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?