A Portrait of Symmetry: Jordan Peele’s ‘US’ calls for a reimagining of our responsibility for one another
By Liz Chege
“What are you people?
It’s Us.”
The act of looking is never really passive, especially when reckoning with ourselves in times of crises. Us asks audiences to consider what happens when our interior discomforts manifest within the contours of our personal demons. Through the Wilson family unit, Jordan Peele explores Us’s central theme of duality, and how uncanny the familiar can be.
From the start, their sunny Santa Cruz summer vacation is riddled with moments of unease and anxiety, quickly yarning into a horrific survival tale. It’s signaled early on that the matriarch of the family, Adelaide (a stunning performance by Lupita Nyong’o), knows much more than it seems. She is unwilling to elaborate on a past trauma, hinted at during a flashback sequence, and is hesitant to return to the site of what caused this childhood distress. However, she yields to her genial husband Gabe’s (splendidly played by Winston Duke) pleas for beachside adventure and we soon discover Adelaide’s suspicions were correct, as she is forced into a battle of self-reflection. Harbingers of doom in the form of doppelgängers who call themselves The Tethered, lay in wait and the mayhem is not confined solely to the Wilson family.
It isn’t a coincidence that Peele chooses home invasion as the stage for a story where ‘we’ are the villains. Peele’s filmography thus far pulls from our collective anxieties, compelling us to examine the scope of impact on personal, national and global levels. Given the political climate across the world at this moment, the urgency in his films is evident. Get Out looked at entrapment, possession and literal gentrification of the body, Us looks at how we instigate chaos both for and against ourselves. If the worth of a life is stratified in a world ruled by money, then no wonder we hide from ourselves by seeking all manner of escapism. This is exhibited astutely through Gabe’s preoccupation with his friend Josh Tyler’s (Tim Heidecker) possessions. Josh and his wife Kitty (Elisabeth Moss) are wealthy and afford a level of privilege that Gabe wishes he had despite the many blessings the Wilson family already possess. Peele wants us to interrogate what we define as wealth and demonstrates in one of the most memorable sequences in the film that money, and the greed that often accompanies it, won’t save you - especially from the incubi residing within ourselves. There is a clear homage to Michael Jackson’s influence throughout, from Thriller to his song Man in the Mirror, especially significant given its similar, impacting and universal philosophy,
I've been a victim of a selfish kind of love
It's time that I realize / That there are some with no home, not a nickel to loan
Could it be really me, pretending that they're not alone?
Within a global structure where the value of our lives is exacerbated by frictions borne out of economic systems we are generally powerless to avoid, the pursuit of ‘powerful statements’ like the 1986 Hands Across America campaign shown in the film ring all the more true but hollow for their fleeting presence. Peele is warning us that even our sincerity is vulnerable to vanity and corruption, and the multiple guises of underclass we’re all tethered to (and ignore), are bound to break free from confinement and unleash their terror.
So, what is our part? If one is to interpret The Tethered as mankind’s consciousness, unbound from their bodies, Peele’s rigorous commitment to precise physical representation warrants regard. Us does not centre race, but the physical form of his female characters in particular is significant. There is a serious attentiveness in Peele’s films to accurate depiction of hair texture and skin tone. There are four Black female representatives (or representations) from the same family whose skin tones do not vary wildly– unlike the regular trend in the entertainment industry. It’s not unusual for Black families to have varying skin tones, but the extent to which it happens in Western media (going as far as casting children of mixed heritage for two Black parents) is all too common. It is a delight to see special attention paid to casting choices here and it made for a more intense subliminal experience for me as I endured a uniquely visceral reaction to the theme of desecration of the body in the third and final act. Adelaide and Red’s (her Tethered self) face off in a final confrontation is a mighty statement on the final girl trope in the horror genre; from how we reconcile our inner and outer conflicts, and the self-harm we commit against ourselves personally and collectively.
One of the methods we use to circumvent our problems is the fugitive effect of time. Us looks at how we use the passage of time as both a mechanism for healing and a method of self-deception in our battles to rise above our visible and invisible despair. Adelaide savours her mental and physical distance from the trauma she experienced, but she is also aware that this feeling of safety won’t last much longer. Realising she has corralled herself into a corner infested by anguish, she is left with no choice but to come to terms with the chaos she has created. If our bodies are the loci of how we experience the world, then it follows that time refracts our malfunctions this way to keep us as sane as possible. The behavioral similarity of the children and their tethers drives this supposition further. Jason (Evan Alex) and his shadow self, Pluto, are much more alike than the older Wilsons and their Tethered selves. This suggests that youth indicates personalities are not yet fully formed, leaving room for growth - a kernel of optimism buried in this bleak, hilarious, sobering and extraordinary film. Us isn’t offering a recipe to reckon with the latest wave of xenophobia and our eternal fear of ‘the other’, rather, it’s asking us to better understand ourselves so we can encode a deeper concern for one another.
Liz Chege is a film programmer, film marketing specialist and founding member of Come the Revolution, a collective of creatives and curators committed to exploring Black life, experience and cultural expression through cinema. She is currently based in Bristol.
Twitter: @elchroncile