The Pastiche of Cinema
The pure cinematic theme that Jordan Peele uses in his third feature film, Nope, evokes various elements from both Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind and sci-fi classics in general. The references in the film never act as a pastiche, creating a variety of genres comparable to his debut titled Get Out. In his more ambitious follow-up, there is Us. Once again, Peele portrayed Daniel Kaluuya using the actor’s wide eyes to mesmerizing effect.
He played O.J. Haywood, a horse breeder whose family runs the Hollywood animal dispute business. At the film’s start, He sees or looks up something he does not understand on a remote farm in Southern California. Such shots recall many of Spielberg’s films, concentrating on the awestruck audience. What causes such astonishment frightens the mind of the images when viewing the shot as raw empathy; a house covered in blood, clouds that do not move, and metal objects that fall from the sky.
Among many unsettling details, the film makes excellent use of and uses the large format screen. It encourages the audience to look for signs in the sky in many expansive compositions. At such a point, one of the most gruesome images happens indoors as the chimpanzee’s face fills a large frame.
Gordy
It instills an animal fear named Gordy, the star of a 90s sitcom. Gordy brutally attacks people in a disturbing scene that echoes throughout Nope. In both the first shot and the next, the character hints at the spacious commentary. Peele responds to an addiction to popular culture, whether it is the media or technology that hunts gruesome footage for news stories. Until then, Peele weaved the thematic undercurrents throughout the film.
He uses the image of formal courage in reinforcing his ideas into a critique of the spectacle. In short, Peele negotiates the line between terror and pleasure, filled with suspenseful sequences. It shows his absolute control. His skill manipulates the audience. For example, in the film’s sequence, O.J. is faced with a strange shadow in the warehouse at night. As the pleasurable tension works in eerie silence, Peele is careful not to reveal too much too soon.
His frame in the exterior shot becomes another device in building uncertainty to the fear the characters felt. Especially when talking about his nature, it is not a film that audiences should watch on smartphones. The picture consumes more of its audience in reinterpreting the film. According to Peele, Nope explores the addiction to character and spectacle in a film.
Obsessed with Camera
Peele repeats the word only to remind the audience to explore how people are obsessed with glasses. Apart from just a few in witnessing outrageous moments that force the audience to pull out smartphones, it has earned notoriety for doing it dangerously. So, Peele concocted an anonymous black identity for the film’s sake, becoming a running camera show in the family. In the narrative, O.J.’s father mysteriously died.
He saw something strange in the sky. While he isn’t too surprised about what he sees looking like a spaceship, the film wisely chooses to leave. He never looked back and decided to record the site using a camera. As a result, it got there because, in truth, people would never think about the consequences for their own lives. By being the first indication, Peele contemplates a public fascination with spectacle, what the website is about, what the consumption is about, or what the film is about.
Aside from the potential shock of the small screen, none of the audience seems immune. In various surprises, this exploration of ideas comes from a philosophy of the human culture’s decline. When living in the conditions and society of modern production prevail, all life presents itself as a severe accumulation of spectacles.
Spectacle and Commodity
Modern spectacle changes a society that mainly has human relations into a society that prioritizes relations between commodities. The relationship serves as an economic relationship that is more important than humans. The spectacle perceives three events at once, specifically as a unifying instrument, the whole community, and part of society. The fact that popular culture separates itself on the common ground of the false gaze achieves nothing more than in all official languages’ generic separation.
In essence, the spectacle that underlies all social perspectives of all consciousness makes society focus on various performances. In other words, society turns them into death stares. Besides being isolated from other people, living in a spectacle constantly encourages people to talk about the spectacle. Whether it is a new gimmick from a TikTok or a controversial opinion from Twitter, the most obvious thing is that it requires material not to see capturing alien ships in front of the camera as a way to make society more meaningful.
Society’s view of being caught in a spectacle alienates them from one another. Until then, the union that the spectacle had achieved became the official language of general separation. Simply put, an individual will not be able to contact other people because they are looking at their cell phone.
Dehumanizing Spectator
After all, it does not consider the humanity of the people on screen and dehumanizes them. The spectator’s alienation gains from the object when the young star Jupe contemplates expressing a show in his world of entertainment, the audience sees what happens when individuals are so trapped as spectators. Instead, they risked losing themselves in the spectacle. In the meantime, we might not risk our lives by getting an extraterrestrial shot.
Most of us also nailed our expressions by the chaos. Interestingly enough, there is something we cannot ignore in general terms. Not only as an individual moral failure, but the spectacle we continue to consume throughout our lives makes everything seem unreal. It is because of the desire to be surprised to see an eclipse as a symbol of humanity. It is no coincidence that many of us pull out our phones to record a strange incident.
If political attacks come from multiple directions, on a darker level, there is a trend that will be troubling. In essence, Nope said an obsession with the audience affects the audience not in a positive way. The spectacle presents itself as something very positive. People can also argue about it, but we can say no more than what looks good.
Nature of Harm
In principle, the passive acceptance that we get is by showing without an answer or appearance. In short, a society that stands on spectacle builds power upon receiving ideas. The idea is that anything that looks good addresses the toxic nature of harm as well as concern. There is no persuasive criticism or people’s obsession with the spectacle. It could be that Peele himself took advantage of the audience’s love for his classic reference films.
More precisely, Peele has built a different tone or visual touch, with a relationship with the audience, as well as a great sense of humor. His fantastic conceptual vision makes for a knack for discovering his ideas along with formal techniques. In producing brilliant effects, he is consistent from his first film, relatively micro to large scale. It became something that only he practiced confidently.
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