Some mild spoilers follow for Nope.
Jordan Peele’s horror mines the unpleasant truths just under the surface of American society. Whether it’s a white family preying on a Black artist to steal his gifts for themselves or a legion of doubles we’ve abandoned underground to lead half a life, Peele’s monsters are extensions of our culture’s worst tendencies… as he’s called them in the past: social demons.
And now in his new film Nope, Peele positions Keke Palmer’s Em and Daniel Kaluuya’s OJ as would-be, should-be Hollywood royalty – descendants of the very first movie star. In 1878, photographer Eadweard Muybridge was commissioned to produce a series of still images in order to prove that all four of a horse’s hooves leave the ground during a sprint. Those images of a jockey riding a horse, when viewed in quick succession, produced the first moving image. The first “movie.” And riding that horse? Well, in real life… we don’t know. The jockey’s name is lost to time. And that’s part of the point.
In Nope’s world, that jockey was Em and OJ’s great-great-great grandfather. And while “The Horse in Motion” catapulted Muybridge to fame, the Haywoods were left in the dust, trading on their association with the film in the only way available to them throughout the years: by training and providing horses for cinematic classics like The Scorpion King. The Haywoods’ contribution to film history being roundly ignored is a painful erasure that Peele builds Nope’s entire story around, especially as filmmaking becomes a focus of the family’s once again.
I recently discussed this aspect of Nope with Peele and stars Daniel Kaluuya and Keke Palmer, and I asked them about how Nope is incredibly reverent to film as a medium, treating shooting it as a very powerful act. This goes all the way back to the very first motion picture – “The Horse in Motion.”
“I think there was something about realizing that this industry, this art form that I've devoted so much to, is built on this initial erasure of this person who is, for all intents and purposes, the first actor and stuntman and wrangler in film,” Peele tells IGN. “And that character, that person, has been sort of tossed aside and … is a character we don't even know. And so I thought the fact that I get to make this film, this big summer blockbuster from my perspective with Black leads – in a way, Nope is sort of the sequel to [‘The Horse in Motion’]. It's sort of the answer to it, and the answer to that erasure. And it was only appropriate that the characters in my film were from the lineage of that original jockey.”
The Haywoods struggle with a very painful family legacy – their erasure from film history – and they kind of deal with that in their own ways.
“[Jordan and I] had a lot of conversations, and I think it was just like [OJ] hasn't got friends,” says Kaluuya. “He's hanging out with horses. So, he doesn't speak, then you get so used to not speaking, you know? And also a big thing was that he's not his dad. He didn't inherit his dad's personality. Em did. And so he always feels that, ‘Well, I can't talk like him, so I'm not going to.’ And we spoke a lot about that. About him just being him. And then his dad died, and then he just didn’t feel like talking.”
OJ’s crippling shyness and anxiety at performing in public isn’t shared by Em, who even within her own family felt excluded from what legacy the Haywoods have managed to hold on to, to the point where she’s totally ready to let it go.
“I think their perspectives and the way they feel about the ranch – you know, you say it's an erasure… I think it's an erasure that Emerald never felt a part of,” adds Palmer. “Because she grew up as the only female really in her family. And even though she had all the skills her dad had, it was kind of like always on OJ to really be the one. So she never felt a part of something. And then you have OJ on the other hand who always felt a part of it. You know, he knew maybe he didn't have the [personality] side of it, but [he was like], ‘I'm always here with Dad. This is my main thing. And I have such a huge respect for it because I've always felt a part of it.’ And so his feelings of watching it die out are a little bit more saddening, you know, and he wants to keep it alive. Where I suppose Emerald is kind of like, ‘How can we get rid of this shit?’ Because she's like, ‘It ain't never really been there for me. No way.’”
OJ’s tendency is to keep quiet, keep his head down; Em’s performative, pragmatic nature… they’re responses borne out of necessity, coping mechanisms for the hard fact that the Haywoods’ shot was taken away from them long ago. Horror often finds its characters processing pain from their past, which can take the form of whatever’s plaguing them in the present. That’s something that the voices behind Nope celebrate as a massive strength of the genre.
“I think that we repress our fear,” says Peele. “Fear is this unpleasant emotion that we suppress. We don't deal with it, we try not to deal with it… and yet we need to deal with it. It's sort of human, it's there for a reason. And I think there's all sorts of ways we find our releases for our fears – be it nightmares, or horror movies, or really dark procedurals. And I just think it's very needed. We need to face these things in some way. And story allows us to do it in a safer, more comfortable way.”
“Man, if you do it right, the opportunity that you have to explore trauma metaphorically with some type of creature, some type of horrific villain, it is insurmountable, but you got to really know what you're doing, which is why Jordan is so beloved when it comes to this genre,” says Palmer. “It’s because he actually knows how to use fear and our psychological feelings around fear to create these magnificent stories. And when you do a horror right, you really have just a great movie. Something that frightens people and makes them think. People on the edge of their seat – they're engaged … The emotion is what ties the horror all together.”
The nature of Nope’s UFO and the reason its over the Haywood ranch in the first place is something you should discover for yourself when you watch the movie. But suffice to say, that UFO and the way the Haywoods come to see it as their second chance as a family are at the heart of how Nope codes its discussions about erasure.
“Well, in many ways, the UFO is a catalyst for [Em and OJ] to get together and the journey that they go on,” explains Peele. “To capture the video is the journey that I think reignites their bond as a storytelling device. You know, there's something about the UFO in question that represents the uncatchable, the impossible. And I think it is in some ways the victim of exploitation itself. One of the reactions that this movie, I think, represents for me is a reaction to the industry itself, and all of the ways that the monetization of spectacle contributes to our soul deterioration as a society. So, I think the fact that the family has been a victim of this erasure in the past and is sort of representing Black people as it is, it just all contributes to the meta aspect of what I was trying to do with the film myself and capture the impossible. Make the film I'm not supposed to make, I'm not supposed to be able to make.”
Asking the audience to consider uncomfortable truths while enjoying his films is at the heart of what Jordan Peele does as a director. Get Out, Us, and Nope invite dissection, consideration, and reconsideration of the context in which you’re watching them. They invite you to look a little closer at the monster under the surface – or over your head – and ask yourself why it’s such a scary thing in the first place. I had to ask Peele, when audiences look up in the sky after they see Nope, what is it that he hopes they feel?
“You know, I've always been sort of daunted by the clouds. They're so beautiful,” responds Peele. “But when I see a big cloud right overhead that feels a little bit lower than it's supposed to be, I just always ask myself: ‘What's in there?’ I hope it's a little bit scarier to look up in the sky.”