If you are a faithful follower of this blog then right about now you might be asking yourself “Didn’t he just cover ‘Sunglasses at Night’ by Corey Hart a few weeks ago?” If that is indeed your thought, then you are correct. I did write a post about this well known Canadian hit song just a couple of weeks ago. (You can even re-read that post again if you like by clicking here). But a cool thing happened as a result of that post. I received a comment from a fellow blogger named William (His blog A Thousand Mistakes can be found here) asking me if I knew that “Sunglasses at Night” had been used in the new Jordan Peele movie NOPE? I did not know that tidbit of information. Furthermore, William mentioned that the track used in the movie was a remix, meaning that the original song had been altered in some way. Since I always appreciate receiving tips such as that one, I decided to head down the rabbit hole that William had so kindly dug for me. What I found there will form the basis of today’s new “Sunglasses at Night” post. I thank William for his tip. I hope that the rest of you find it all as interesting a journey as I did.
Jordan Peele is one of Hollywood’s most creative and prolific directors working today. He first came to the attention of North American audiences because of his role in the comedy show Key and Peele. Along with partner Keegan-Michael Key, Jordan Peele wrote, directed and starred in dozens of comedy sketches that offered razor-sharp social commentary on various aspects of the times we all find ourselves in. Key and Peele won several awards for the consistently innovative manner in which they produced their skits. In 2017, Jordan Peele debuted as a feature film director with the movie Get Out. That movie was a critical success and ended up being nominated for several Academy Awards including Best Picture and Best Screenplay. Peele’s follow up project was the equally well-received film Us. Then, just as momentum was really building in his career, the COVID pandemic came along and shut down many film projects around the world. As Jordan Peele sat at home like the rest of us, he thought about movies and about the uncertain future that lay ahead. As he thought those thoughts, he decided that if and when things returned to normal, he was going to return to the big screen with a movie that would be a spectacle in every sense of the term. Well, things did return to a new normal, Peele got back to work as promised and in 2023, he released a movie called NOPE.
Starting with the Key and Peele comedy show on TV and continuing on through his first three movies, Jordan Peele has developed a reputation as being someone who embeds social commentary, history lessons and “Easter eggs” of all kinds within the scope of the stories he tells. This is especially true with NOPE. In order to give you even a small idea of how Peele tells his stories on multiple levels at the same time, please allow me a short tangent that will give you an idea of what I am talking about. One of the most popular stories I read to my students while I was still teaching was a book called Something from Nothing by a wonderful children’s author named Phoebe Gilman. The story idea was a simple one. There was a boy who had a grandfather who would make him articles of clothing out of a piece of material. Over time, each article of clothing that once was new would become worn. The boy would take the worn out piece of clothing and ask his Grandfather to mend it. The Grandfather would take whatever it was and would turn it into something new but smaller than before. A blanket became a coat which became a vest, which became a bowtie and then a button. The idea was that nothing should be wasted and thrown away. That everything, even worn out objects, had value and worth. However, as you can see from the image above, while the main story was being told in the upper three-quarters of the book, a second story was being told simultaneously at the bottom of the page. This second story involved a family of mice who lived under the floorboards of the boy’s home. In their story, they took the scraps of material that had fallen to the floor and created wondrous new things for themselves, too. It was two stories in one, both told at the same time, the second story told only in images.
Jordan Peel employs this technique as well. However, he does it everywhere, all the time, all throughout his films. Get Out, Us and NOPE are all movies that have a surface story that you can enjoy just for what it is. But all three movies also have many other stories being told through the use of background props, music, small scenes that appear to be isolated scenes at first but, over time, can be connected together to tell a new story in a fashion similar to how Phoebe Gilman created the second story in Something from Nothing. Before going on any further, I will give you links to two different movie trailers for NOPE. If you haven’t watched the movie yet and think that you might, then watch the trailers and stop reading this post at that point. I will discuss aspects of the movie below so you will be more than welcome to join back into the discussion at a later date. If you have seen the movie already or don’t plan to, then by all means, stick around for the ride! The two trailers for the Jordan Peel movie NOPE can be viewed here and here.
