Us

Us is a 2019 science fiction horror film produced and directed by comedian, actor, and writer Jordan Peele. The movie starts with a chilling introduction where we see a young black girl at a pier out with her parents. Her parents don't like each other much, the father is drinking too much, and the mother is telling him no more beer. At some point the girl wanders off on her own, getting lost in a hall of mirrors, some sort of 'ride' at the pier. She was lost for fifteen minutes before her parents found her. When they were reunited, the girl was mute.

The next part of the film starts with a well-to-do black family on vacation at a vacation home. The same girl who got lost at the pier is now an adult, with two children. A boy who is slightly awkward, and a well-adjusted girl. Her husband is a jokey fatherly type with glasses. Things take a turn for the worst when a family wearing red jumpsuits appear on their lawn. They don't say anything. The father goes out to scare them off with a baseball bat but it doesn't work. It turns out that the family is actually them-doppelgangers. This is where the horror element comes from. 

It turned out that the family on the lawn were actually doppelgangers, an apparition or double of a living person. This is where the science fiction element comes in. Later in the film, after some exposition, we find out that there are doppelgangers of Americans living underground, the disenfranchised, the dispossessed. Meanwhile, the privileged, well-to-do people that have it easy in life are living above ground, getting their vitamin D from sunlight and livin' easy.

Not only that but the film makes a reference to the 1980's Reagan era with this event that actually happened, called Hands Across America. These doppelgangers have come up from underground to exact revenge across their doubles, holding hands across vast areas of land in America, after killing people. Does that make sense?  Does it have to?

We see underground that the doppelgangers live with these white rabbits in the corridors. That was an interesting visual. The idea that there are underground places across America reminded me of Colson Whitehead's The Underground Railroad, where slaves find their way to freedom using these underground passages. The movie is somewhat similar and referential a lot of other horror movies, such as A Nightmare on Elmstreet, The Shining [b/c of the white family's twins], and even has some similar aspects to Get Out, Peele's first film.

The movie is filled with too many references, metaphors, and so much symbolism that its all to much to write about here. The main takeaway I got from Us is the idea of the have nots coming to take their revenge on the bourgeois. This goes back to Marx and Hegel's philosophy about the rise of the proletariat, meanwhile, the bourgeois does everything in their power to keep the working class in the gutter. This is what the Communist Manifesto is all about. It's a very overt philosophical overtone. 

Many writers online have been speculating about what this film means. I'm not sure that it particularly means anything, other than that it is a damn good black horror movie. It's great to look at visually too. The fact that the main actors are black people is a plus [and a negative, see below] because its 'the first black horror movie', other than Get Out,  however, that movie works better than Us in the sense that Get Out is simpler in form and not overstocked with 'too much syndrome'. In short, it's less messy, thus works better as a movie that can be enjoyed as well as reviewed. 

I didn't come to the conclusion that Us was too cluttered until I read reviews. After viewing the movie with my friend, we got sidetracked by the clutter: symbolism, metaphors, references, and subtext. But now that I've seen what good movie reviewers think I've come to realize that the movie was still great, although probably not as great as I first thought. This isn't going to be Jordan Peele's best film but it will definitely be one of his most referenced and most talked about, probably for years to come. 

Lastly, I want to mention another thing that is personal to me regarding the movie. I don't think Jordan Peele did black people a favor making a movie like this. Yes, its a black horror movie but in a metaphorical way, I think it works as entertainment for white people to enjoy watching black people get scared, complete with vaudeville big eyes, tears falling down their faces and animalistic noises instead of speech from the doppelgangers. I don't think this is a movie my mother would like or any older, serious, black person. In short, its a young black persons thing, if they're into it at all. Older black folk would scoff at the way black people are portrayed in this movie. This is a personal criticism yet I think it is crucial to the film as a whole culturally. Of course, you could speculate until you turn black and blue and say, "Yeah, Peele is trying to say something important regarding class and race in America." And I would respond with, "Yes, we understand that. But at what cost?"

Despite that I still enjoyed the movie. You can see the ending coming a mile away yet it is still satisfying. Jordan Peele is a young film director and he was trying to do too much, not unlike a great author's sophomore slump. Yet somehow the movie still works, although probably not as effectively as Peele intended. Still, this was probably the best movie I've seen in 2019. You should definitely see this movie.

Charles Mingus Beneath the Underdog

I finished this book a while ago and I wanted to record some of my thoughts on the book. Its an autobiographical (with some fiction thrown in, probably a lot) work written by Mingus himself and Alfred Knopf. Charles Mingus is a famous jazz musician, a bass player who is known as a composer and working with Eric Dolphy. I know of him more through Dolphy than his own compositions but his works have great artistic merit and he will not be forgotten because of this.

The one thing to note is that although this book is about a jazz musician most of the book has nothing to do with music at all. Rather, its more like poetry through life itself. We start with a young baby Mingus who's mother is fearful for his life because he'd been dropped on his head. Great opener, "I almost died as a baby."

The book goes on to display Mingus' young life as a youth facing off against bullies, learning to fight and stand up for himself, and most importantly finding love and woman. Oh, yes this guy was a womanizer. To the point that as an adult he was pimping for a while. But he had other and more musical desires. The parts about music mostly focused on the fact that although he was acclaimed as a good composer and had found fame, he was still quite penniless at times. Mingus described "what it feels like to be an artist – actually be it, in a world that is not only trying to stop you being an artist but has tried to stop you being human in the first place." (wiki/Beneath the Underdog)

A stand out story was this part where Mingus is up in Mexico and he fucks twenty Mexican girls within two hours. Definitely fake but still a cool story. The human body definitely can't handle that but the thought of it is sort of interesting. This book had tons of sex scenes in it. It was probably just as bad as Fifty Shades of Grey, except probably worse. There was some really raunchy sexual stuff in the book, things they don't even do in porn because it would be construed unacceptable. These parts of the book, although vulgar to a certain degree, has a certain poetic beauty to it. Is sex really all these things and more? For Mingus sex was of utmost importance. And not just the act of fucking. Its the act of making love that was important. I think that was the best thing I learned from these parts of the book.

The women in Mingus' life were numerous. At one point he was living with two chicks who were devoted to him. He pimped them for a while but eventually quit to focus on music. You get the sense that for him its not about one woman, but an infinite number. And all of them could important to you, not just a fuck. This idea was quite new to me although I've heard of men marrying multiple women in Islam so its nothing new. Interesting to see it in the context of a jazz musician.

Mingus' personality shines through well in this book. He is a man of complexity. He could be mean, angry, racist, gentle, forgiving, and loving all at the same time. Although the book focuses more on his anger and troubled issues I like to think of Mingus as a troubled man who found himself (intellect, art, musicality, and social ingenuity) through music.

If anything I found out about what jazz musicians are really like, not just some white guy's (critics) thoughts on them. And for that it is invaluable. 

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