Us (SPOILERS) Discussion Thread

I think the fact that the "Untethering" is modeled on Hands Across America is one of the most interesting things about the film.

I think the fact that it's there was probably because it was Adelaide's (who was probably only like six or seven in 1986) only real frame of reference for challenging inequality.  Every other one of her experiences after descending into the subaltern abode of the doppelgangers was some sort of horrifying grotesque mimicry of life on the surface, such that when she started plotting the attack, a showy and (given that less than half of the money raised in the real-world Hands Across America actually ended up actually being put to use in directly providing aid) woefully inefficient and paltry act of charity was her blueprint for plotting revolution.  To quote Marx in his "18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte":
Therefore one could argue that once Adelaide has been radicalized by her entry into the abode of the doppelgangers, she draws on what she knows of human society and history to combat this grave injustice, only, since she was a young child when she left the surface world, the "spirits of the past" that she "anxiously conjures up" to her service are not rigorous philosophical frameworks of past radical thinkers, but rather Hands Across America.


(As an aside, and more relevant to the entire idea of the premise of the doppelgangers, there's a more famous quote from the same essay: "Hegel remarks somewhere that all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce."  I made this connection because of another film about doppelgangers that I watched recently, Denis Villeneuve's Enemy, in which a character directly references this quote, but I think it applies quite well to Us as well)[/s]

Us dies.

I just saw this 30 minutes ago and I am a little disappointed based on what I got from the trailer. I was surprised that the copies were of everyone so it turned into something different than what I was expecting and though it kept me guessing....it just threw me off. I will definitely revisit the movie, but I guess I was expecting more social commentary like Get out, which may be unfair to this movie.

I liked that the daughter got to kickass without the cheesy "female empowerment" that I got from Cpt Marvel. I had to play sports and take karate as a kid so i always liked and identified with female characters that fought. As a horror fan, never got to see that in movies a lot, so she is cool for young female horror fans today.

Also, that mom is the evil twin thing was obvious from the beginning so that may have been what just ...made this movie kind of lackluster for me....and now to read what you guys have written so far.

A thing that is sticking with me, though I dont know if there is supposed to be more to this, but I was bothered by how sad Red (Lupita's character in the red jumpsuit) was when explaining that she was tethered to Abraham,  mirror husband. She didn't love him but was stuck with him and had to be with him because the other Lupita had control over her life. When she says, "it didn't matter that I didn't love him" and just cuts over to this hulking, cold shell of a person. I felt so bad knowing that she was the feeling, emotional, original Adelaide. I knew that the original couldn't have what she wanted because it would destroy the normal family. Evil twin is the mother and wife, and Red Adelaide doesn't want the children and probably can't live in the above ground world.

Totally forgot to mention, one of my closest friends lived three blocks from the Boardwalk while attending UC Santa Cruz, so I have walked around that neighborhood many, many times in the past, and have been to the Boardwalk itself at least once with Mrs B.

I was thinking of writing some long post about why everyone overanalyizing us on twitter and other sites was annoying me, but I think this piece actually sums up what I feel very well.

thegrapevine.theroot.com/a-thinkpiece-about-thinkpieces-about-us-1833545814

Us was a great horror movie with some interesting shit in the premise, and Jordan Peele has already said before the movie even came out:

“It’s important to me that we can tell black stories without it being about race. I realized I had never seen a horror movie of this kind, where there’s an African-American family at the center that just is. After you get over the initial realization that you’re watching a black family in a horror film, you’re just watching a movie. You’re just watching people. I feel like it proves a very valid and different point than Get Out, which is, not everything is about race. Get Out proved the point that everything is about race. I’ve proved both points!”

I could maybe give Peele the "this isn't about race" if he hadn't added so much stuff that black people wouldn't pick up about it.....can't say the subtext isn't there if the text is in bold. In my opinion.

Plus, I follow Tanarive Due on Twitter feed has been filled with info about her and Peele's college course about race and horror for over a year, as well as their documentary, Horrornoire. The doc is okay, nothing I haven't seen or read already. But I like to read and watch stuff about black actors in horror.

Okay, thoughts on Us. I have many thoughts on Us, most of them not fleshed out yet. So I'll focus on a few points in particular.

1) Just a really well made film. Likeable and competent protagonists, scary and creepy villains. It does this really unfair thing where the movie intentionally leads right up to a jump scare, then doesn't go with it. Then for the rest of the movie you never know if it's going for a fake out or something fucked up is about to happen. And it looks good as hell. Strictly as a horror/suspense movie, it works.

