Science fiction, thriller, and horror genres are giving non-white filmmakers modes of expression to explore themes regarding class conflict.
By Mateo Daffin
Lupita Nyong’o as Adelaide Wilson in Jordan Peele's Us // photo: Universal Pictures
In the last decade, sci-fi has taken over the media market. The genre helped usher in the dawn of the MCU, teenage post-apocalyptic trilogies like Divergent or The Hunger Games, and countless other movies such as The Martian, Inception, or Ex-Machina. In our rapidly advancing technological world, it isn’t surprising that audiences are captivated by stories that explore themes of artificial intelligence, cyber-digital worlds, or cosmic adventures. Sci-fi movies allow us to escape to other worlds, proposing futures that bend and break our current realities. These films, however, have always had the potential to be more transgressive than just escapist action movies. Since the 2010s, non-white filmmakers have picked up on and used the sci-fi, horror, and thriller genres as tools to discuss more radical politics. More specifically, some of these directors have brought stories about contemporary class conflict to life, positioning anti-capitalist ideals at the intersection of other social debates.
One of the first recent films where we see this desire for class analysis is South Korean director Bong Joon-Ho’s 2013 movie, Snowpiercer. His first English speaking film, this was Bong’s debut on the American stage, expanding his viewership from primarily Korean audiences. An action packed sci-fi- thriller, Snowpiercer has all the qualities of a captivating blockbuster to draw viewers in to share some scathing critiques on Western society.
The basis of the plot is simple. After an apocalyptic ice-age destroys practically all life on Earth, the only surviving humans reside on a super-sized train called the Snowpiercer. The first characters we meet are Curtis (Chris Evans), Tanya (Octavia Spencer), Edgar (Jamie Bell), and dozens of other coach passengers who live and work in the “tail” section of the car. The mood Bong creates here is drab, and miserable. Passengers in the tail are compacted into tight spaces with little room for movement, the only food they are given is unappetizing “protein cubes,” and they are under constant surveillance by armed guards. Soon, we meet Minister Mason (Tilda Swinton), who marches in from another car behind the highly secure door.
Minister Mason is the first character to give us insight about life beyond the tail and social structure of the train’s society. Wearing a violet formal suit and skirt with a fur jacket, she storms onto a stage to make an announcement, towering over the sea of tail passengers. Her clean, well-dressed appearance sharply contrasts from the raggedy beige, brown and gray clothes of her subordinates, all of them with faces marked by dirt and sweat. It takes no time to realize Mason is in a position of power– a representative of the elites who govern the train. In her speech, she quickly describes this class system, barking at the passengers that they are the “shoe,” and she, the “hat.” The message: you’re at the bottom of society and I’m at the top. Mason also reveals that powering this mammoth vehicle is “the eternal engine,” designed by Mr. Wilford. Until the end of the film, the only thing we know about Wilford is that he is some sort of genius, tech tycoon responsible for preserving humanity. What is clear, though, is that Mason, the soldiers, and this hidden group of elites are viciously cruel, after she orders one of the soldiers to freeze off the arm of a tail passenger who disobeyed her.
With the genre of sci-fi being established and the film’s primary conflict being about class inequality, the scene is now set for Bong to use the former to creatively explore the latter. Curtis eventually leads the tail in a revolution to escape and reach the front of the train. This takes the audience on a journey through the different train cars where we discover an aquarium, a sushi bar, a school, indoor farms, and even a nightclub. These cars are designed to be luxuries for the upper class train passengers and with each new revelation, we learn more about the complex science powering them. For example, the aquarium was designed to be a self-sufficient ecosystem that naturally and perpetually produces the fish for the sushi bar. The one scientific mechanism that everything has in common is that they are all powered by the eternal engine.
