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US-Sabrina Lacy

The 2019 horror movie US, written and directed by Jordan Peele, portrays the effects of oppression on a subjugated group and how that group gets its agency. In the film, the main protagonist Adelaide (Lupita Nyong'o), her husband Gabe (Winston Duke), and her two children, Jason (Evan Alex) and Zora (Shahadi Wright Joseph) are on vacation when the family is attacked by their doppelgangers, called the Tethered, who come to their house to kill them. Throughout the film, Adelaide and her family fight off the doppelgangers and find a way to escape.










Screenshots



The first introduction to the doppelganger family. They are standing in the driveway of Adelaide's family's summer home. 






Adelaide and her family are driving to the Santa Cruz Beach, where Adelaide first encountered her doppelganger when she was a kid. In the car, they sing I Got Five On It, which is a song used frequently in the movie to heighten tension.


Film's Significance

Jordan Peele's Us uses a black middle-class family and the horror genre to explore the topics of racism, marginalization, and oppression. The doppelgangers, who stand in for marginalized people in the U.S., are forced to live in squalor, hidden away from their oppressors. They slowly lose their minds while the dominant group, unaware of the immense amount of privilege they have, live their lives uninterrupted in the light. This film is also culturally significant because black people are underrepresented in the horror genre as main characters; however, another point that can be seen in US is how black people, especially middle or higher-class black people, can also engage in the systems that marginalize other black people as well. Overall, this film discusses how society contributes to the systematic oppression of marginalized people and its effects on those people.


Discussion Questions

1. In this film, when the doppelganger family and the real family first meet, Adelaide's doppelganger talks about her trauma. After her monologue, Adelaide's husband, Gabe, asks the doppelgangers what they are, to which Adelaide's doppelganger says, "We are Americans." What do you think is the significance of this line, and how does it reflect the status of marginalized people here in America?

2. In the movie, it is revealed that Adelaide is actually a doppelganger and that she traded places with the real Adelaide when she was a child; in a way, she has "passed." Adelaide was able to easily get her freedom, while the other doppelgangers had to start a revolution. How do you think Adelaide's ability to pass comments on individual freedom versus systematic freedom?



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