#nope analysis

i feel physically ill.

And like, okay, on the surface that’s more sympathetic than say, the TMZ guy, or the Hollywood folks at the start of the film, or depending on how you slice it, even Jupe, who wanted to remain relevant. Because True Art is meaningful, right? It’s worth more than people.

Talented painters and directors can abuse their partners and subjects and actors, and well, the art is still good though, sometimes the abuse makes the art “better”. Artists can work themselves into an early grave and that’s valorized, the artist should say thank you for having the privilege to destroy their body in that fashion. The suffering made the art better.

(There’s been pushback on these ideas recently, but only recently, and they’re hard to unlearn. As an artist myself, the impulse to destroy my body and health in the name of my own work is one I still fight.)

Antlers just wanted to create the best form of his art, but that was not a good thing. He died horribly. Angel nearly died horribly. OJ might have died horribly. Emerald could have lost everything, and the Haywoods are left with a photo that is ENOUGH to get them through,but have most likely completely lost a much more impressive video, one that fully demonstrated OJ’s skill as an animal handler, too. In the quest for The Best Possible Thing he not only endangered others, he lost something that was perfectly good.

(I think the power dynamic alluded to here, too, with Antlers being a white male director, is very intentional as well. Who do we allow to hurt others in the name of Art? Who is allowed to be hurt? Did he learn the rules for that during film school, during his career?)

The specificity of the vortex. In the desert, in the plains, the vortex is a singular tragedy. Floods, storms, fires, they hit everything. They touch everyone. But a tornado is specific. A tornado can take down a single house, a single horse, a single person. One building can be brought to its foundations and its neighbor left with just a broken window. And in the same way, a tornado can spare a single man.

Jean Jacket’s mouth is not a tractor beam. It’s a vortex. It’s a tornado. It’s choice of victim is specific. When JJ eats the TMZ reporter OJ makes it out unscathed, despite the fact that the two were mere feet apart. And that’s what makes it horrible.

But what makes it worse, you can see a tornado coming from miles away.

Gordy was a time bomb, an amalgamation of instincts placed into a setting made only to exacerbate them. In retrospect, it seems so obvious. Of course a chimpanzee, a species prone to violence, known to have man-killing strength, would cause a tragedy. But when Gordy does, all you can do is watch. All you can do is see the devastation approach and hope you’re not in its way. This is Jupe, caught in the wake of a tornado, in a singular act of havoc.

I watched Nope a while ago with friends and can’t get it out of my mind. The movie rich in themes and has much to offer, but one of my (and prob most ppls) favorite things to analyze would of course be Jean Jacket herself. (warning: this is really fucking long)

One of my fav types of characters/plot lines/objects etc are ones that distinctly can be viewed and analyzed in more than one way. A popular example would…. Lmao flowey the flower in undertale (but this ain’t about him rn). The characters in Nope state multiple times that Jean Jacket is a predator/animal and has the instincts of one. This is further held up by the Gordy parallel. But Jean Jacket can also be understood as the camera, as the all-seeing and consuming eye of Hollywood and audiences. By looking at Jean Jacket in these two ways, then adding the analyses together, we come to interesting conclusions about the camera as a predator.

Jean Jacket as the territorial and predatory animal

I’m sure everyone came away with this idea in mind after watching the movie. I mean legit it’s stated directly in the movie.

The Gordy incident is very similar to the JJ plot, however it’s a very simplified version. During the flashbacks we never see Gordy when he’s not on a rampage - he never look him in the eyes when he’s just a trained animal. This ties into the ‘don’t look into it’s eyes’ concept, but also it ties into respect and acknowledgement. It’s not that we don’t look into his eyes before the incident, it’s that we don’t see him at ALL even though he technically was supposed to be in the frame of the camera. (This will come back later.) Only after the incident the monkey, the actual monkey, is acknowledged. Here the animal is much more a force of nature than truly predatory or territorial - the set wasn’t really his territory, he didn’t eat any of the actors etc - something just set him off and he started attacking. It’s unexpected and unexplainable to the victims.

The coworker of Jupe’s tries to run, but his behaviour is interesting. First of all in trying to defend yourself from monkeys facing directly towards them and yelling probably won’t deescalate the situation. Again, the nature of the animal wasn’t thought of before shooting. But on a thematic it’s interesting that he talks to Gordy like he’s talking to another human. HIS NATURE ISN’T ACKNOWLEDGED. Trying to push nature, animals, anything that can’t (or even those that can) be tamed into the spotlight and twisting it into a spectacle will lead to your downfall.

