A deep-dive into Get Out: A series in five parts - Quintet Part 3 - Something's wrong, but what...

Another hint comes in the middle of the next scene when the Dean, Missy and Rose are having brunch out on the patio with Chris and they eventually end up talking about some upcoming shindig on the weekend. Rose’s parents mention it was some tradition started by Roman Armitage and they had kept it going after his death.

CHRIS: What’s the get-together? 

MISSY Rose’s grandfather’s party. 

DEAN: My Dad threw a shindig for his friends once a year. Bocce ball, horseshoes, badminton. ROSE: It’s basically a bunch of rich old people playing lawn games. Why didn’t you tell me? MISSY: It’s the same day every year sweetheart. 

(To Chris) We kept it going after they died. Makes us feel like they’re here with us.

Missy’s last line here is a haunting double entendre. Of course, you might have realised it already what I’m getting at here. The real reason behind the perpetuation of the shindig is because its hosts and progenitors are still alive - by having their brains transplanted into the two black servants Water and Georgina. Pretty unsurprisingly therefore Walter - the vessel for Roman Armitage - comes out to greet and receive every guest to the shindig later on in the film.

Later that night, Chris is roused from his sleep by an eerie and disturbing buzz in his ear. He sits up and looks around as if he were searching for another presence in the room and soon in apparent paranoia turns away a stuffed lion as if it had been watching him. A soft howl of wind rushes through the room and Chris’s gaze drifts to a pack of cigarettes tucked into a pocket of his camera bag. Having been relentlessly hounded for his smoking habit by Rose and her parents, Chris takes the opportunity to grab a quick light by heading outside through the back door. As he stands outdoors in the tranquil, yet ominous darkness of the night swarmed by the deafening noise of crickets, puffing on his cig, he suddenly hears a running noise in the distance. He squints and peers into the darkness ahead and terror comes over him as he pieces together a silhouette that is rapidly and menacingly moving towards him. It gets closer and closer. When it’s just about ten feet away the moonlight reveals the figure to be Walter who is still running at Chris with a nasty scowl and an intense locked gaze. Chris shrinks back as Walter races past and away to his right. Chris gathers his breath attempting to recompose himself and turns around only to find himself face to face with Georgina who with teeth exposed in a frightening grimace glares through the window dead into Chris’s eyes.
Why was Walter pacing furiously in the dead of the night and why was Georgina so obsessively admiring her own reflection in the glass of the window against the darkness of the night? This scene marks that point in the movie when the oddities about these two become too out there and glaring to dismiss lightly. The viewer alongside Chris begins to ossify their own suspicions about the two as Peele shores up the sense of disease and presentiment as the dominant undercurrent of each scene. To answer the question, Walter, or Roman Armitage, the man who never could come to accept his defeat to the African American sprinter Jesse Owens, and his wife Marianne Armitage are relishing in the spoils of their conquest. Roman is exercising the natural speed and ability of his new vessel I.e that of Walter which he never had access to in his former body while Marianne, who used to be old, is vainly impressed with how she appears in her new and youthful body and the texture and sheen on the black skin.

 When Chris sneaks back into the house after having had a smoke, he is caught by Missy. The way this bit of the scene unfolds is as cliche as it gets. The desk lamp startlingly lights up illuminating Missy milliseconds after her voice creeping up on Chris and the viewer from within the darkness inside the house ‘Do you realise how dangerous smoking is?’ Chris, who at this point can’t seem to catch a break with the rapid succession of severe panic-inducing and disconcerting events, is already in a vulnerable state of mind. So when Missy finds him and hurls the question at him well aware of his psychological state she’s playing a perfect hand. Chris who feels like a criminal at this moment is readily willing to comply to her request of sitting down for some therapy, a request that he turned down a couple times before and seemed visibly uncomfortable about. However in his present state he yields to her request to a therapy at once showing only very slight resistance. In other words Chris is already in a state of ‘Heightened Suggestibility’ at this point. This scene also marks the final time Chris’s smoking habit is brought up by a member of the family. It had been brought up twice before - firstly when Chris and Rose are in the car on their way to the Armitage home, the latter swipes a cigarette from the former’s hands before tossing it out the window and secondly when the family are out on the Patio with Chris treating themselves to some iced tea, they grill the latter about his smoking before revealing to him that Missy offers some sort of service that could completely change his feelings about smoking. Why is any of this relevant? The constant fixation on this and the apparent over-concern about Chris’s physical well-being (Rose not wanting him to check on the deer, Missy and Dean’s annoyance at Jeremy trying to hurt Chris, etc) both have exactly the same root. The reason behind these pattens of behaviour is their concern that Chris’s body might suffer injury and therefore become unsuitable or undesirable to be transplanted into.

The next noon, as the guests arrive and the shindig kicks off, we are flooded with scenes and details that have another layer of meaning to them, that are not quite what they seem to be and that which will blow the viewers’ minds forever. Let’s go over the detail-rich interactions between the guests and Chris and what they really mean.

