Du Bois’s double-consciousness from The Souls of Black Folk, where he wrote how Black consciousness in a white supremacist society is painfully aware of stereotypes being projected because we are “looking at oneself through eyes of others.” So when Gabriel tries to scare the strangers off, they break in and force the “real” family to see their racial doppelgängers. Here Peele invokes themes of Black art to layer the film’s neo-Freudian drama with a political subtext. Reluctantly, she goes with her kids, Zora (a convincing performance by Shahadi Wright Joseph) and Jason (savvy Evan Alex) and husband, Gabriel (a humorous Winston Duke) to the beach, but when they come home, a strange family, shrouded in shadows stands in the driveway. The plot spirals inward like a repetition compulsion as an older married Adelaide Wilson (played with ferocity by Lupita Nyong’o) returns to Santa Cruz to vacation with her middle-class family. Peele uses horror film aesthetics to translate this return of the repressed in masterful sequences of feint and foreshadowing. Us is a neo-Freudian drama, where Adelaide’s childhood trauma symbolizes the nation’s racial and class trauma - both are repressed, build pressure and erupt to the surface. The Tethered are the U.S.’s repressed memory. Unable to think, they toil away like desperate shadows, “tethered” to those on the surface. The government made clones, telepathically linked to citizens to control the public but the experiment failed and the clones were abandoned. The conflict driving Us is that doppelgängers, grotesque doubles called the “Tethered,” live underground and mime the lives of those above.
She descends into its dark rooms, sees her reflection it smiles evilly and grabs her. While dad is busy winning a game, his daughter Adelaide (a shy Madison Curry) strays into a house of mirrors. Us begins with text, saying under the United States are “thousands of miles of abandoned tunnels and mineshafts.” In the next scene, a family strolls through a carnival on the Santa Cruz beach. The terror in Us is not the pain of the “American Dream,” but the terror of not maintaining it. Us is a Black, middle-class guilt trip, and the catharsis it gives the audience comes at a price. What they miss is the film’s conservatism. In Jordan Peele’s latest film, Us, doppelgängers represent the repressed side of the “American Dream.” Critics have praised Peele for his craftsmanship, Hollywood homages and rich political subtext. How would you react if that other “you” came back for the life they should have had? It is who you would have been if born poor or in a war zone. It’s your face but harder, scarred and angry. They run toward you and press their face on the window. Imagine at night, seeing a stranger in the shadows. Editor’s Note: This article contains spoilers.
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