It becomes apparent that Bong is critiquing the hoarding of wealth and material by upper class elites but his use of sci-fi brilliantly demonstrates the absurdity of it. All this intricate science used to create luxuries like sushi could be used to do things like properly feed the passengers in the tail. Of course, that would take more of the engine’s energy which would then dwindle the amount of lavish excess for the elites. At the end of the film, it’s actually revealed that Mr. Wilson designed the engine with the philosophy that it is carrying out a divine social order. Therefore, we can then think of the engine as the spirit of capitalism and the descriptor “eternal” as the justification by elites that their power is an everlasting birthright. This seems like Bong’s attempt to link the wealth generated from scientific advancement to scientific advancement generating ideology that justifies such grotesque amounts of wealth. By the end of the movie, Curtis’ revolution succeeds, the train is derailed, the engine dies, and the final shot depicts a polar bear walking through the icy tundra revealing that life actually exists outside the train. While the film is dystopian and reflective of current flaws of western society, this optimistic ending suggests Bong rejects the belief of an inevitable social hierarchy and sees hope for a world no longer dominated by greed.
Snowpiercer, while intense and exciting, still primarily portrays white bodies and characters. While Bong is a Korean director, the film’s casting is indicative of what is expected from a Hollywood major studio production. This problem, however, begins to change towards the latter half of the decade and helping to lead the charge is Jordan Peele. The comedian-turned-director stunned audiences after the premiere of his 2017 horror/thriller Get Out, a social commentary on American racial politics in the post-Obama age. Peele returned to the screen in 2019 with another horror/thriller, Us. Like in Get Out, Peele also employs sci-fi techniques in Us, this time to create a story delving into topics of class.
Us tells the story of the Wilsons, a Black middle class family of four on vacation in contemporary California. Newly arrived at their rental home, an impinging anxiety that something bad is about to happen to the family begins to consume the mother, Adelaide (Lupita Nyong’o). Soon, the home is broken into by a set of doppelgangers that are carbon copies of the entire family. Dressed in red jumpsuits while holding golden scissors, the doppelgangers are introduced as menacing evil twins, intruders that mimic but threaten the existing order. Adelaide’s twin, Red, is the only one who can speak and her opening monologue reveals the origin story of these creepy clones. Informally called “The Tethered,” these people were conceived in underground tunnels as part of a government-sponsored scientific experiment. Their actions are directly influenced by their twins above ground, that is, until the experiment ends and they are abandoned in the tunnels. Red then leads them on a mission above the surface to kill their lookalikes and sever the tie that brought them into existence.
Like in Snowpiercer, Peele divides the sets of characters into a top and a bottom, both metaphorically and literally given the birthplace of the Tethered. Due to the evil characterization of the doppelgangers, however, it is initially difficult to sympathize with their revolution. We especially want to root for the Wilsons because they embody the traditional American nuclear family associated with safety, wholesome values, and innocence. It isn’t until the very end of the film, when Adelaide fights Red in their final dramatic standoff, that this alliance shifts. Here, we discover that Adelaide is actually one of the people born in the tunnels and forced the original Adelaide, Red, into captivity after they encountered one another at a theme park as children. Eventually, Red is defeated but her army has won, having slaughtered most of their twins. The last shot of the movie is of an ever-expanding chain of doppelgangers holding hands, a symbol of their collective solidarity.
Given the violent nature of the film, Us is literally a story about a class war. With their shiny scissors, the tethered are fighting to overthrow to the world that forced them into confinement and torture. It’s indicative of how wealthy people are tethered to the working class, the inequality stemming from the former making their profits off of reducing the wages from the latter. Peele thus visually shows what it looks like to not have any upward mobility and how this eventually leads to rebellion. Despite doing so, however, he inverts the audience's traditional perceptions of good and evil by casting the underdogs as the villain. This isn’t an attempt to lambaste the needs of lower class people but rather it’s meant to reveal that structural change can be uncomfortable and disorienting. Making these villains our twins also forces us to turn inward and realize that that the status quo stays in place when we fail to see ourselves as part of these social problems. By using the horror genre, Peele thus exposes our deep seeded fear of confronting our own selves, a fear that thus limits the advancement of the greater collective.
