Get Out and the legacy of sundown suburbs in post-racial America

Abstract

In the thriller Get Out (2017), director Jordan Peele depicts the reality of people of color in wealthy, white-dominated spaces in ‘post-racial’ America after the election of Obama. In a post-racial society, colorblindness is represented in cinema by increasing the number of black films, directors, writers, etc. This essay argues that the logic of colorblind ideology masks the centrality of racism in neoliberalism. Get Out challenges neoliberal racism in its current form of colorblindness through the narrative and casting, but also uses memory to restore African-American history to undermine other neoliberal strategies that obscure the colonial roots and the lingering impact of structural racism, such as individualism, equality, and progressivism. Get Out confronts the collective illusion of the elimination of racism as a social-spatial practice in post-racial America, exemplified by the real horror of Trayvon Martin being killed in the modern equivalent of a sundown town.