*Warning: Article contains “Us” spoilers*
By Émelyne Museaux
Writer, director, and producer Jordan Peele has gone on record to state that his latest blockbuster, Us, is not a Black movie, meaning that it is not about race. Us, though having quickly earned a spot in the horror noire genre and starring Black leads, is a horror film first and last, a film whose appeal is universal because it’s a film whose leads could have been portrayed by actors of any racial and ethnic background while keeping the plot intact.
That being said, Us is a film that makes a very bold commentary on systemic inequalities, the difficulties in overcoming the circumstances of one’s birth, and why the very notion of a person having to overcome who they are in order to succeed is inherently violent. At its core, Us is a narrative of haves versus have nots, and a message about race and the oppressive system of white supremacy can be very easily extracted from the plot of the film.
Both horror and psychological thriller, Us has a twist that is hinted at from the very beginning, and is fully revealed by the end: The wife and mother whom we’ve been rooting for from the very start is a fraud. As a child, this person—one of the underground “tethered” people who were created and then abandoned by the U.S. government as “failed” experiments—met her above ground counterpart, Adelaide, then quickly overpowered, and swapped lives with her, damning the real Adelaide (later dubbed Red) to an existence without comfort, sunlight, and (seemingly) without free will. Meanwhile, the double “Adelaide,” though experiencing a brief rough patch due to not being able to speak, quickly adjusted, adapted, and seamlessly assimilated into Adelaide’s life. This would mean that our “Adelaide,” the woman whom it turns out is not haunted by what was done to her, but rather what she did, that she’s appropriately anxious and fearful of retribution. This would make her the villain, right?
But what exactly makes “Adelaide” so villainous? One of the most popular statements among conservative white Americans is “Pull yourself up by your bootstraps,” which basically means that if you want something, despite whatever socially-constructed obstacles stand in your way, you should work hard to get it, and if you fail, it’s no one’s fault but your own. While this statement isn’t nearly as popular in Black communities, we do have our own adjacent sayings that carry similar connotations, one of the most popular being “Work twice as hard for half as much.” This statement acknowledges that certain folks have to work harder with much less to show for their efforts in the end, but encourages them to do so anyway.
Our communities have now made #BlackExcellence synonymous with achieving success according to white standards. Everyone from Serena Williams, to Trevor Noah, to Jordan Peele himself has been afforded that label by either gaining access to white dominated spaces, or by proving that they could excel within an arena where they have previously (or currently) been told that they do not belong. We know how difficult this is to achieve but still praise those who can pull it off, while chastising those who can’t for “Making us look bad.” As a person who has grown up either hearing that I cannot or should not do “fill-in-the-blank” because I am Black, a woman, an immigrant, and don’t have a degree, I view “Adelaide” as a victim of her circumstances.
As someone who was born a tether, a shadow of another, “Adelaide’s” will and drive to escape the misery of life below ground gave her the motivation to go above ground and wait for her counterpart to come to her in the house of mirrors. Like many privileged people, the real Adelaide was completely unaware of having such a privilege. She knew nothing about her tethered self which is what allowed the unsuspecting young girl to be physically overpowered by her double. And this isn’t the only time “Adelaide” overwhelms her, either. Just as she was desperate to have an above ground life, “Adelaide” was equally desperate to keep it, eventually killing Red/Adelaide.
So often, when a member of a marginalized group is working hard to “make it,” they feel so much pressure to be “just as good” as their more privileged counterparts. But what’s discussed less often is that they’re usually superior in skill to those counterparts, as evidenced by the bloodshed of the tethered uprising. If/when the marginalized are finally accepted into a space they’ve been told is sacred, imposter syndrome and lack of support keep them in a constant state of anxiety. “Adelaide’s” anxiety over the possibility of the life she’d stolen being taken away one day looked a lot like an adult carrying childhood trauma because, to her, that’s exactly what it felt like. Imposter syndrome is its own form of self-inflicted trauma and “Adelaide” has lived in fear for decades before encountering Red again.
Though “Adelaide’s” family clearly sees the tethered as beneath them—as revealed when Gabe asks what (not whom) they are, and later when the family enthusiastically exchanges kill counts—the tethered are just as human as they are. Though they can’t speak in languages above ground people can understand, “Adelaide” is proof that they can certainly learn and can become just as talented, intelligent, and accomplished as their above ground counterparts, if only given the chance. Red/Adelaide is also a harrowing example of how traumatically scarring and insurmountable it can be for a person to have certain privileges stripped away, of how little talent matters in an environment where one is unable to thrive.
In a moment alone with her imposter and former tether, Red/Adelaide remarks how “you could have taken me with you,” but “Adelaide” knows what most people born into suffering know: Until the actual systems oppressing and ignoring marginalized people are done away with, space is limited. There can only be one. She knew that Red/Adelaide’s parents, though initially heartbroken over her presumed trauma, loved her. They wouldn’t have accepted her if they’d still had their real daughter. “Adelaide” knows that everything she has is a direct result of taking opportunity, violently and ruthlessly, when it was not given to her.