Winston Duke caught my eye big time playing against type in Person of Interest. He shows up as "Mini", the soft-spoken henchman of a gang boss...who turns out to be the Boss himself, Dominic. For the rest of his time on the show, you have a massive man playing the shrewd, calculating villain, and he does an AWESOME job with it.

Then of course there's M'baku, who appears to be a savage, but has honor and acknowledges when he's beaten and stays loyal afterward.

I'm white, so I obviously have no more authority on this subject than you do, Matt, but I am inclined to agree with the author of the meta-thinkpiece in that many successful films about black people seem to flatten the experience of being a black person into nothing but suffering and dealing with racism, and as Peele himself said, he wanted to make a horror film with a black lead that isn't just a racism allegory. 

But I think there is a message beneath the surface level of "this is a really good horror film that happens to star a black family".  And this is where I disagree with the author of the meta-thinkpiece, who basically argues "Stop saying that there was any meaning to anything that Jordan Peele did other than making a scary horror movie."  It's a false dichotomy to say "A horror film with a black lead must be about racism or be entirely devoid of social commentary or any deeper meaning."  The film can have a meaning that isn't about race.  Indeed, I would say that oppyu's interpretation that the film is by-and-large a metaphor for class (and more specifically about prospering under an economic system that inherently causes immense suffering for other human beings), a reading of the film with which I agree, is entirely consonant with Jordan Peele's stated aim to make a film with black leads that wasn't just about racism.  Not only has he made a horror film with black leads that isn't an allegory for racism, he's made a wildly successful film about classism where the lead isn't a working class white person, another thing that is rather uncommon in cinema.  Also, class and race in America are inextricably linked, so there are moments of commentary on race in the film (see: Winston Duke code switching when confronting the doppelganger family, or the daughter looking critically at her facial features in the mirror early on in the film), although they certainly don't rise to the level of making the film "about" race.  Perhaps the author of the piece would say of such a reading of the film: "Ah, I see, so you're reducing the leads of the film to symbols for classism, rather than appreciating them as full human beings," to which I would reply that no, I appreciate the leads as full human beings and complex characters, and I see the film as making a sophisticated commentary on class without reducing its leads to the status of mere "thematic placeholders".

Also, the author's hypothesis that "Maybe Peele’s point and ultimately, the point of Us, is that black people are just regular human beings who aren’t any different from white people," directly contradicts the point of his entire article.  If that were "the point of" the film, then the meta-point of the film would, in spite of your own claims to the contrary, ultimately be about race.  So yeah, I don't think I'm second guessing my own take on the film after reading the piece.  To argue "The film is, in a nutshell, about class, and the moral culpability that people have for benefiting from an economic system that immiserates enormous numbers of other people," isn't much like those people from Room 237 who think The Shining is about Kubrick confessing to filming a faked moon landing.  It's not a stretch to read social commentary into a film that is, in fact, brimming with social commentary. 

I overthought this movie. HeScruff, from the very beginning, the part about the tunnels, saw this is a straight up movie about cloning. He said the stuff in it used the same imagery, words (like tethering) to the conspiracy stuff he's read and listened to. I guess this movie is talked about on conspiracy boards as to why Peele was discussing it. Because conspiracy heads tend to think if a theory is broadcast it is either as a warning or a way to get normies used to the idea.

I straight up felt guilty looking for signs of race and class in this movie because, goddamn can't a black man just make a horror movie that isn't about race and class? What if he is just straight up interested in conspiracy theories. I mean, he's making his own Twilight Zone.

I disagree.  Both Original Old-Timey Adelaide and Doppelganger Adelaide appear to have souls.  Is the apparent "soullessness" of the doppelgangers not most likely due to the years of their tethering?  Each doppelganger is compelled to act out some grotesque mimicry of what their surface counterpart is doing.  And this isn't even inherently true of doppelgangers, for once Original Adelaide is trapped in the subterranean abode of the doppelgangers, she is compelled to mimic her doppelganger's actions.  A lifetime of this would amount to profound psychological torture, and presumably fuck somebody up really badly.  I mean, it's not explicitly addressed either way, but I don't buy the argument that "the doppelgangers are less than human because they don't have souls" at all. 

I still think the film is pretty clearly engaging in social commentary on class, and I don't think the fact that it utilizes elements of conspiracy theories means that it can't do that.  I mean, authors like Philip Kindred Dick and Thomas Pynchon spent their career writing books that are about labyrinthine conspiracies but which also engage in social commentary.  It's interesting to learn that the film borrows from elements of extant conspiracy theories about cloning, though.  Is there any more nuance to "tethering" in cloning conspiracies beyond what's explicitly explained in the film?