by Demitri Kissel

Jordan Peele’s third horror film Nope was released in the summer of 2022 as a hard step from his previous genre work into sci-fi horror. Peele’s take on an alien horror movie received much praise, and no small amount of complaints about what some thought was an odd, confusing plot. Many who experienced the spectacle, lovers and haters alike, were left with one big question at the movie’s end: What was going on with the chimp?

Nope is about siblings OJ and Emerald Haywood, owners of Haywood Holywood Horses and descendants of Alistair E Haywood, the black horse jockey riding the horse in the first motion picture. After the mysterious death of their father, the horse training business is struggling and more of the horses are being sold. When the siblings discover a UFO in the area, they attempt to capture an “Oprah-worthy” picture of it, hoping it will give them the fame and money necessary to save their father’s dying business. When the UFO is discovered to be a living alien animal all on its own, and a hungry one, the siblings have to shift their focus from photography to survival as well. The film, in an artistic way, includes discussions of exploitation and devaluing of black labor, as well as the exploitations and languages of animals. OJ finds ways to communicate with the alien the same way he communicates with his horses. Though many have pointed out the film’s key theme of Spectacle, this discussion can overlook the key role animals and human-animal relationships play in the film from the top down.

To fully examine both what Spectacle means in the film and what we can learn from the film’s Spectacle as we struggle within the Anthropocene, I will be exploring the film through a synthesis lens of Derrida and bell hooks theory in four parts: First Black and animal bodies under capitalism, then Consumption, then Vision and Language, and finally a synthesis understanding of Spectacle. It is only through this synthesis of Derrida and bell hooks that we can examine the connections between animal and black exploitation in Jordan Peele’s Nope through a cycle of discovering language and consumption in human-animal(-alien) relationships.

1. Black and Animal Bodies Under Capitalism

There are innumerable theories connecting the Anthropocene to the growth and prevailing dominance of capitalism. Specifically for our analysis, the initial integration of animals into human society stemmed from capitalist exchanges, as animals were used to work lands, or killed for meat and trade. Derrida laments in his work that the subjugation of animals is one of the worst ethical quandaries of our time. He says, “such a subjection, whose history we are attempting to interpret, can be called violence in the most morally neutral sense of the term” (Derrida 394). Vint expands on this in her work Animal Alterity, saying, “the integration of animals into human social relations of capitalist exchange is one of the chief sites of suffering for animals in contemporary culture. In addition to their commodification as meat and as products such as leather, so-called exotic animals are sold as pets or for sport…” (Vint 32). The preoccupation with animals under capitalism is clear throughout the film from multiple points (one being the chimp, who we will return to in the end), but also from two perspectives: Nope shows both this exploitation in a straightforward sense (the protagonists own a horse training business and require the animals to work in shows or on camera) and with a clear respect for the animals’ lives, too. The title card for each act of the movie is the name of an animal in the film, and the conclusion is brought about because of OJ’s understanding of “entering an agreement” with the alien animal. Because of the declining business, Haywood Holywood Horses has been forced to sell many of their horses, one of which is used explicitly as bait for the alien, intended to be eaten as part of showing off the alien (as a spectacle) to paying customers. Before even that moment, OJ is seen on a Hollywood set, where the horse (the same one used as bait later, Lucky) is in a very stressful situation for the benefit of a commercial (Peele). Both narratively and meta-narratively, it is useful to look at the horses, chimp, and alien in the movie as Derrida’s technics. Derrida describes technics as stemming from shame, from an idea that humans are somehow more lacking than other animals, and he makes this example with his first technic of clothing, and later written language (783). Technics are tools and humans, as well as this film, use animals as technics, too. The horses are how OJ and his family are making money, after all, and the filmmakers are using the horses and Gordy the chimp for the same purpose. Even the alien, though an unknowable animal, is a technic if the Haywoods can get a picture of it to sell. The film itself also uses the animals as tools, as their names mark the chapter titles. The animals, to the film, are used to mark significance. While I feel the film wants us to respect these animals, the writing also uses each one of them as part of the spectacle.

