✹ 𝔪𝔬𝔱𝔥 𝔱𝔬 𝔞 𝔣𝔩𝔞𝔪𝔢

the amount of FUN Adam Driver had playing Cesar Catilina in MEGALOPOLIS (2024) dir. Francis Ford Coppola

Doug Jones as Amphibian Man in The Shape of Water 06/??

Alien production still.

ADDAMS FAMILY VALUES (1993) dir. Barry Sonnenfeld

THE ADDAMS FAMILY (1991) dir. Barry Sonnenfeld

Private Vasquez in Aliens (1986) dir. James Cameron

I am having such a hard time putting this thought into words but I am going to try my best.

NOPE is very interesting in concept, because the title is derived from the idea that in weird situations, Black people will go “Nope.” and turn our asses right around and leave. Like a subconscious self-preservation tactic. So something that I wondered immediately after hearing Jordan Peele say that was, “Okay, but if the Black people just say ‘nope’ to anything that seems off, then how do we even have a movie?”

And there’s something here about Blackness, and knowing better, but ending up right back where you started anyway.

NOPE is a movie where the main characters do EVERYTHING right. When OJ sees (Jupe’s kids dressed up as) aliens in the barn, he tries to take a photo for a second before he nopes his ass out of there, and is also ready to box with anything that gets too close. When Em and OJ first see Jean Jacket in the cloud, Em immediately tells OJ to run, and OJ starts running for his LIFE, and he is NOT on some “tripped on a rock and twisted my ankle” horror movie bullshit that man is hitting the BRICKS. And I know Angel isn’t Black, but after the Star Lasso Experience, even HE has the sense to get out of that dead car, get his ass in the house, grab something sharp, and hide until he can figure out what the hell is going on. All of these characters have an unprecedented amount of common sense. We do not have to sit there rolling our eyes or yelling at the screen because of stupid choices these characters make, and that’s why they escape with their lives after the Star Lasso Experience.

So now the Haywoods know that their home is dangerous. But they still go back. And that’s something that really, really stuck with me. Because yes, it’s about the horses. But it’s also not just about the horses.

I don’t think Emerald has a job. I don’t think she has a car. Besides the ranch, I don’t think she has a home. It seems like she’s just crashing with various people while she does little jobs to get by.

OJ hasn’t been able to make money outside of selling his horses, and this has been going on even since before Otis Sr. died. OJ can’t maintain eye contact with other people. He is hardly willing to have conversations with people outside of his immediate family. He has been raised to be a horse wrangler. He still uses a flip phone. His fucking name is OJ.

And all of that is to say, neither of the Haywoods are really in a position to be abandoning everything they have.

In that parking lot, when Em is trying to avoid even talking about what happened, OJ says something along the lines of, “We don’t own shit. Somebody’s got to let Lucky out. I got mouths to feed.”

The ranch is literally all that they have. Yes, they escaped with their lives, but they escaped to what? Crashing in a studio apartment with a tech store employee? Trying to room with Em’s various fuck buddies every night, and hoping they let OJ stay too?

And all that aside, that’s their home. This is not some family that just moved into a haunted house. This is not some group of drunk teens hanging out in cornfields in the countryside on Halloween. That ranch is all of their childhood memories. That’s all they have left of their father. That’s what their father left for them. He created this business and taught his son how to do the job, because he wanted to leave something behind for his kids. Most of us (Black people) do not have generational wealth to pass down. Generations before us work their asses off to put together something to leave to their children, to make life a little easier on them. Otis Sr. wanted his kids to have this ranch. He wanted this business to take care of them.

And what? They’re supposed to just walk away from that?

That ranch is their responsibility. It’s their past. It’s their future. It’s their 40 fucking acres and a mule.

Being Black gave them the sense to “nope” out of there, but being Black also gave them the burden, the responsibility, the need to take themselves right back.

And besides that: they don’t have anywhere else to go.

Steven Yeun in Jordan Peele’s Nope (2022)

The Watermelon Woman (1996) dir. Cheryl Dunye

Hey this movie is really important in queer history! It was the first feature length film directed by a black lesbian! You can watch it here for free!

I really recommend you do because while it is a rom-com (and a drama), it also looks at how the stories of black queers are over looked in history.

DEV PATEL as GAWAIN THE GREEN KNIGHT (2021)

Suspiria (1977) dir. Dario Argento

The First Omen (2024) dir. Arkasha Stevenson

SHELLEY DUVALL as WENDY TORRANCE THE SHINING (1980) dir. Stanley Kubrick

SCREAM (1996) dir.WesCraven

THE WITCH (2015) dir. Robert Eggers

CLUE (1985) dir. Jonathan Lynn