If you’re a bit OCD about how movies should be categorized, you might want to stay away from the Golden Globes. The Hollywood Foreign Press Association is happy to play fast and loose with defining what genre a film belongs in (see “The Martian” winning for Best Comedy), still it’s not a surprise that heads were turned when “Get Out” was accepted in Comedy category.
Jordan Peele‘s horror hit is an awards season contender, and Universal‘s decision to submit the picture as a comedy instead of drama for the Golden Globes, was likely done to give it a better shot at earning some hardware (the drama category is very crowded and competitive). However, Peele himself was not involved in that decision, though he admits that “Get Out” is not easy to put into a box.
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“The problem is, it’s not a movie that can really be put into a genre box,” he explained to Indiewire. “Originally, I set out to make a horror movie. I ended up showing it to people and hearing, you know, it doesn’t even feel like horror. It’s in this thriller world. So it was a social thriller.”
While the movie does has it’s (dark, uncomfortable) comedic moments, the thematic thrust of “Get Out” is deadly serious. And Peele recognizes that a surface reading of his movie as a comedy might rub some people the wrong way.
“What the movie is about is not funny,” he said. “I’ve had many black people come up to me and say, ‘Man, this is the movie we’ve been talking about for a while and you did it.’ That’s a very powerful thing. For that to be put in a smaller box than it deserves is where the controversy comes from.”
Still, he’s not above having some fun himself, tweeting the following earlier this week:
‘Get Out’ is a documentary.
— Jordan Peele (@JordanPeele) November 15, 2017
However, the message behind his tweet is serious. “The major point to identify here is that we don’t want our truth trivialized. The label of comedy is often a trivial thing. The real question is, what are you laughing at? Are you laughing at the horror, the suffering? Are you disregarding what’s real about this project? That’s why I said, yeah — it’s a documentary,” Peele explained.
If haven’t seen “Get Out” yet, it’s available on all formats, and will likely be popping up on many year-end lists.