Haywood Holywood Horses ends up losing the commercial job, as the cast and crew refuse to listen to OJ, the trainer, and startle Lucky into kicking suddenly, nearly hitting the main star. Though OJ (and Emerald when she appears on set) are obviously experts on horse behavior, and this horse in particular, the predominantly white set doesn’t give the trainers or the horse any respect, and this dismissing of labor very nearly gets someone seriously hurt (Peele). Black bodies have also seen commodification under Western capitalist society and this depersoning shows us some of the worst-case scenarios when humanity is allowed to separate from the nonhuman and act on their behalf. The white cast and crew refusing to listen to OJ when he tells them what Lucky needs to feel safe, and the general decline of the business shows the dismissal of black labor and agency, as Emerald tells the cast and crew they are the only black-owned horse trainers in Hollywood. This disrespect, dismissing, and depersoning comes from viewing black people, and their work, as inferior, and this is coupled again with the fact that OJ is working with animals, which is also considered an inferior business. The commercial wants to use this company with deep black history, with no respect for what that history means. bell hooks describes the commodification of blackness in nonblack spaces as such: “From the standpoint of white supremacist capitalist patriarchy, the hope is that desires for the ‘primitive’ or fantasies about the Other can be continually exploited and that such exploitation will occur in a manner that reinscribes and maintains the status quo” (bell hooks 367). In Nope, Emerald tells the white cast and crew of the commercial that everyone knows the name of the man who put together the first moving pictures, but no one knew the name of the black jockey who appeared in them. OJ and Emerald’s family name is film history that the status quo ignores. It is an interesting connection to the way the film makes sure we know the names of all the animals that appear in its runtime.

2. Consumption; Who’s Eating Who

Derrida, and Vint say that the main key to human-animal relationships is that humans eat animals. Vint describes this as “the ethical dilemma of who eats whom” (Vint 26). Derrida discusses at length the ethical issues with factory farming and describes it with the same imagery and magnitude of genocide. The alarming thing about this alien-animal is that it first flips this relationship, as an animal that eats (consumes) humans. Obviously, it is not the only animal who can do so, but this discomfort with being anything but top of the food chain applies just as easily to the human treatment of other predatory animals, too, especially in situations where humans assumed they were safe (Gordy being an example of this). Vint sums up this who-eating-who relationship: “Our contemporary culture is characterized by an enormous gulf between the material basis by which our civilization feeds itself, and the system of meaning through which it understands its relationship to the rest of nature’. Meat consumption is part of this tension” (Vint 25). The alien eating human meat (although it doesn’t seem picky on what kind of meat it consumes) adds further to this tension, as Vint also expresses that animals in science fiction never represent purely an animal, but “challenges what it means to be human” (Vint 30).  Vint criticizes how animals are seen as “unnatural” when they reverse this human-eating-animals relationship (33). This villainization of meat-eating animals from that fact alone brings us back to Derrida again, and his struggle with the ethics of “eating well”, and what eating well could mean. Derrida explains that the struggle for the answer to the question of how to “eat well” is in part an answer to the unethical treatment of animals under consumption. The other large answer to the “eating well” question is to reexamine the human-animal relationship in order to stop viewing animals (and others) as a resource to be used for self-betterment (Vint 37).

While consumption is being used here as literal eating, we can also interpret consumption as a metaphor for exploitation, or in another literal sense of using something (or someone) for the self. In Eating the Other, bell hooks uses eating in this way, as she refers to sex as a form of consumption. hooks writes that this desire to consume the Other through a sexual relationship (or conquest, as she writes) stems from a combination of pleasure and perceived danger, and the idea (subconscious or fully conscious) that you can be changed by this exchange. She writes, “the over-riding fear is that cultural, ethnic, and racial differences will be continually commodified and offered up as new dishes to enhance the white palate– that the Other will be eaten, consumed, and forgotten” (bell hooks 380). Using a combination of Vint, Derrida, and hooks, we can define Consumption to mean using the other to benefit the self, but not the other being consumed (in fact, often at an extreme detriment to the metaphorical meal, removing something until there is little or nothing left of the other). In this way we see consumption of the literal and metaphorical sense throughout the movie, both in the treatment of OJ and Emerald as black characters and the literal eating of meat both human and horse. We see the belittling of OJ’s labor constantly both from Jupe who intends to use the bought horses as bait and from the commercial set that disregarded his safety instructions, and in a smaller way when Emerald is dismissed in the technology store, and by Antler. We also see both horses and people eaten by Jean Jacket, and the blood around Gordy’s face implies he might have taken some bites of his human co-stars, too (but more on him later). Notably, our protagonists do not allow the horses to be used as bait during their final plan to get a picture of the alien and kill it. OJ insists on using himself as bait (although with Lucky’s help) rather than letting the horses be eaten. Though still using a horse as a technic, and still putting a horse in danger, OJ intends to do all he can to keep the horses from harm, acknowledging his responsibility for their lives and potential pain in that moment of human-animal interaction. This respect for the horses fits OJ, as we see throughout the film he works best with them and tries to understand how the horses perceive and communicate. This is the real key in their final plan, and the next stage of analysis:

