Visiting Vassar—March 27, 2025
Us: Empire and the Threat of Black Femininity
Mar. 27, 2025, 5:30 p.m.–7:00 p.m.
A Lecture by Professor Amber Jamilla Musser
Unlike Get Out, whose plot twists provided some of the film’s shock, the trailers for Us foreground the film’s conceit: a family comes home from a day at the beach to find murderous doubles in their home. While the film complicates this reveal, the sense of dread that the film activates comes not from suspense but from its mobilization of the uncanny. Even before the doppelgangers are introduced, the film—especially upon repeat viewing—percolates with the sense that something is amiss. Bringing the unruly sensations of the uncanny to bear on Jordan Peele’s Us allows us to see how horror makes especially evident the United States as Imperial formation and the numerous ways that Black femininity is presented as threat.
