More than any other perspective, it is the blind spot that interests Jordan Peele. “The wrong angle”, as the American director likes to call it. In his eyes, this prism is called the black question. By opening this door, he has the feeling of putting his finger on the strangeness, the complexity, the violence, the racism and the reality of American society. Without this angle, the 43-year-old filmmaker would be useless. Taking another path would not be his story.
“To have a black voice like mine, to stage black stars, is a manifesto in itself, he defends, in Los Angeles. My task is to explain to the public that you can no longer tell stories from the white point of view alone, another light is needed. » This “wrong angle”, therefore, he has been cultivating it since his first film, get-outreleased in 2017, and in the next one, Nope, in theaters August 10.
“I always wondered what black Americans would do in front of a flying saucer, they would say, ‘Nope.’ »Jordan Peelen, director
When he writes a screenplay, Jordan Peele always starts by asking himself the same question: what would be the reaction of black Americans to the story materializing on his page? Or, rather, what would they see that a white audience would not grasp so starkly? The director evokes the beginnings of Boop as the perfect example.
In this film, the inhabitants of an isolated valley, in the vicinity of Los Angeles, including a brother and a sister, black, breeders of horses, witness supernatural events, such as a spaceship flying over the region. “I started from the premise that African-Americans would react differently to an alien film. They will have a different sense of urgency, of the origin of the evil. In American society, when you are black, danger can come from anywhere, at any time. I always wondered what black Americans would do in front of a flying saucer, they would say: “Nope.” » Or, in French : “ Nope. » A mark of skepticism, therefore, of mistrust too: for the black population, the threat does not come from the sky, it is daily and is embodied at every street corner.
Flush out racism
This racism, which he has made it his mission to flush out in the films he directs as well as in those he watches, has become Jordan Peele’s obsession. In his history as a spectator, the example of Night of the Living Dead (1968) appears as a standard meter.
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