Nyong’o and Winston Duke as the parents of a vacationing family terrorized by their doppelgangers, trailers for the film are brilliantly unnerving.

Unlike Get Out, Peele has said that the film will not be explicitly about race. It is nonetheless still a crucial component.

“It is very important for me was to have a black family at the centre of a horror film.”