Jordan Peele, however, isn’t the only Black filmmaker experimenting with different genres to make serious social critiques. In 2018, musician and activist Boots Riley made his filmmaking debut with Sorry To Bother You, taking his audience on a satirical, witty, and disturbing journey through the corporate world. Riley’s sci-fi comedy grapples with a variety of themes but overall it reveals how 21st century corporate America relies on racist ideology, the corrosion of organizing, and the dehumanization of the working class to uphold its economic dominance.
Sorry To Bother You follows the story of Cassius ‘Cash’ Green (Lakeith Stanfield), a young Black man in search of work. He lands a job as a telemarketer for a company called RegalView where he sells products to strangers. When a colleague of his notices his poor sales performance, he recommends that Cash should alter his voice to sound more like a white man. When this trick works, Cash soon becomes one of the most successful callers at RegalView and is promoted to become a “power caller,” who transfers him to a luxury office and grants him a life of luxury. This promotion, however, is contrasted with the ongoing RegalView workers’ strike demanding better pay and treatment. As Cash becomes more immersed within the affluent lifestyle of the upper class, he is soon exposed to their dark secrets and must decide where his true values lie: with his fellow workers or with the elites.
This binary, however, is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Riley’s message. This emphasizes the ever growing danger of big corporations manipulating civil society. Cash’s inability to find employment in the beginning signals that the job market in today’s society eventually pushes people to work for companies like RegalView, ones that don’t offer livable wages nor benefits. The structure of the company essentially creates four tiers of workers: callers, middle-management, power callers, and the CEO. The callers are underpaid, overworked, and are pitted against each other in order to secure their own financial security. Furthermore, their main purpose is to pedal products that will ultimately end up generating more money for the company executives. It’s this inherent conflict that drives the callers to strike and wage an actual battle against their oppressors.
After Cash is promoted, the sinister intentions of his higher-ups are finally unveiled. We learn that the job of a power caller is to sell weapons and labor on behalf of the megacorporation WorryFree. Under the command of deranged, narcissistic CEO Steve Lift (Armie Hammer), WorryFree mirrors companies like Amazon which sell a wide variety of goods and services online to the general public. Riley, however, condemns corporations like these by portraying WorryFree as a facilitator of extremely inhumane practices. WorryFree’s business model is that workers sign a lifetime contract of service in exchange for food and shelter. This system of labor parallels a feudal system, one where employees essentially take on the role of serfs. Riley seems to be suggesting that today’s labor conditions are inching toward a form neo-slavery.
This theory reaches its peak at the climax of the film where Lift reveals his plan to chemically alter his workers to become half-human and half-horse. These “Equisapiens” would increase efficiency and productivity for WorryFree. Riley’s ultimately use of sci-fi and satire clearly imply that large corporations and the ruling class create power dynamics that literally dehumanize the lower class. By physically stripping the workers' human features, Riley is conveying to us that workers are considered as mere animals – emotionless and disposable for the sake of material gain– by the wealthy owning class.
As of 2022, movie theaters and streaming services alike are overflowing with science fiction content. Clearly, this is an extremely popular genre amongst both audiences and filmmakers alike. Perhaps, it’s because of the fluidity it gives stories to break the rules and step outside of what is normally possible. While most stories can be examined with a class analysis to some degree, adding the sci-fi aspect gives viewers new opportunities to contemplate these issues from a different perspective. The films above are hopefully just the start of more innovative approaches to contemporary social commentary. For decades in the literary world, authors like Octavia Butler, Samuel Delany, or Ursula Le Guin have used sci-fi in their stories to imagine new ways to think about social categories. It’s time that groundbreaking material like theirs and other stories have a proper place in the world of film and media in order to expand the limits are what these mediums can do.
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