Intro to Film 2025 • Professor Gregory Zinman • Emory University

Entertainment VS. Exploitation in NOPE

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Beatriz

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I went into this week’s screening thinking that maybe this would be the day where I would start liking terror or at least understanding why so many people love it. Long story short, it wasn’t… But it got me thinking that maybe this is the point. Keke Palmer herself says that “Nope is not a movie that you can really explain, It’s a movie that is meant to be perceived. It’s a movie meant to make you think and bring out some of your innermost thoughts of your subconscious and trigger you“. 

Going into that idea that this is a movie meant to be perceived, my perception is that Nope e is not about the horror or the scary things we don’t know about reality, it’s about people’s greater desire to be a part of something greater, a spectacle. To that end, Peele exposes this desire as he connects it directly to Hollywood’s history of turning people and animals into objects of consumption. Jordan Peele is throwing at our faces at all times a parallel between Jean Jacket and Gordy, and how these 2 characters have been pushed into performance roles that are outside their nature.  In essence, it is hard to learn about a thing when you are learning about it in a context where it shouldn’t be in in the first place, which is the case for the chimpanzee in the sitcom and Jean Jacket in the Starlight lasso show. Gordy is made to act human and JJ is turned into a profitable attraction – both stripped of autonomy in the name of entertainment. 

Both Gordy and Jean jacket are creatures that cannot be controlled. Peele suggests that once you turn something uncontrollable into a product of mass viewing, you invite destruction. Hollywood in this sense is the real monster. Which is why I understand both creatures to be symbols that represent Hollywood in this context, and this idea that the spectacle pays off. Hollywood is this unpredictable beast, and spectacle is always a currency of high value. 

Besides Gordy and Jean Jacket, all of the other characters also serve as symbols. The TMZ reporter and the cinematographer are also unmistakable symbols for this obsessive culture and the neverending gaze for the perfect shot. In contrast, OJ is the only one who sees animals not as tools but as living beings and he is therefore the only one who’s able to “tame” JEan Jacket as he understands the creatures mechanisms. 


Ultimately, Nope becomes a criticism of the exploitation disguised as entertainment. A movie that uses the conventions of horror, sci-fi and western genres to critique the industry that birthed them.

Comments

2 responses to “Entertainment VS. Exploitation in NOPE”

  1. Yuen Lin Avatar
    Yuen Lin

    I agree with your interpretation of “Nope,” and I especially agree with your point that the real monster is the humans behind Hollywood and the pursuit of success. Although the scenes where the wild animals such as Gordy and Jean Jacket kill and brutalize the humans were terrifying, we have to remember that the ones who made this situation in the first place were those humans. Instead of leaving wild animals be and respecting their behavior and instincts, characters like Jude and even OJ and Emerald see this thrill of “taming a predator” as something to be monetized. Jude’s demise was pretty gnarly and made me feel bad for him, but he became what he wished as his death became a spectacle that attracted people from all over the country.

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  2. Jooeun Choi Avatar
    Jooeun Choi

    Hello,
    I agree with your point that Nope criticizes the way Hollywood and society turn everything into a spectacle. I also felt that Peele was warning us about our addiction to spectacles.
    The “bad miracle” that was mentioned repeatedly throughout the film stood out to me. I felt like it symbolizes how people consume tragedies as entertainment. Through Jupe, who spent six months baiting Jean Jacket with horses and eventually got eaten by it, the film clearly shows what happens when we overconsume trauma and disaster for popularity or profit.
    Even though Jupe had trauma from his childhood as an actor, when the chimpanzee Gordy attacked the other actors and was killed right in front of him, he still craved people’s attention. He even planned a show where Jean Jacket, the alien, would eat a horse. If I were him, I would never do that, because the idea of an alien eating an animal itself feels too dangerous. This film wants to tell us that people have become so addicted to spectacle that they’ve grown numb to dangers that can threaten their lives just by seeing them.
    In the film, the only way to survive the Jean Jacket is not to look at it, and to me, that felt like a promise not to look at the spectacle. I also thought that Jean Jacket’s mouth is like a camera. People had to run away from the camera’s appetite for recording and consuming (Jean Jacket eating people). This reminded me of our society, where some people suffer from being watched, while others are eager to watch them. Maybe that’s what Peele wants to tell us: we are either the ones behind the camera consuming others, or the ones desperately trying not to be captured by it.

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