SPOILER ALERT!!!
NOPE is all of the following things and probably more. It is a movie about the history of cameras and filmmaking. It is a movie about historical representation for people of colour. It is a story about our penchant for using cameras to record events with profit making in mind. It is a movie about bad miracles. It is also a movie that is an homage to Hollywood films such as Jaws and Alien and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. It is a movie that uses sounds as ambient characters. It is a movie that critiques the nature of capitalism and greed. It is a movie about families. NOPE is all of these things and more, all at the same time. What Jordan Peele is able to accomplish in his movies is truly amazing to me. He is a gifted storyteller, for sure. For the purposes of today’s post, I am going to focus on the theme of representation, mainly, but I am sure I will talk about many things along the way as they are all so wholly integrated together. Here we go.
The easiest entry point for NOPE is the surface story. This is the story that answers the question as to what the movie is about. The rest of our discussion will be what the movie is really about. For now, NOPE is a story that in many ways most closely resembles that told in the movie Jaws. However, instead of a great white shark roaming about a vast ocean, we have an alien creature in the shape of a UFO flying in the sky in the desert/mountain areas that exist outside of Hollywood. The parallels between both movies are strong. In both cases, we have humans who, initially, have no idea what they are up against. Then we have the humans discovering what they are up against and realizing what a dangerous position they suddenly find themselves in. Finally, in both movies, we have the situation resolved in a last ditch, Hail Mary-type of effort that destroys the beast in question. So, on the surface, NOPE is a thriller about a monstrous UFO-like alien entity. If you enjoy a grand adventure movie, then you can watch NOPE and come away satisfied. But there is so much more going on than that. Please allow me to give you a quick example of how complex the multiple story arcs really are.
The main characters in the movie are a brother and sister named OJ and Emerald Haywood. The Haywoods are descendants of the jockey featured in the very first “motion picture” created by Eadweard Muybridge in the 1880s. Muybridge gained much fame and notoriety from his use of stop-action type photos that, when shown quickly in consecutive order, gave motion to still photos. Muybridge has been called the forefather of modern filmmaking ever since. But no one has ever learned the name of the Black jockey. This is one of the first scenes in the movie. Emerald is explaining how that jockey was her great, great, great grandfather and because of that connection, her family have become the only Black trainers of horses for use in Hollywood movies. As NOPE progresses, the scene depicted in Eadweard Muybridge’s study of motion is repeated numerous times and in numerous ways as OJ rides horses while attempting to escape from the alien creature and/or to lure it in so they can try to destroy it at the end. But from this opening scene alone, we have the themes of family history and connections, of Black representation from history being erased, the homage to filmmaking and the history of cameras and filmmaking techniques being introduced and on and on it goes.
The vehicle that moves the plot along is that OJ and Emerald are experiencing financial difficulties and fear that they may lose their horse ranch. Once they come to realize that a UFO seems to be hiding in the clouds over their ranch, Emerald comes up with the idea of capturing it on film and selling the photo for millions of dollars. Thus, she seeks to exploit the existence of the alien for personal gain. She claims that the sudden arrival of the UFO/alien is a miracle. OJ replies that it is a bad miracle and will only cause them all grief in the end. The Haywood storyline continues on with their quest to discover the best camera for filming the UFO, the best setup for the cameras and, in the process, they become involved with several people who are experts in that field. Meanwhile, a second independent but connected storyline unfolds involving an Asian neighbour of theirs named Jupe who was a former TV child star. Jupe had the misfortune of witnessing a massacre as a child while on the set of his TV show. Apparently the show used a real monkey as a character. One day, the monkey got spooked by the popping of a balloon and attacked everyone on set except for the boy who hid under a table and never made eye contact with the riled up monkey. The fact that Jupe survived the attack convinces him that he is special and is immune to danger going forward. As a man, Jupe has sought to capitalize on the incident and on his fame by opening a cowboy-themed amusement park. The main attraction of this park is a show in which Jupe summons the UFO/alien by offering it a sacrificial horse which the UFO/alien inhales and eats in front of the paying crowd. The horses that Jupe sacrifices each day had been purchased from the Haywoods ranch and, as such, is one of the Haywoods only sources of income, which ties the two storylines together. Needless to say, nothing good comes from poking the bear, as it were, so what happens to Jupe in the end seems entirely predictable. However, one of Jordan Peele’s moments of genius is how he integrates one scene into another. As OJ and Emerald and their team of photographers and videographers prepare for the arrival of the UFO/alien, the sky darkens and the wind picks up. We all know that there is a moaning quality to the sound of wind at times. Well, Peele uses this knowledge to full effect as he places the scene where Jupe meets his end just before the scene where the Haywoods prepare for their own encounter in the darkness. As the Haywoods watch the sky with fear in their eyes, the wind moans. Except this time, it is not just the wind moaning, it is the actual voices of Jupe and his audience as they are being digested by the UFO/alien entity that was at the amusement park in the distance and is now approaching the Haywood’s ranch.
