Living in the Sunken Place: Notes on Jordan Peele's Get Out as Gothic Fiction

Abstract

The gothic imagination often expresses a sense of the instability and/or vulnerability of human identity, bearing either on specific individuals or on the species as a whole. The present article examines the 2017 film Get Out, written and directed by Jordan Peele, in order to highlight the ways in which its exploration of the abovementioned topic relates to the tradition of the gothic as it is recognisable in literary texts dating from as far back as the eighteenth century. Relevant titles include Walter Scott's Count Robert of Paris and Robert Louis Stevenson's Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, as well as examples from film. The argument of the article therefore focuses on a gamut of thematic concerns that link different works across different ages and media.