Blog Assignment #2

 Jordan Peele’s 2019 cinematic masterpiece Us, serves as a cautionary tale of the dangers and possible societal destruction stemming from institutionally embedded inequalities and inequities that starkly cause division of class in America’s Capitalist landscape. Unlike Jordan Peele’s earlier film Get Out which showcases the idea of otherness with a special emphasis on social racial dynamics from microaggressions, white privilege, and outright racism--Us takes an interesting angle and explores the complexity of the black middle class. The plot of Us follows a Black family on vacation in Santa Cruz (a predominantly white area) and their revenge and bloodthirsty doppelgangers who have long waited for their opportunity to kill their counterparts, take their place and achieve justice for only being able to live a partial existence as outcasts below in the literal trenches of society. The Black doppelgangers as well as the rest of the doppelgangers symbolically portray the hidden population of America, from poverty to immigration these people are casts out as others and do not have access to resources to provide a stable or comfortable living in a consumeristic based society. After years of institutional oppression and societal inequality from being casts to the worst pits society has to offer--in the film the filthy and abandoned tunnels of America where they only have raw rabbit meat to consume. The film in its entirety showcases that if the divisions among various classes become too extreme there eventually will be a reckoning, moreover, the United States will have to answer for creating such division and lack of resources for the others. As “Red” says in the film that they all of the doppelgangers have a claim to being American; however, their American experience has differed greatly. The conclusion of the film is when the audience discovers the full extent of Adelaide’s childhood memory, that she and her underworld doppelganger switched places--or more like the true Adelaide had her life stolen from her. The audience is left feeling unsure who the true villains of the film are. From one perspective the expanding middle class can be the villain, so too can be America’s capitalistic framework or the doppelganger for carrying out their murder s plan--but there’s a collective empathy many share for them and the awful lives they had to experience in the trenches of society. The symbolism of duality from the portrayals of duplicates of people, rabbits, and societies showcases that there is always another even if we the middle class choose to conform to the narrative of collective ignorance.