But what does this all have to do with the song “Sunglasses at Night”? As mentioned several times already, Jordan Peele is known for dropping in seemingly unrelated “Easter egg” type items or moments within a scene. The value or meaning of these Easter eggs only becomes apparent in later scenes when connections between them become known. In the case of “Sunglasses at Night”, the song appears in a scene in which it is being played on the radio of a pickup truck. In this scene, we learn that the UFO/alien possesses the ability to control electricity, and so, as the song plays normally, the power goes out and the music slows down before petering out entirely. Unbeknownst to me and many others, this slowed down to half speed version of the song is not only the Jean Jacket remix but that it is an actual subgenre of Hip Hop known as chopped and screwed music. The term “screwed”, from chopped and screwed, is in reference to a Houston-area man known as DJ Screw who pioneered this musical technique. The science behind the technique is one in which a song is remixed and recorded at a slower speed than the original. The trick is to get the reduced speed just right so that the lyrics maintain their integrity, but the reduced speed renders them as being spookier or more atmospheric. When you add in the mind-altering effects of drugs and alcohol, it gives the song a trippy, otherworldly effect. Regardless of what you may think of the chopped and screwed remix of Corey Hart’s “Sunglasses at Night”, the main thing to take from this is the topic of historical representation of people of colour. This mid-film Easter egg shout-out to DJ Screw is a subtle reminder of the historical contributions of people of colour.
NOPE is a movie about an alien monster, but it is filled with moments of cultural, historical and socio-political significance all throughout the film. There are no throwaway moments in NOPE. Even one that appears on the surface to simply be the manipulation of a well known pop song because of the UFO/alien’s ability to control the Haywood’s electrical supply turns out to be a commentary on people watching others without wanting to be seen (which is the plotline of the song, as well as a key story element for the movie), it introduces a key piece of knowledge that neither the characters nor the audience knew before (which is that the UFO/alien reacts to eye contact) and it reinforces the key historical idea of cultural representation by acknowledging the pioneering influence of a person such as DJ Screw (who is well known and highly regarded within the Hip Hop community but not so well known in the world beyond Hip Hop). And it all comes from a seemingly innocent ten-fifteen second scene in the middle of the movie. Imagine watching and rewatching the whole movie! I am willing to bet that NOPE will become a movie that true fans will watch dozens of times as they attempt to discover everything that Jordan Peele has stitched together so expertly as skilled weavers of tales know how to do.
The link to the video for the song “Sunglasses at Night Jean Jacket Remix” by DJ AK47 (in the style of DJ Screw) can be found here. ***There is no lyric version of this remix.
The link to a video that attempts to explain the movie NOPE can be found here. ***Spoiler Alert.
The link to a video that examines the subgenre of chopped and screwed music and talks about the influence of DJ Screw can be found here.
The link to the official website for Jordan Peele can be found here.
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