“Nope” and the Spectacle of the Unknown
Credit: Marc Veraart, Flickr
For humans, the unknown is bizarrely multidimensional and sometimes contradictory. In many respects, it poses an opportunity for exploration; newly discovered land throughout history has given millions of people the chance to build new lives, and new technology has given countless more limitless access to knowledge. The unknown can also contain great horrors incomprehensible to the human imagination, leading people to be more ambivalent about stepping into murkier waters.
Nope, the latest film from director Jordan Peele, is a gloriously horrifying deep dive into the many facets of the unknown. It follows the journey of the Haywood siblings, OJ (Daniel Kaluuya) and Emerald (Keke Palmer), who run a ranch in California that wrangles horses for use on Hollywood sets. They are the descendants of the black man who rode atop the horse in one of Eadweard Muybridge's pioneering animations, but that jockey’s name remains shrouded in mystery (Peele took some creative liberties in this). The Haywoods want to build off that legacy regardless, elevating their struggling business using the undiscovered identity of their ancestor.
A towering threat stands in the way, however. A seemingly otherworldly force of nature haunts the ranch, causing blackouts and dropping debris from the sky. It also seems to have a taste for horses, further denigrating the foundation of the business; the void of knowledge regarding the otherworldly force threatens to destroy the Haywood ranch that was built on decades of progress attempting to revive the unknown identity of the “first movie star” of Muybridge’s animation. It is a stark demonstration of how the unknown can lead to both great fortune and tremendous tragedy.
The Haywood siblings are driven to unearth the secrets of whatever is lurking above their ranch and purchase a camera system in an attempt to document it on footage they can market and sell. As it turns out, Ricky “Jupe” Park (Steven Yeun), the owner of a small neighboring theme park, also has an interest in the object. He wants to use it as a new paid attraction regardless of the potential consequences of exploiting a deeply threatening force. What begins as an already ingenious twist on the “great American UFO story” becomes an expertly-crafted examination of how people engage with sensationalism.
The nature of spectacle is intricately explored in Nope, and Peele goes to great lengths to demonstrate how far humans will go to observe and market it. The main characters have complex reasoning for chasing spectacle, with overlapping reasoning that avoids a simple hero-villain dynamic. The Haywood siblings and Jupe Park both want to use the bizarre scene of the UFO for monetary gain, with the former wanting to take the footage to the media and the latter putting on a circus-style exhibition for a live audience. What distinguishes these near-identical motives is the context in which they are acted upon, painting a complicated picture of how using similar means to similar ends can vary in acceptability based on who takes the action.
One of the best parts of the film is how Peele grounds these abstract concepts in sheer entertainment value. Even with its exploration of complex themes, Nope is a horror-thriller first and its priority is dragging viewers through its deeply disturbing world. It accomplishes this feat through its extraordinarily crafted atmosphere and countless terrifying scenes facilitated with stunning visuals by cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema.
There is a potentially deliberate irony in Peele’s most ambitious, visually complex movie with the biggest budget being a commentary on spectacle. Combined with an elaborate marketing campaign, Nope is seemingly a perfect example of the issue it is satirizing. In reality, it reflects OJ and Emerald’s own quest to chase the UFO for monetary gain: their motive may be identical to the more antagonistic Jupe, but the goal is to build the legacy of their struggling ranch. The film itself similarly uses spectacle as a vehicle to criticize spectacle because there is nothing more sensationalist than UFOs abducting horses in the middle of nowhere, and like the viewers in the movie, we willingly pay to sit in awe as the show unfolds.
Alien stories regularly capitalize on the spectacle of the unknown, but the genius of Nope lies in its ability to tell several exceedingly engaging stories at once. The otherworldly threat is an achievement in itself in regards to its presentation, but equally intriguing is the journey of the Haywood siblings as they seek to save their ancestor from obscurity. Every aspect is equal parts thought-provoking and bone-chilling, and it creates a wondrously dark work of art worth returning to.