Nope has been met with a slightly mixed reception. Those expecting a full-blown horror might be disappointed with the lack of scares. For others wanting a clear-cut science fiction narrative, the ambiguity of the central plot may not be satisfying. Personally, I found Nope to be a thrilling, unique experience at the theatre and a wonderful modern day answer to movies like Signs and Close Encounters of the Third Kind (the former being one of my favourite films of all time).
Weeks after watching it, I continue to enjoy mulling over the layers of its central themes, thinking back to small character details I missed the first time and marveling at the film-making in its best scenes. Director and writer Jordan Peele chose to use a sci-fi horror movie to explore spectacle and the danger of our addiction to it.
Here are some of the most common questions audiences, including myself, had after walking out of Nope and a (semi-coherent) explanation of how every single mystery and detail ties back to spectacle:
How does Gordy relate to the main plot?
Nope begins abruptly in the midst of an incident that occurred during the filming of a popular sitcom where a chimpanzee, Gordy, was triggered by a burst balloon and went berserk, brutally attacking those around him. Throughout the film, we learn more about this incident, and how it relates to Steven Yeun's character, Jupe, who was the little boy present during the incident and is still clearly traumatised by it years later.
It's a disorienting opening, and one that can seem random even by the time the credits roll. Really, the entire Gordy storyline serves as an encapsulation of Nope's main theme: spectacle. Even within this opening sequence, Peele foreshadows a couple of recurring motifs. Firstly, there's the utterly haunting shot of Gordy looking directly in camera. This is a movie all about seeing, and having the audience themselves be observed so directly right at the start is immediately unsettling and hints at the themes at the center of this story (as well as building up tension when we revisit this moment later on). Everything from the difficulty of capturing the alien on film, the director obsessively watching wild-life documentaries and not looking at animals in the eye ties back to the morality of observation. The second, and perhaps most obvious, demonstration of what Peele is exploring in Nope is shown through the Bible verse from Nahum 3:6 that opens the story: “And I will cast abominable filth upon thee, and make thee vile, and will set thee as a spectacle.”
The link to Gordy's exploitation and the subsequent disaster is fairly direct here. The casually cruel manner in which humans use a wild animal as a literal spectacle within a sitcom leads to horrific consequences. Gordy's story serves as a parable (or a cautionary tale) for the world of Peele's Nope. And it is a parable that Jupe doesn't learn from...
Jupe - What is a Bad Miracle?
Though he disguises it, Jupe is extremely traumatised by his experience with Gordy as shown through the excellent scene where he shows Em and OJ the memorabilia he's saved from the Gordy's Home sitcom and describes the event through the lens of an SNL sketch that covered it. However, the fact that he keeps this shrine to the incident (including the standing up shoe) is evidence towards the idea that there may be more to his trauma than first appears. The way he fixates upon the tragedy suggests he may even believe that it was his destiny to survive the attack and come out unscathed. Instead of learning from the Gordy's cautionary tale, he has learnt the opposite- that he has the ability (or even right) to tame nature. It circles back to the idea of a 'bad miracle', a belief that incidents like these were cosmically destined to occur. Whether that be a chimpanzee showing mercy to a boy, a shoe standing on its end or the appearance of an unidentified flying object...
Though we only get to properly see Jupe's show at Jupiter's Claim once, it is implied that he has lured the UFO there many times, making a spectacle of it to further his own career and profit from it in exactly the same way that the sitcom exploited a chimpanzee and then SNL exploited the tragedy for laughs. In fact, the only time we, as the audience, see the show is when it goes horrifically wrong. Instead of the UFO doing what Jupe wants it to - eat the horse- it consumes the entire audience, leading to perhaps one of the most traumatising scenes I have witnessed in a cinema. By refusing to learn from the past, Jupe's desire to control the uncontrollable leads to a grisly end for him and his family.
OJ and Emerald's great-great--(great?) grandfather & the Hollywood machine
At the beginning of the movie, Emerald mentions proudly that her great-great-great grandfather was involved in a pivotal milestone of cinema. He was the black jockey featured in the first motion picture in history, though barely anybody remembers his name. This highlights another thread that Peele weaves through the movie, which is a homage to movie-making, both as a loving dedication to it and also a critique of how it exploits the people within it.
On the more positive side of his ode to Hollywood, we see OJ wearing a 'crew' hoodie as he heroically enacts their final plan to film Jean Jacket, the UFO. Peele's desire to "express Black joy" and a sense of adventure in this film shines here and you can see echoes of classic adventure movies from the grand, sweeping shots to the energetic music (Michael Abel's wonderful score definitely echoes the vibe of Stephen Spielberg's adventure films).
The negative aspect of Hollywood ties right back in with the exploitation of spectacle that Jupe's storyline explores. As a former child actor clinging to his fading fame, Jupe himself was chewed up and abandoned by the Hollywood machine and then, er, chewed up by a giant, flying alien (RIP).
It's interesting to wonder - are OJ and Em exploiting the UFO/Jean Jacket by trying to film it? Though they're rightfully trying to reclaim their own narrative (in reference to people of colour historically being excluded from cinema), they're still exploiting a wild creature- by all accounts, a scientific miracle! - and capturing it on film to make a name for themselves. Peele draws the comparison even further by having Jean Jacket's downfall be the same as Gordy's trigger- a balloon.
The parallel between how the siblings, particularly OJ, treat horses and the creature is interesting- on one hand, it was OJ's respect for animals that gave him the innate instinct to avert his gaze from Jean Jacket and show respect for it (i.e. not treat it as a spectacle), therefore allowing him to survive. On the other, it is suggested that their role as ranchers has given them a right to tame animals... and how different is that from how Gordy was tamed and used? (They even end up naming the creature 'Jean Jacket' after a horse that their father tamed years ago. Emerald mentioned that she was promised the right to tame that horse, which she eventually ends up fulfilling this time by luring and killing Jean Jacket, the alien, at the end of the movie.)
Audience participation?
The link between all these themes- exploitation, spectacle, film-making and nature is fascinating in how it ties into the meta aspect of it all. After all, Nope was designed to be an experience specifically viewed in the cinema as explained by Peele himself.
As the audience, we are watching this movie to be dazzled. It's why the fake-outs in the film work so incredibly well- we are expecting big-eyed, eerie aliens and saucer-shaped UFO's and in-your-face jump scares (in the words of The Prestige, "we want to be fooled..."). We cheer as OJ lures Jean Jacket on horseback or Em performs that slick Akira motorcycle slide, and recoil at the horror of the Jupiter's Claim audience massacre or Gordy's attack.
Even as we are warned against the danger of spectacle, we continue to be addicted to it.
Thanks for reading this article- this movie is so fun to analyse and write about. There are dozens of other small details that are just delightful to notice: Jupe's hat is shaped like the UFO, and his red jacket is embroidered with it too. OJ and Em's affectionate 'I see you' gesture also ties into the themes of observing or looking. Gordy taking off the party hat is akin to Jean Jacket shedding its classic UFO appearance for something far more alien. Jupe was buying the horses from Haywood ranch to use them as bait, and this is why he seems reluctant to sell them back to OJ- they're already dead.
I can't wait to re-watch it and continue to find more details that Peele scattered through the film!
I do not own any of the images used in this post.