Intro to Film 2025 • Professor Gregory Zinman • Emory University

Jupiter’s Spectacle

Written by

Andrew Cai

in

,

Rewatching Nope today was a blast. It was really fun seeing the reactions of people who had never seen it before, and how similar their reactions were to mine when I first saw the movie a few years ago. One theme of the film that stood out to me during this second viewing, though, is how the need for a spectacle is constant throughout the entire movie.

Before the film even begins, Jordan Peele shows an epigraph of a Bible quote, specifically Nahum 3:6: I will cast abominable filth upon you, make you vile, and make you a spectacle.

The theme of spectacle continues during the rest of the film. For example, Steven Yeun’s character, Jupe, turns his childhood trauma from “Gordy’s Home” into a camp museum exhibit. The blood-soaked shoe we see at the beginning of the film can be seen on a glass plaque in the room, along with several fan-made posters that seem to glorify the horrible attack that occurred.

On the topic of Jupe’s childhood trauma, a scene that stands out to me is immediately after Jupe reveals the museum exhibit in his office. When Emerald asks him what really happened on set, Jupe isn’t able to explain it through a firsthand account. He has to use an SNL skit, a spectacle itself, as a medium to describe the events that took place. Spectacle is almost like a coping mechanism for Jupe: he uses it to avoid direct confrontation with his past and to downplay the damage it did to his mental state. He almost frames Gordy’s killings as an act in a show.

Going back to the quote from Nahum, and some things we discussed in class, we determined that what makes something a spectacle is if it catches your eye. In other words, the content needs to be shocking enough to make you stop (scrolling) and watch. The quote from Nahum implies something very similar. Only after “filth” is cast on the subject (in the context of Nahum, God is casting filth upon the Assyrian capital of Nineveh) is the subject a spectacle.

This is why Jupe has capitalized on Gordy so much. It’s an event so violent and shocking that people can’t help but watch it unfold and become obsessed with it. Jupe even says it himself, how there is a growing fanbase for the show and most importantly, for its violent ending.

Jupe also tries to do the same thing with Jean Jacket. Though he doesn’t necessarily paint Jean Jacket in a very violent light, he buys the Haywoods’ horses for the sole purpose of luring the alien down from its cloud and turning its hunt into a spectacle.

Though spectacle is an obvious theme throughout the film, there are many different ways of looking at it. Though I talked about spectacle purely from Jupe’s point of view, you can also analyze the Haywoods or even Antlers Holst. I’m curious to see how their ideas of spectacle differ or coincide. Is their fixation on spectacle also originating from past events like Jupe’s?

Comments

2 responses to “Jupiter’s Spectacle”

  1. Ethan Curtis Avatar
    Ethan Curtis

    One thing that particularly stood out to me from this blog post was the section about scrolling. Jordan Peele began writing NOPE in November 2020, during the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. As many might know, this time period forced people to stay in their houses and find something to do with their time. It was during this time period that screen time usage and social media consumption reached all-time highs (https://eyesafe.com/covid-19-screen-time-spike-to-over-13-hours-per-day/). Instead of going out to the theater and watching a movie, the masses were forced to revert to social media content, namely TikTok and other short-form media. This serves as important context when discussing the idea of spectacle in NOPE. Like you mentioned, Peele’s continuous use of spectacle in this film highlights the importance of attention-catching media. In this movie, there is spectacle after spectacle; the word is used throughout NOPE, so it is hard not to notice. With a large section of the plot centered around the process of creating film and media, Peele is arguing against the sensationalization of modern film, to avoid forming itself in the same way that short-length, attention-grabbing, social media content does.

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  2. Kaitlin Keil Avatar
    Kaitlin Keil

    I really enjoyed reading your post. You have some great insights about how spectacle functions throughout Nope. I also found myself thinking about this theme while watching the film. Beyond Jupe’s character, both OJ and Emerald are also consistently trying to capture a spectacle. Rather than escaping the alien or trying to destroy it, their focus is on filming it, on getting “the Oprah shot.” It’s interesting that their obsession is framed as both heroic and desperate: they want to prove their family’s legacy in Hollywood, but in doing so, they fall into the same trap as Jupe, trying to turn something terrifying into entertainment.

    I also really liked that you brought up the significance of Antlers Holst. I was confused by his character the first time I watched the movie, but your post made me think about him differently. He’s another person consumed by the need for spectacle. Holst uses the Haywoods to get “the impossible shot,” but he does so in a way that feels self-destructive, as if he knows he’s going to die doing it. His final scene, walking directly into Jean Jacket’s path with his camera rolling, almost feels like a metaphor for artists or directors who are so obsessed with their craft, fame, or legacy that they risk everything for it.

    In that sense, Holst’s death mirrors Jupe’s and even the Haywoods’ ambitions: they all want to be seen, remembered, or immortalized through spectacle. Peele seems to be asking how far people are willing to go for recognition, and whether the act of looking, filming, or creating inevitably leads to being consumed by what you’re trying to capture.

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