3. Vision as Language

Once OJ realizes the alien (who he names Jean Jacket) is an animal, he says, “[Jupe] got caught up trying to tame a predator. You can’t do that. You got to enter an agreement with one” (Peele). OJ then explains how he’s going to communicate with Jean Jacket: “It’s an animal. You don’t turn your back on a bear. You don’t wear red around a bull. It’s like that. You don’t look at it unless you want its attention…” (Peele, emphasis mine). The main way OJ communicates with his horses and with the alien is through acknowledged vision, much like an evolved form of Derrida’s theory of “seen seen.” Derrida describes the concept of seen seen with an odd anecdote about his cat seeing him naked, and himself seeing the cat see him naked. The idea of being “seen seen” is not just vision meeting another vision, but all naked parts (literally or metaphorically) recognized and met in gaze with the Other. This concept also relies on giving equal respect and importance to the seeing eyes of the animal doing the looking (Derrida 382).

This is a form of communication with the animal, and appreciating this as a form of language is imperative to a healthier human-animal relationship, and the main communication we see between human and animal throughout the film.

We see this first with OJ and Lucky on the commercial set, one of the first things he tells the crew for safety is not to look Lucky in the eye, and when a mirror is held up to Lucky that makes it appear as if his own eye is staring back at him, the horse kicks, overwhelmed and upset. In preparing to take on Jean Jacket one last time, OJ works with Lucky, tossing flags in his face, banging loud noises around his head, and making direct eye contact with him. We see that Lucky doesn’t move likely because of a trust in OJ, because they’ve been working together for so long. Perhaps it is no accident that Lucky survives his initial meeting with Jean Jacket, even though Lucky is meant to be used as bait; Lucky stays still and doesn’t react to the chaos happening around him, so Jean Jacket is never threatened or enticed by the horse. OJ uses this idea of vision as communication, of being seen seen by the alien, in order to get the alien under his control long enough to get the picture. Emerald then at the end uses what she understands from OJ’s instructions to bait Jean Jacket into eating a balloon that ends up killing it: A balloon with big eyes staring right at the alien, of course. Earlier, OJ survived being outside while Jean Jacket was attacking because, even before he could put his understanding into words, he dived down and looked away.

I call vision language in this film because it is the most notable instrument in communication between humans and nonhumans. Both humans and animals respond to a gaze upon them, from either side of that border. This is even more notable given the role of filmmaking and photography in the story. Vision is going not just through human and animal (and alien) eyes, but through the nonhuman eye of a camera lens, too. The ultimate goal throughout is to get a picture or footage of the alien, and ultimately for money, but this picture is only achieved at the end after a deeper understanding of Jean Jacket, after naming it, and after seeing its full expanded form (after Jean Jacket is seen seen, even). Vision interpreted as language opens the door for better human-animal communication, if (both within the narrative and without) we recognize that language is different for every person as well as every species. With this understanding, communication can still happen, even if it takes work. Vint says about language and these human-animal boundaries: “Language and the recognition of communication in others is one of the key ways that we might begin to rethink and change our relationships with other species and thus produce a more ethical world” (Vint 71). She says through science fiction as well as through life, we see that language is a constant act of translation in a struggle for meaning. OJ may not know what exactly is being communicated when he meets Jean Jacket’s gaze, but he knows communication is happening, which is an important step. OJ recognizes what Derrida says the point of understanding seen seen is, an especially potent warning about disregarding the gaze given the alien subject: “They have taken no account of the fact that what they call animal could look at them and address them from down there, from a wholly other origin” (Derrida 382). But language isn’t all vision is doing in this film.

4. Spectacles

It is finally time to talk about Gordy, the chimp, and his role in the film. The cold-open of the film shows us a sitcom set covered in blood, and a young boy hiding under a table. A chimp in a button-up t-shirt and blood on his hands and mouth approaches the table slowly. A semi-opaque tablecloth prevents the two pairs of eyes from meeting, and the scene cuts before we later find out the chimp was shot in front of the boy (Peele). We cut back to that incident between every act, and Jupe (the young boy shown in the cold open) keeps a museum (or shrine) to the event in his office. Besides Jupe telling the story, Gordy is never discussed. What’s going on with this chimp?

