The Real Villain of Nope

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It’s crazy Peele makes a movie about the film industry and spectacle and then Netflix releases Dahmer

Awesome that Nope did the whole “how the internet & fame causes us to do dumb, unlikable, fucked up and horrible things to achieve it” better then all the others did without ever showing social media at all.

Have you heard about how Logan Paul called this one of the worst films ever? The fact that a guy like him doesn’t understand What this film is trying to say is pure irony at its finest.

I remember seeing Nope and afterwards seeing people complain about the Gordy scenes, saying that they didn't add to the overall plot of the film. To me, it was clear as day that these segments were used to help relate the theme of spectacle and how some people will use even their own trauma to achieve that goal. Even Joseph Wincott's DP character was willing to sacrifice himself for spectacle, looking directly into the eye of the creature to get the "impossible shot." God do I love Nope.

Peele gave us a hint of the movie’s theme right at the beginning, when we learn about the the main character’s name: OJ. The OJ trial was perhaps the birth of the modern commodifcation of spectacle.

The sheer scalpel sharp genius of Peele, with the dialog describing the SNL skit as a stand in for a first hand account is still mindboggling to me. How Jupe describes Kattan's performance... "he's just crushing it... he is a force of nature... he is... killlling it on that stage." Not "he's hilarious" or "he's outrageous". No, Jupe is using the very same terminology one might use to describe the actual chimpanzee attack, and it fits a comedy routine. It's just such good writing.

The idea that this movie is a very pointed commentary at the film industry can I think also be seen in how jean jacket processes what it eats. It literally eats you alive and anything that isn't easily digestible will be spit back out. Hollywood will take anything that can be monetized and throw away all the rough edges of you, your life, your traumas, and what you have to say.

I’ve been thinking about spectacle more recently as it relates to the recent Netflix biopics for Dahmer and Marilyn Monroe. Both films are being called out right now for exploiting real life trauma. The families of Dahmer’s victims are speaking out about how they were not consulted. They are being re-traumatized by the show (it portrays exact replicas/recreations of real life events). The Marilyn Monroe story is being called out for oversexulizeing Marilyn in the exact way that Hollywood did when she was alive. It portrays her in a fictional way that doesn’t attempt to show the real her at all.

There was a war photographer in the 90s who went to Sudan. He took a lot of pictures. One of the dilemmas of this sort of career is whether you help or not. The general consensus is you do not intervene or interfere, you merely snap photos, and leave. Well, this photographer, his name was Kevin Carter, he took one particular photo in Sudan. It was an emaciated baby girl in the road, with a vulture behind her, literally in the process of dying. She died shortly after he took the photos. He didn't help. He didn't touch her. He won a Pulitzer for that photo in 1994. And then he killed himself. He couldn't live with it. He was responsible for the commodification and celebration of sick and depraved spectacle, the painful death of a baby, and the world rewarded him for it. He couldn't handle benefiting off the death of a baby (whether he could've helped or not, he didn't try, that's the problem). He's not the only one. John Gaunt won the 1955 Pulitzer for photographing the moment a couple on the beach realized a wave had dragged their baby out to sea. Just utter horror and grief and shock. He couldn't handle it either. He said getting the Pulitzer made him "ill in his interior" and he was ashamed of it for the rest of his life. He had his own baby at the time. So I really think this is an important conversation and thank you for explaining the actual meaning behind the film, because it's not being understood very well by many people, they aren't tapping into the deeper truths. Like the spectacle of horror and how our society deals with it. We give prizes to people who end up suicidal for getting them, when it was their lifelong dream to get that prize, they can't cope with what their inaction meant outside the context of the photograph itself. It says too much about them as people. What's right? When is inaction acceptable for documentary purposes? Is it wrong when there's profit or spectacle? How do you avoid exploitation? Can you? These aren't easy questions to answer. I think we need documentation of horror in the world, but it should never extend into profit and spectacle, and therein lies the problem. How else do you accomplish that without profit? What's the right way? Like I said. No easy answers. Edit I'm mistaken about the Vulture and the Little Girl, generally people think what I said is true but the baby was a boy, and while I tried to find where or how, I can only find that the baby made it to a centre for refugees. How I have no idea but that's the reported story. It was a boy and he survived. I can't find proof of that though. There's a comment I made below about this being a very relevant issue to the subject.

Did you notice the fight happening in the parking lot through the burger bar window while the main cast was both figuratively and literally digesting their recent trauma? I think it was a genius summary of the obsession of spectacle from Peele. I found myself watching them through the window, eager for the next spectacle.

jupe hurting people and getting himself killed due to a negative response to a trauma in a stressful situation, which he reacts with in a way he fully doesn't understand until it's too late? guess jupe and gordy weren't so different after all

My friend and I were debating this film yesterday - I loved it, he didn't. He said "that scene with Gordy at the start? Give me that all day, I'd watch a full movie of that!", which I think highlights the point of the film.

The connection of Gordy and Jean Jacket was well done, the quiet/brutal attack from Gordy is something I’m not gunna forget any time soon. So visceral, like when we get the inside digestion shot of Jean.

The cherry on top of this whole movie is how in the end, a reporter tells her camera-man to get Emerald in the camera shot for their news-report, instead of actually running over to see if she's all right. To the very end, Peele comments on how the authenticity and memorializing of a traumatic moment is more important than caring for victims.

Excellent analysis as always, though IMO, the 'spectacle' aspect is only half the story here. The other piece of the puzzle seemed to be exploitation, and how in a world that puts a price on spectacle, many will try to exploit others, nature, or even themselves & their own trauma, to turn a profit. Think about OJ and Ricky. Both are attempting to exploit nature to sell a spectacle. OJ with his horses, and Ricky with the alien. The difference is, OJ knows that the spectacle can never truly be controlled. Only worked with. He respects the unpredictable nature of the animals he works with, and this is what ultimately saves him. This is further illustrated by the fact that OJ is smart enough to separate himself from the spectacle he sells, whereas Ricky has deeply intertwined himself & his identity with both Jean Jacket & Jupiter’s Claim. He exploits himself in the process, and this puts him in danger. Remember, neither Gordy nor Jean Jacket were evil. Both were just wild creatures, recklessly exploited by the people around them. And that recklessness eventually cost lives. Its also worth noting that Gordy's rampage was triggered by a popping balloon, and Jean Jacket is ultimately killed by a balloon.

Usually, when I hear little green men, I think nothing but harmless, little, bent out of shape, alien dudes. But in this movie, Peele really crank up the scare level to 9000. That scene where Otis was being pranked by 3 kids dressed in alien costumes in the dark scared the shit out of me.

For me Nope is a scathing commentary on the viral culture\panopticon society where everyone is looking but no one is seeing. We see something and we see how we can profit from it and not how we can communicate with it. OJ and his sister (played by the lovely Keke Palmer who’s characters name I can’t remember) don’t even try to talk to it. They try to record it and make money. It’s fitting that the way you get screwed by the alien is by looking at its mouth which looks eerily similar to that of a camera’s lens.

The standing shoe is the creepiest part for me, idk why. It felt so out of place, but I also knew Jordan included it for a reason, but it was so creepy in its ambiguity nonetheless

This movie felt like an instant classic