Few things stand out about the gathering of guests at the house at once: They’re all white and elderly and the only two people of color are a Japanese man and another African man we come to know as Logan King. The first out of the guests to greet Chris are the Greens. Gordon Green is a cute man with a cane and impish excitement. Emily is pretty and delightful. They both smile broadly when talking to Chris and one doesn’t detect the slightest hint of animosity or racism emanating from them… that is until of course you rewatch the film and reconsider the contents of their exchange.

GORDON: Nice to meet you, Chris. Nice to meet you indeed. 

(to Emily) Good grip. 

CHRIS: Thanks. You too. 

GORDON: You ever play golf? 

CHRIS: Once, actually; a few years ago. I wasn’t very good.

EMILY: Gordon loves Tiger.

GORDON: Best I’ve ever seen. Ever, hands down. Now, let’s see your form.

My impression of the conversation went from ‘completely harmless, light hearted, innocuous banter’ and ‘aha.. finally some non-racist white dudes’ to ‘damn.. what an.. he’s only checking out Chris like any buyer would examine the goods they’re about to buy…’ Indeed, Gordon is as terrible as any other racist in attendance on the day. As a golfer and golf enthusiast, he needs to know if Chris would serve his golfing passions well were he to become his vessel later on. And then he throws out the name of Tiger Woods in the same spirit Dean throws out that of Barack Obama, Using support for a few celebrity blacks as token to show they don’t racially differentiate.

The next guest interaction Chris gets has nearly an identical vibe, but this time with a bit more added flippancy and flagrancy. As Lisa Deets stretches out her hands to feel up Chris’s arms and pectoral muscles, she screws her head back and motions to her husband asking for his opinion on what seems to be Chris’s physique. On my first-time viewing I just dismissed this as ‘Ah ok she’s one of those loose-lipped people who aren’t particularly self-aware or perhaps she’s just an oddball.. strange’ and that was it. I didn’t read any deeper into it than that. Perhaps this causal and callous dismissal on my part of what was in fact an abhorrent act of racism, because I could not recognise it to be so through my delusional conception of social reality then - which I’m very glad the film slapped me out of - is what allows and contributes to an environment so conducive to these openly racist acts. Covert racism or racist acts carried out in broad day-light are only indeed understood keenly by the victims of the acts and uninitiated onlookers such as me may never understand it unless we experience it ourselves. This is part of the genius that the film delivers. It puts you in the shoes and the thick of the African-American experience and gets you as close as the medium of film can get to waking up to the full brunt of present social reality. But I’m going off on a tangent here (more about this in Part 4 I promise…). Lisa also, in a moment of completely throwing caution and decency to the wind, asks Rose ’So is it true? Is it better?’ insinuating the question of if blacks were indeed as the rumours say better in the sack. Again Chris has been completely reduced to an object from the white perspective to something like a garment that is to be worn and used as they please.

As Chris grows continually more uncomfortable with the conversations he excuses himself to go off and shoot something on his camera to help get his mind off everything he had seen and heard that day and while he’s looking around surveying the guests through his lens he discovers the only other black man in attendance - someone who introduces themselves as ‘Logan King’. Chris is immediately taken back by Logan’s demeanour and fashion sense. There are no vestiges of any urban dialect on him as he continues to slowly and deliberately enunciate words with great precision at Chris. Logan was after all another who exemplified the conflict and dissonance between the white mind’s command on the black body. What you may or may not realise at this point about Logan of course is that he is inhabiting the body of the black man we see abducted at the very inception of the movie. Yes, the vessel here is none other than Andre Hayworth. Give yourself a pat on the back if picked up on this before the film explicitly tells you that’s the case.

Might I also add the delightfully clever way Peele chooses to close off this conversation? As Chris extends his right fist for Logan to bump, Andre in an act of either tone deafness or cultural imperialism grabs his fist to offer a handshake instead. I suspect it was the latter. Peele is throwing a quick jab at the practices such as cultural appropriation and cultural imperialism prevalent among whites. Unable to get a moment of respite and peace outside among the guests, Chris eventually marches back into the house to get his phone and talk to Rod. The setup to this scene and then its contents provide explanations to some persistent phenomena that has kept up through the film. Why does the vibe of the party feel so contrived and ominous? Why is that every time Chris goes to check on his phone he finds that the charger cable is unplugged? As Chris slips past several mingling guests to go upstairs to his phone, as soon as he’s out of sight, the mingling guests halt in mid-conversation as a terrifying silence suddenly descends upon the party. Everyone in the room waits and listens to Chris’s footsteps above. It becomes patent their conversations have been faked and they are waiting with baited breath on Chris’s next move. When finally upstairs Chris much to his annoyance finds his phone disconnected from the charger and this inevitably cuts off the conversation with Rod about the happenings at the party short when his battery dies. The unplugging of Chris’s charger throughout the movie we realise was being done as per Armitage orders. They wanted him to leave as little evidence behind in his final days and contact as few people as possible. Chris’s phone was his one remaining link to the outside and they had been desperate to erase that link to make the operation go smoothly.