The focus of many analyses of Nope has been about the repeated theme of Spectacle. There can be no doubt that this is a key theme of the movie, as Gordy’s “incident” (referred that way in the film) is surrounded by cameras (that Peele makes sure we see), and was even adopted into an SNL skit. The entire plot revolves around taking an “Oprah-worthy” picture, and the speech seen most in the trailers, and the speech that kicks off the main action says: “What if I told you that in an hour, you’ll leave here different? See, every Friday for the last six months, my family and I have bore witness to an absolute spectacle. One that you’ll be seeing here today…” (Peele, emphasis mine). Everyone agrees, especially the movie, that a spectacle is happening here. But what is a spectacle? This definition, I feel, is the true (often missed) core of the film, and lends itself to viewing the movie as a story of the Anthropocene and redefining human-animal relationships. This definition must be reached through a synthesis of Derrida and bell hooks, using both Vision (Seeing) and Consumption (Eating).

Simply: Spectacle is Consuming through Seeing. Using the revised definition of Consumption, taking into account bell hooks’ “Eating the Other”, and consumption as a using of the other to enhance one’s own life, and understanding Vision both as language and as Derrida’s Seen Seen (a true gaze of recognition between human and nonhuman), we can understand Spectacle as exploitation through seeing. So the treatment of Gordy the chimp (or “Gordy” the chimp) is a spectacle: there are several cameras on him at all times, as well as the eyes of humans through the cameras, on set, and in many homes, watching the television (though I suppose Gordy couldn’t see those). He is made to perform for the benefit of humans, even through what was poor or maddening enough treatment to finally result in the violence we see. The chimp was exploited in treatment, but also in the act of watching the treatment for entertainment. The horses are used as bait for the larger spectacle of the alien. The alien is a spectacle first for Jupe (though maybe not how he intended), as Jupe intends to profit from allowing people to watch the alien feed, and then later is a spectacle for OJ and Emerald as they try to get a picture of it to get enough money (and fame) to save their father’s dying business. (And after that, of course, the world). To a lesser extent (though not absent from the film) OJ and Emerald are also made into spectacles as they are stared at but not listened to during the commercial shooting, and at the end as reporters crowd to break the alien story.

Ultimately, Derrida and bell hooks discuss two different forms of exploitation and abuse, of Consuming an Other, and through a synthesis of their theories, we can understand Nope not just as a statement about spectacles and the harm they do, but also about the near-impossible feats can be achieved when the human-animal relationship is respected and communicated. From Nope we see the worst that can happen when animals are exploited and disrespected (Gordy), and the best of what can happen when this relationship is removed from spectacle and reexamined from a place of equals, of neighbors (such as Lucky’s required assistance in getting OJ safely away from the alien, and getting the siblings their Oprah-picture). Many have discussed the importance of the idea of spectacle throughout the film, but few have connected it back to the equally important animals, and fewer still have attempted anything of a definition for the term. I hope I have satisfied this through my examination.

On the third rewatch, a friend pointed out to me that the panicked human actors still call the chimp “Gordy” as they are running from his violence, when that couldn’t have been the chimp’s actual name. Animal actors usually have their own names besides the character’s names (like human actors) and Jupe says the chimp that became violent was one of many who played Gordy. But, the human actors may not have felt the need to know the actual animal’s name. While it is also aesthetic, the wild west cowboy ranch backdrop of the film also plays into bell hooks’ discussion of imperialist nostalgia, a longing for a “primitive” and problematic past, and again displays a sense of spectacle. A fact often erased at these faux-historical cowboy attractions is that many (most) of the cowboys of the past were black, escaping exploitation (and slavery and abuse) in other areas. Often erased or forgotten, much like Alistair E Haywood, the first black man in a motion picture, rescued from spectacle himself by his history brought to life in this film.

Works Cited

bell hooks. “Eating the Other: Desire and Resistance.” Eating Culture /, State University of New York Press, 1998, pp. 181–200.

Derrida, Jacques, et al. The Animal That Therefore I Am. Fordham University Press, 2008.

Peele, Jordan, director. Nope. Universal Pictures, 2022.

Vint, Sherryl. Animal Alterity : Science Fiction and the Question of the Animal. Liverpool University Press, 2012.