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Jordan Peele surprises UCLA class studying ‘Get Out,’ gives them a lesson

Back in 2017, Jordan Peele pulled up on a class at UCLA that was discussing his film Get Out. Peele was wearing a hoodie in the back of the class when the professor Tananarive Due called on him.

Needless to say, the students were a little hype to suddenly see Jordan Peele in their midst speaking to them about Get Out, Black horror films, and the larger idea of the “sunken place.”

The class Peele showed up to is “The Sunken Place: Racism, Survival, and Black Horror Aesthetic,” taught by Tananarive Due, a filmmaker, screenwriter, and professor at UCLA.

Pretty cool experience for students to be able to ask Peele directly about his idea behind Get Out on a deeper level. Obviously it’s an interesting film on the surface, but there’s also so much happening in Get Out beyond what meets the eye.

Professor Tananarive Due spoke to Gizmodo back in September about her course, motivated by Get Out, that examines the role of Black Americans in horror films.

Due told Gizmodo that Get Out inspired her creation of the course,

“The idea for the course, specifically, came because Jordan Peele dropped Get Out when I was teaching my Afrofuturism course last spring at UCLA. And it was one of those things where the timing wasn’t quite right and I thought, ‘Oh, I wish I used that in the course…’”

For as good as Get Out is, it’s not the first example of a Black horror film, just the most mainstream. That fact in and of itself drove Due to want to take a deeper academic look at the history of Black horror in American films. Due said to Gizmodo,

Get Out is not the first black-made horror film, but it’s definitely the most successful. And I think it definitely has the ability to be culture-changing, let’s say.”

Sounds like a rad course. This is some cool stuff from both Tananarive Due and Peele himself.