By Hannaan Fuad
Edited by Siti Nur Najihah
Jordan Peele’s 2022 movie, "Nope," is a film that I think about all the time. Particularly because the cinematography for the movie was hauntingly beautiful. However, there’s something more about the movie that has made me want to write about the movie for a while now. However, before I continue, a disclaimer must be made that this article is very heavily influenced by Thomas Flight’s video, The Real Villain of Nope. Please watch the video if you have time. It is very well-made.
The movie displayed a quote from the Old Testament at the start of the film.
“I will cast abominable filth at you, make you vile, and make you a spectacle.”
Now, I will not comment on the quote itself because I know nothing of the Old Testament. But what I want to discuss today has to do with the concept of spectacle, and I’m not talking about the glasses you wear to make your vision clearer. I will use Oxford Languages’ definition, which is ‘an event or scene regarded in terms of its visual impact’.
Around 24 centuries ago, Aristotle wrote in "Poetics," six elements that make for a good and compelling tragedy. Plot, character, thought, diction, music, and spectacle. While the list isn’t necessarily listed according to their importance, during the time, ‘spectacle’ was not being put as a priority compared to others. However, when the Romans adopted much of their entertainment forms from the Greeks, a shift that turned the focus on the element of spectacle happened. They prioritised it above others, and that is why they built the Colosseum, a place where gladiators fight for their lives while the spectators watch for their entertainment.
This focus, based on my observation, persisted until today, apparent in today’s fixation on action-based movies, with scenes displaying gushing blood, dismembered bodies and other gory details being normal. The difference is now, we know that it’s not happening in real life in front of us.
In 1967, a French philosopher, Guy Debord, wrote a book called "La Societe du Spectacle," translated as "The Society of the Spectacle." In the book, Debord discussed a few ideas that we can relate to what’s happening in Peele’s "Nope." One of the ideas that Debord wrote was the concept of media saturation. Real-life experiences are now mere representations to be spectated by other people. He argues that through the spectacle, the line between reality and simulation becomes blurred.
In "Nope," one of the characters, Jupe experienced a traumatising event during his childhood in which he witnessed an ape going off on attack mode, beating Jupe’s friend to death in front of his own eyes. However, as he grows up when asked about this trauma of his, he can only relate it through the perspective of an SNL sketch that recreated that horrifying event. This shows that the line between real life and simulation has now been blurred, even for those who experienced the event first-hand, like Jupe. Of course, there are psychological factors that explain Jupe’s dissociation from the event, but we’re not focusing on that today.
This relates also to the concept of commodifying traumatic events. What is meant by that is in today’s society, a traumatic event for one person sometimes is turned into a spectacle for other people. The fact that they even reenact the horrifying event for an SNL sketch shows that this traumatic event has been commodified as a spectacle for entertainment purposes. Even Jupe himself joined in on this train by creating a special display room that displays all the things found in the aftermath of the ape’s attack, and anyone who wants to see them must pay the fees to him.
However, today, spectacle can also be used as a weapon to control a narrative, hence being a powerful tool of political and social control. OJ and Em Haywood, the main characters of "Nope", decided to find ways to film the creature, requiring the help of Angel Torres, an electronic store employee, to set up surveillance cameras around them to help capture the movement of the monstrous creature. Not only that, they also contacted a famous cinematographer, Antlers Hoist, to help them with their project.
This can be seen as a way for them to control the narrative so the world can believe them. Unfortunately, while capturing ‘the impossible shot’, Hoist ended up sacrificing himself, again tying back to Debord’s idea of the spectacle being a “social relation among people, mediated by images”. Life is no longer about what’s happening in real life to an individual. It’s about what is served to and spectated by other people.
“In a world which really is topsy-turvy, the true is a moment of the false.”
Photos courtesy of Universal Pictures***
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