Us

I really loved Us and I’m a big fan of Jordan Peele’s. I loved his comedy show and I was excited to see him start directing horror films which I also am a big fan of. I think Peele’s use of the horror genre to make a social commentary is genius so my post today will focus on this commentary. Us has plenty of themes alluding to the American Dream that isn’t attainable by everyone, as well as themes that discuss the oppression and abandonment of largely marginalized people. But as I feel this will have been talked about in other posts, I thought we can look more into the themes centralized around the materialistic behaviours of America.

There are plenty of instances in the film where we see the materialistic greed of characters become evident. Gabe spends the whole movie admiring the expensive things the Tyler family have. Gabe himself is well off, having a boat which is a symbol of luxury and expendable income, but this boat isn’t enough for him. He is constantly needing to attain more to be happy. Even after the Tyler’s are slaughtered he would rather stay in their house as they have all the “food, water, and back-up generators” they need to protect themselves. This coincides with capitalist ideas that money can essentially solve all your problems. Looking back at the invasion scene, Gabe offers these materialistic things (ie: money, the boat) in order to save him and his family when in reality, those materialistic things are what’s killing. Though scissors are the weapon of choice for the Tethered, they rarely are used to kill. Instead, they use symbols of the American middle to upper class. The first death we see when Gabe kills Abraham with the Boat, the epitome of luxury. Then we see Zora kill the Tyler twins with a golf club, Gabe kills tethered Josh with the flare from the expensive boat, and Jason kills tethered Kitty with an expensive mounted geode. This continues when Zora kills Umbrae with the really nice care. This essentially makes the point that their stuff isn’t doing good in the world and is instead a weapon of control. Even the Tyler Family’s tethered were unable to resist the temptation of capitalism as they are seen putting on the expensive robe and trying on make-up. Peele wants to make the point that this materialistic way of living that has made itself embedded in the ‘American Life’ is slowly killing us. Our desire for more stuff is destructive not just to ourselves, but those around us and the American culture as a whole.