Return of the Living Slave: Jordan Peele’s Get Out as Zombie Film

Jordan Peele’s 2017 film, Get Out, seems far removed from the gut-munching excesses of the zombie movies of George A. Romero or the exotic Haitian “voodoo” ceremonies wherein this folklore originated. However, the connection between the film and the original folk belief traditions is quite pronounced. Firstly, by looking at the Haitian Revolution (1791–1804), and then to the folk beliefs within vodou, specifically those beliefs about zombification, a pattern of denunciation and fearmongering about Haitians and their beliefs spread throughout the (white) Western Euro-American worlds. The “first black republic” threatened the assumptions of the right of white rule across the eighteenth to the twenty-first centuries. Peele picks up on those white fears and satirically explodes their inherent absurdity with his variation on Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (Stanley Kramer, 1968), wherein a young black man finds, at first, a warm liberal welcome at his white girlfriend’s family’s home. But this warm welcome turns sinister as Chris uncovers the Armitages’ plot to re-enslave healthy young African-American men.