My Prolonged, Complicated Situationship with Nope
Do I love Nope, you ask? Well, in my 10 viewings, my countless hours spent toiling over its true meaning, and my 2 papers written on it, I’ve come to realize that the only constant in our relationship is confusion. So, rather than mustering together another analytical essay for which there is no clear thesis, I’ve decided to write about Nope in the only way I see fit: A romantic memoir chronicling our encounters over the years.
Watch #1: Los Feliz Theater, Los Angeles, July 2022
Peele’s proven genius, a young, enthralling cast, and an alluringly cryptic marketing campaign left me beyond giddy to meet Nope as soon as I possibly could. Just a few days after it came out, I ventured to my favorite independent theater where we were first introduced—and I had a good time. It’s a thriller with mesmerizing effects and charming characters, so, naturally, I left the theater feeling satisfied with our encounter. Satisfied, but still slightly disconcerted. It was a good time, but good-time movies aren’t typically about the horse-leasing descendants of a long-forgotten film pioneer, or the former child star of a fictional 90s sitcom-turned-western-theme-park owner. More importantly, Peele wasn’t the sort of director to make such an idiosyncratic movie for the sake of a good time. As the days went by, thoughts and questions circulated my mind unrelentingly. What had begun as a casual fling was quickly becoming a more meaningful relationship…
Watch #2: My Grandparents’ Basement, Philadelphia, December 2022
What was Nope’s deal? What was it about? These unanswered questions poked and prodded at me in the months following, so when my Dad suggested watching it during a family trip to Philadelphia, I jumped at the chance. 2 minutes in, I noticed something that seemed to reveal everything: the opening sequence, which features Eadweard Muybridge’s The Horse in Motion, takes place inside a tunnel—the very same tunnel depicted as Jean Jacket’s internal anatomy. This forgotten footage, this exploited horse jockey, was being cloaked by the most mainstream of spectacles: the UFO. I got it! It’s about the sanitization of media! This was why our characters were so bizarre and unfamiliar—to pit them against the popular tropes of cowboys and aliens. This explained Gordy’s outburst, and its parallels with Jean Jacket’s aversion to being watched—both were natural retaliations to commercialization. Boasting the film’s “infinite layers,” I asserted my understanding of the film with a submission to my high school student newspaper: “[It’s] about how what we get to see is controlled and falsified for our enjoyment until it’s pushed to its breaking point.” I felt confident, ready to commit, bordering on falling for the film. What a fool I was…
Watch #3: High School F&V, Los Angeles, April 2023
It was a yearly tradition in my high school film class for all the students to submit an Oscar predictions ballot, the winner of which got to choose our next class screening. I was 2023’s winner and I chose to flaunt my new favorite masterpiece. Sitting back, smugly observing my classmates’ mixed reactions, I noticed something about Nope that I hadn’t before—from below, Jean Jacket resembled an eyeball. Knowing Peele’s intricate intentionality, I decided this wasn’t a mistake, but this would complicate things for us. Wait… consumption! It’s about media consumption, not sanitization!. Rather than a spectacle to be monetized, the alien is an omniscient observer, constantly watching over OJ, Jupe, and their respective ranches, violating their privacy. It represents the aggregate “consumer,” best exemplified when it fatefully ingests the inflatable cowboy—the epitome of American entertainment. To both confuse and excite me even further, my teacher pointed out that by fleeing the alien on horseback, OJ rides a white bronco being pursued by an aircraft—another unlikely coincidence. In this moment, Jean Jacket becomes the helicopter through which over 95 million people consumed and enjoyed the police pursuit of OJ Simpson. Just when I thought I knew Nope, it went ahead and blew my mind.
Watch #4: My Friend Adam’s House, Los Angeles, December 2023
After listening to me rave about it for months, my friends insisted on finally meeting Nope. I told myself I wouldn’t be overbearing, but I had to ensure they appropriately absorbed the credits sequence. We all watched closely, but this time around I was struck by something new: the cut from Muybridge’s foggy, monotonous footage of Alistair E. Haywood to a bright shot of OJ Haywood in front of a lime green tarp. The green screen is used to fictionalize settings in movies—or, in other words, it falsifies the contexts of stories. It returns at the film’s conclusion after Jean Jacket unfolds into a blimplike vessel, flashing a notably green box at its prey. Remaining under the assumption that the alien served to obscure The Horse in Motion, the green screen comes to represent the lack of recognition granted to Alistair E. Haywood, and how his story, his context has been lost. Thus by attempting to catch Jean Jacket on camera, OJ demonstrates an understanding of his history and seeks to document it. In comparison, Jupe entirely ignores his own history. Rather than facing his trauma, he relives it through the SNL skit made to satirize it, and his profound denial leads him to perpetuate his own mistakes, and suffer the consequences. This has to be it. It’s about our ignorance to history. Right? I was a mess.
Watch #5: MCM 0150, Providence, October 2024
My last encounter with Nope was as a requirement for class, and, as expected, it produced several shocking revelations. During the discussion of the film, beneath the typically insufferable MCM jargon, I discovered an overwhelming number of new theories—but I was tired. Tired of trying to read mixed signals, tired of feeling confused, and tired of putting so much effort into an endlessly unsatisfying relationship. It was then that I realized this was precisely what makes our relationship so timeless. Between the themes I understand but can’t quite synthesize—sanitization, consumption, history—and the moments I’ve observed but still don’t understand—the upright shoe, the horses’ names, the fist bump—we never run out of things to talk about. Just because we don’t understand love doesn't mean it isn’t the most wonderful experience we know. No matter what, we’ll always keep searching for it, and that’s why I love Nope.