The Thing That Lives There: Audience Discomfort and Jordan Peele's "Us"

[justira]

Having watched Jordan Peele's second film, Us, I've also been consuming a lot of reviews and takes, and... oh boy. Internet, we need to talk

A lot of reviewers took issue with the movie for not building up its revelations enough, for leaving questions unresolved or plot threads hanging. Here's the trick: Not every piece of art is meant to be immediately satisfying. A lot of art is not meant to be comfortable, immediately or ever. There's a reason Dr. César A. Cruz's quote, "Art should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable," has gotten so much traction. Us has a lot to do with the idea of complicity, with willful ignorance.

Us is a movie that is meant to be digested. In a movie about what kind of people get things handed to them on a silver platter, Jordan Peele is inviting us to question the very feeling of not having information handed to us (on a platter). If there's something you don't know or don't understand by the end of the movie, I think it's worth sitting with that feeling a bit. Jordan Peele may not have all the answers, but I think he asked the right question, and that's the point. And I want to talk about the question, potential answers, and why I think so many people are so damn unsatisfied and uncomfortable.

Note: There will be spoilers. For the whole thing.

( The Thing That Lives There: Audience Discomfort and Jordan Peele's 'Us' )