by Jamie A. Thomas

Anyone who knows me knows I'm fairly obsessed with zombies, where they come from, why they persist, and how their inability to speak as we do masterfully articulates their sudden and involuntary departure from humanity. We all have our obsessions, right?

So when I went to see Get Out in theaters recently, with its central narrative of race-based body-and-brain-snatching, I couldn't resist reading zombies into it. Between writer and director Jordan Peele's chilling interpretation of the living dead, and his move to open and close the film with a hushed chorus sung in Swahili, I was stunned. All throughout the film my mind was completely blown by its twisting plot line, but even more so because of my expertise in Swahili, and continued research and teaching on discourses of zombies and survival horror across the African Diaspora.

As Get Out unfolds, Peele's Black male protagonist pays homage to the groundbreaking narratives of Night of the Living Dead (1968) and Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967). However, Get Out goes beyond these earlier films to offer additionally complex critiques on gender and interracial relationships, and the merit of competing discourses of survival when zombies are afoot. Get Out also harbors an important commentary on the power of communication, and above all else, the extreme costs of a failure to listen. 

With a promise to keep spoilers to a minimum, here are 5 reasons why the horrors of Get Out are a particularly apt vehicle for exploring discourses of exploitation, betrayal, and survival in today's America...

These were questions addressed in our experimental roundtable discussion on April 28, 2016 at Swarthmore College. The event provided an amazing first opportunity to bring together scholars in the Philadelphia area to discuss intersecting themes of morality, race, and the body. The conversation attracted an audience interested in moral emotion, the brain, human classification, urban redevelopment, Vodun, zombies, and the afterlife.

​Part 2 of our discussion (~20 mins, video available below), particularly concerns historical and contemporary imaginings of the body and afterlife through religious and other lenses. We ask: Which bodies, brains, and emotions are considered righteous and human? Who gets to have an afterlife? What happens to the body in the afterlife?