The children of Red/Adelaide and her tether are further proof that nurture and opportunity, not nature, are the deciding factor in how far a person can go in life. Both sets of children have one parent who was born below ground, and one parent who was born above. The children are more equally matched than anyone else. Even with Zora’s head start of over a quarter mile, Red’s daughter, Umbrae ran laps around her. And Jason’s tether, Pluto, has a face scarred from successfully performing the magic trick that Jason had failed to the previous summer. “Adelaide” saw her own children in these tethered children, showing visible distress when Umbrae and Pluto die.
They could have been her own children; in many ways, they are. But “Adelaide” cannot risk her position and take on all of the tethered People’s problems. She tells her family near the end of the movie that the hand-holding demonstration that they are performing “won’t matter” in the end because, like the original Hands Across America, it is doing nothing to address the systemic issues of their existence. Red’s early childhood above ground created in her a mindset comparable to that of poor white people in our world, a feeling that they are merely temporarily inconvenienced; she’d suffered greatly but had never lost her feeling of privilege.
Upon meeting the Wilsons, she tells them “We’re Americans,” with the childish misunderstanding that this statement alone is a guarantee to the rights of full citizenship. This rose-colored view of the world above ground might be why she felt comfortable “playing with her food” so to speak, more focused on prolonged revenge rather than immediately killing “Adelaide”. “Adelaide” was born into suffering and wasn’t afforded the idealism of Red’s early childhood. And she was above ground to witness how spectacularly Hands Across America failed; she knew that making bold statements was often not enough. In an unfair world, you have to seize your moment and take what you feel is owed to you.
In our world, the ability to take up space is a privilege predominantly reserved for cisgender heterosexual white people. The rest of us have to fight over crumbs and leftovers. Though not many people have done what “Adelaide” did, being one of few or the only member of X group allowed in a certain space is inherently violent, and whether or not physical violence is used, the admission of a select amount at the exclusion of others is a means of maintaining the oppressive status quo. I’m not convinced that some of us wouldn’t have made the same decision as “Adelaide” in order to be fully accepted, and not just survive, but be allowed to thrive. In fact, many people of colour make this choice to suppress the aspects of themselves deemed undesirable by white supremacy and try to assimilate into white spaces daily. Though not as seamless as “Adelaide’s’” assimilation, we feel an ease of burden, and believe that our lives are/will be better with certain tokens of validation. And like “Adelaide,” many of us are too afraid of losing that hard-won position to risk going back to our humble beginnings and helping others born in the same circumstances.
“Adelaide” is in a lot of ways the personification of a sell out, a crab in a barrel. First she abandons all of her people to embark on a great new life, then she pretends not to know who they are when Red’s family enters her home, then she participates in killing several of them. But the barrel isn’t a crab’s natural habitat. Who put her there? Who created the circumstances? We focus on “Adelaide’s” actions, but she didn’t create the tethered people, people who are just as human and therefore just as deserving as their above-ground counterparts. We can judge the revolting tethered as violent savages, but inequality is the breeding ground of most violence. Violence was how “Adelaide” was forced to create a new life for herself, at another’s expense, and violence was ultimately how she managed to keep it.
While “Adelaide” may be difficult to sympathize with once we know her secret, we cannot deny that this terrible, violent, and unforgivable thing she did was for all of the right reasons. More than oppressed, the tethered were invisible and unknown. She was literally going through the motions of someone else’s life. “Adelaide” didn’t have the knowledge base, the support, or the time to change the world she was living in, so she found a way to adapt and flourish within that system. What some might call selling out was clearly trading up in her situation. Though we can judge her choice, it is very clear by the end of the film that her son Jason knows who she really is, and while their relationship may change, he knows that she loves him and their family, and will keep her secret because a different choice would have meant an entirely different life for them.
How far could marginalized people go if our access and opportunity, like “Adelaide’s,” was fully untethered? How many geniuses do not have the money for university? How many musical prodigies cannot afford lessons? How many artists were shut out of art school? How many innovators have been swallowed whole, tethered by the school to prison pipeline? Merely saying that “The monster is us” is a gross oversimplification. For better or for worse, our lives are shaped by how we view the world, and how the world views (and subsequently treats) us. It is easy to simply say that “Adelaide” is a villain and conveniently ignore the circumstances she was born into, but we cannot fault her for no longer wanting to be a shadow of someone else and stepping out into the light.
Reading Suggestions:
“1Q84” Haruki Murakami (2013)
“The Belles” Dhonielle Clayton (2018)
“Let the right one in” John Ajvide Lindqvist (2004)
E. Museaux is a full-time opinionated loud mouth, part-time editor, and an aspiring YA novelist who enjoys binge-watching obscure series, reading the work of her contemporaries, and using music to suppress her existential crises.
