Get Out.
My favorite part of Get Out—or at least one of my favorites—is the iconic tilt back into the Sunken Place. Daniel Kaluuya’s character grasping for the real world, which is far away from him now, inaccessible even as he still stands in it. It feels so different from more common expressions of Black distress—from all-consuming pain (Michael Ealy’s character in For Colored Girls, dangling his children out the window) to feeling no pain (Samuel L. Jackson in Pulp Fiction, a black boy shot in the head behind him, him complaining about the mess). I like how Daniel Kaluuya’s character is feeling something in between blankness and blind violence. The structure of his distress is both messy and neat.
The first time I watched Get Out, I was a senior at Baylor. It was 2017, and I saw it in the movie theatre with some friends. Though I don’t remember much about the experience of watching it, I remember how afterward my friends and I sat in the car and talked. Maybe I’m making this up, but I think we talked about interracial relationships. What does it mean, we wondered, to have any kind of relationship across race? Is it possible, and if so, how do you cultivate trust, considering all of the things our respective bodies represent? I remember thinking it was refreshing to talk about that, as Trump had just been elected or was revving up to be, and considering my college—not so liberal itself—was smack dab in the middle of Texas, it was good to get to speak on things that I didn’t always get a chance to.
A few years later, I watched Get Out again. I’d like to think it was 2020, as this time, when Daniel Kaluuya’s character got trapped in the Sunken Place, I remember finding it hard to breathe myself. I might’ve teared up watching him claw at the space between his mind and his life. I know what it’s like to be anxious, but if it was 2020, I knew that feeling more than usual. Maybe we all did. I’d started going on walks every day so that the restlessness of the moment wouldn’t bubble up in me, spill over. Eventually, I got a road bike, rode that around instead because I didn’t want to wonder if the split second of passing someone on the sidewalk was enough for Covid to catch up to me, leave me hurled over and coughing. Covid was this mysterious thing—this case we hadn’t yet cracked and as much as I wanted, maybe even needed, to be closer to others, less adrift, it felt very risky trying to bridge that gap.
Weirdly enough, a few weeks before Covid became this worldwide emergency, I was in the public library in Iowa City when I had a panic attack. I don’t even know what I was anxious about—I just remember feeling like my life was so small and my surroundings were so big and there wasn’t enough room for me to breathe. That night, I packed a bag, and the next day I drove to Nashville, a trip I was planning to take a few weeks later. I needed to get out of there, and my work was remote, so off I went.
It wasn’t long before people were nonchalantly talking about Covid, and it wasn’t long after that when we were told to stay home, to wash our hands often, avoid people as much as we could. I think a lot about what it meant to go to Nashville when I did. If I hadn’t gone then, I probably wouldn’t be in Atlanta now, as staying in Nashville, quarantining there with my sisters, I made some decisions that changed what my future would look like. No, I would not go to grad school in Wales like I’d planned, even though I’d just visited, walked around, met my advisor, signed a lease. No, I would stay in Nashville, apply to grad programs in America, where I’d be closer to the people I cared about, might even go somewhere paid for, that paid me. I’d get a job in the meantime. I was able to do that somehow, and now, I’m here, in this totally different timeline, an arguably better life.
For Chris in Get Out, the Sunken Place trapped him because he was in a very strange and unlikely situation. Not every anxious moment is so high-suspense, but the Sunken Place scene is maybe still a little relatable. In less dire circumstances, I think anxiety can sometimes be a good thing, in the sense that if you pay attention to it, listen and respond to it, adjust, you might be able to take care of yourself in ways that will eventually grant you a better life. Not always, obviously—sometimes the world around you presses down and all you can do is grit your teeth and bear it, but sometimes, you can pack a bag and go, or if you’re not a runner (I’m trying to stop being one) or too broke to keep on running (which is helping me stop), you can just sit down for a moment and ask yourself, What do I need?
What do I need? And how can I start to give it to myself, even in just a tiny way? Maybe, like Chris, it’s to block out the noise. To listen to a frantic LaKeith Stanfield when he warns you to get out. Or maybe it’s less thriller than that—maybe you could start with a nap, a glass of water. Maybe you could sit outside for a second, give yourself a little sunlight, some air. To be fair, what do I know? But also, how much could it hurt to be a little nicer to ourselves? How else do we get out when we’re free falling?
Image: Monkeypaw Productions
