SYMBOLS: BLACKNESS, COTTON, THE TEACUP AND MORE
I feel the key symbol in “Get Out” is blackness itself, both what blackness is symbolic of, and what Christianity in America has come to see blackness as symbolizing, as these are two opposite things. To contextualize this analysis of blackness and religion, I will draw on theories of symbols in religious studies, and perhaps how they can be misconstrued to represent differing things to differing people, while maintaining that blackness in the eyes of Christianity, illustrated through this film, has been villainized and misconstrued in racist ways. So, in what ways is this present? Well, even without the research i have done, it is sadly clear to see. Blackness is seen as a skill in the movie, it is seen as a "advantage" because of their "genetic makeup". And if you were to ask the Armitage family and the auction go-ers, they would say they arent racist, one even said he didnt see his colour at all. This is problematic, as it insinuates that their blackness is ignored for the sake of their acceptance. By "acceptance", i really mean a sort of assimilation. Christianity has a pattern of "accepting" people of colour, but only on their terms and if they act in a way deemed "acceptable". Being black to these people is like being non-human, they are marked as "the other", and as the photo to the right from a Black Lives Matter protest says, this makes being black incredibly dangerous BECAUSE of the people who perpetuate racist ideas about black people, such as rich white christians (the Armitage family), the church, the police system, the justice system, society, and more. Farrin Chawlowoski in their book "Symbols in arts, religion and culture - the soul of nature" states: "A symbol is the reflection or shadow of a higher reality (Lings 2005) and it indicates the relationship between myth and reality. Through the use of symbols, men have even sought to communicate with each other. Symbolism is therefore also a way of looking. A symbol has its own story to tell how it finds its way into human-made objects". This leads me into the next part of my explanation of symbols in "Get Out", the symbols of the teacup and the cotton.
THE COTTON
There is a scene in the film where Chris wakes up in the basment of the Armitage house, chained to a chair and sat in front of a TV. The TV turns on, and reveals the family secret - that for generations, they have been selling black bodies for the highest bid, giving that person the body of the black person while keeping their own brain, and living their life through that black persons body. They even say in the clip "Its only fair to spread the advantages you have enjoyed freely your entire life", which is a painfully ironic thing to say. Then, he gets to talk to the man who bought him in the auction through the TV, he is a blind man who wanted Chris for his eyes. It is now that Chris realizes whats going on: He was bought by a rich white man, he will remain trapped in the sunken place forever, while this man puts his brain in Chris' head and lives the rest of his life as him. The connection to the slave trade her is very palatable, the buying and selling of black bodies. The TV then switches to be the teacup again, with Rose's mother turning the spoon and putting him in the sunken place once again. When he comes to, he is scratching at the chair he is sitting in, and realizes that something is coming out of it: cotton. He realizes that if he can put some cotton in his ears, he wont hear the spoon clinking on the cup and wont become hypnotized. Therefore, he picks cotton from the chair and plugs his ears. When they play the teacup on the TV again, he pretends to fall back in the trance, so that when they unstrap him from the chair to bring him into the operating room, he can start taking down these monsters one by one. Picking cotton, as we know, was very common work for black people in the slave trade. It symbolized pain and death for most of these people. For Chris in the film, it actually was what saved his life.
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The teacup is the tool used by the Psychiatrist, Rose's mother, to hypnotize her victims, including Chris, into the sunken place. She does this by spinning the spoon in the cup, and clinking it off the edges. It is this sound that slams Chris throughout the film down into the Sunken Place. The teacup itself is fine, expensive China. I feel it symbolizes wealth and privilege, and how that is directly used to subordinate, oppress, and even systematically kill black people.
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