How Does Jordan Peele Use Double Consciousness In Get Out

Jordan Peele’s 2017 psychological horror film ‘Get Out’ is a dissection of what it means to be African-American today. It portrays the lives of black people in a white society dominated by persistent racist attitudes, violence and racial hierarchies, in order to teach the viewer about the challenges still in place, decades after the legal battles that supposedly gave everybody equal rights. In its study of race and how race affects the behaviour of others, ‘Get Out’ analyses the concept of double consciousness, the idea of a split identity within the minds of black people who are forced to separate into two distinct personalities to fit in with typical white versus black society. ‘Get Out’ also uses its platform as an entertainment feature

E. B Du Bois in his 1903 publication ‘The Souls of Black Folk’. It is described as “a peculiar sensation… (in which) one ever feels his two-ness,—an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings.” DuBois uses double consciousness to theorise … (explain more) This theme is explored in depth throughout these texts, firstly in Jordan Peele’s ‘Get Out’, a film which follows African-American photographer Chris, as he meets his white girlfriend’s family for the first time. Chris is clearly divided between the two different worlds he lives in. Surrounded by the black community, Chris has learnt to fit in with their culture and lifestyle, but we as the audience are shown that he understands he cannot behave in the same way to fit in with white people and their separate world. This is highlighted throughout the film, as we are led to compare the way Chris talks to his friend Rod, who is also black, as opposed to his white girlfriend Rose and her family, the Armitages. When speaking to Rod, Chris’s speech is far more comfortable and slang-oriented; they greet each other using casual terms like “‘sup” and “yo”, swear more often in conversation, and call each other “man”. However when Chris is talking to the Armitages, there is a noticeable change in Chris’s speech and mannerisms, to account for how they behave having grown up in white society. His words are far more carefully

In ‘Othello’, our titular character has worked his way up from slavery to reach his high position of army general, but he still holds himself to particularly great standards because of how his double consciousness has affected him. In the opening of the play, the people of Venice are outraged at the fact he has eloped with the senator’s daughter, Desdemona, both because he was not one of the approved suitors, and because he is a “Moor”. Othello realizes he must change himself and behave in an acceptable manner for the white society around him in order to be accepted by the people, and so he boasts that he is “from men of royal siege”, making certain that his “demerits may speak unbonetted as to proud a fortune as this that I have reached”. He makes clear in his speech that he considers himself deserving of both his position and his wife, through using the intense, powerful language of the people around him, filled with beautiful imagery and recountings of the struggles he has been through, as though he feels the need to validate himself and prove his worth in their terms. This is further shown later, as we see Othello’s insecurities come to light, displaying that he is not as certain of his identity as that he presents to others. Othello clearly doubts himself because of his race, knowing that many people consider him defined by his dark skin, as is shown by the ways he is often referred to