The standing upright shoe accents Jupe’s experience. A bad miracle. He HAS felt the consequences of Hollywood in his being forgotten, his trauma being twisted, but he’s always had something worse to compare it to in the back of his mind. He hasn’t actually felt the animalistic, the gore-y consequences (he wasn't actually attacked remember?). He knows his behavior can bite him in the ass at some point, but he doesn’t truly think it a possibility. He was always waiting for the "other shoe to drop", but the bad miracle itself made him feel above it. Gordy coming up to him under the table and not attacking was a bad miracle, one that put into his head the idea that he would be ok. He himself was never noticed or acknowledged properly and here he is, being acknowledged by Gordy. Being spared by him. He (while probably not consciously) feels special.

Now into the territorial behaviour of not JJ, but the other humans. Here the key comparison is Jupe VS OJ. And a little bit of Em.

Jupe is the prime example. He’s new to the area, but claims it as his own. He’s not truly a cowboy, but makes money off of it. When his plastic horse statue was stolen, he sent his children (first of all wtf) as a threat to OJ (this threatening behaviour come back in JJ). Then we have OJ. He’s also (in a sense) territorial, but it’s never shown to be a negative thing to others; Em only worries about HIM not surviving by staying at the ranch. He never threatens anyone. He simply is keeping their family's legacy safe. He’s simply taking care of his horses. He is the actual cowboy, not Jupe.

Em is only is connected to the animal theme by her ‘never being looked in the eye’ by her father. Instead of it being connected to a negative trait however, it’s connected to her struggle for acknowledgment (something that’s tied into her taking her horse Jean Jacket). (All of these traits and comparisons come back later).

Now of course onto the behaviour of Jean Jacket. She absolutely is just a wild animal. Like that’s one of the hugest points of the movie. She hid in that cloud, not wanting to be seen, like every other predator. She was “trained” by Jupe to expect food there. When she ate the fake horse, she went there early. Now if she went for 1) revenge or 2) just because she was hungry is not knowable. If the former was true (she was mad about the fake horse) then the siblings are veryyy responsible for the Star Lasso event. That doesn’t truly fit into the themes of the work, so it’s most likely the latter. Jupe made himself be known as a source for food, and then he + others became... the SOURCE for food (lmao). Animals are unknowable. You can’t control their behavior even when you think you have them tamed. Another aspect of Jean Jacket’s behavior is the fact she views the area as her territory. AND she doesn’t view the siblings as food… but why? It’s cuz she views them as a threat to her territory. Someone had posted (if u can find their post pls send it so I can credit this idea properly) that JJ’s behavior at the end of the film was similar to performative behavior of predatory animals protecting their territory. Thus her bowel movement after the Star Lasso event was similar to how predators mark their territory- thru excrement/urine.

Overall the comparisons between Gordy and Jean Jacket showcase the impossibility of taming forces of nature and the consequences of believing yourself powerful and special enough to do so. You get eaten.

JEAN JACKET AS THE PREDATORY CAMERA

NOW!! The second part of the analysis is more symbolic. JEAN JACKET LITERALLY LOOKS LIKE AN EYE. The alien merch and costumes look like the cameras from the Gordy set. When you put the implications from the predatory behaviour together with the fact that JJ is Hollywood it get real interesting.

Jupe for years has tried to make himself more and more marketable (more...digestible haha) to the public. It’s borne from his trauma and due to the system he’s in. He tries to “fist bump”, to feed this terrible force that’s only taken from him - the camera, the audience. On the other hand he’s been taking and taking from siblings, just like how the system, how Hollywood has slowly been taking their livelihood away, showcasing just how much he's become like the industry . The audience as an animal reacts negatively to being seen. Life is performance, and eyes have been watching from the clouds for forever. Their father was literally tokenized!!

Spectacle is a force hard to reason with. Hollywood is hard to tame. The only way to defeat it is to let in consume it’s own bloated deeds (Jupe’s huge ass balloon). But instead of letting their experience be forgotten, for the repressed trauma from it to dictate the rest of their lives (Jupe) OR instead of trying to capture it for their own selfish needs (the director), they have just one picture… to prove that it happened.

OJ and Emerald have been through so much. They have been forgotten as has what’s been done to them. This photographic proof serves as an acknowledgment of their suffering and bravery.

I watched "NOPE" the other day and this is what I think about it...

NOPE is an Horror/Sci-fi movie about a flying vacuum cleaner that then becomes a levitating wedding dress.

I'm telling you, the guy who made this movie must be a big fan of Lovecraft/Hidetaka Miyazaki's work.

The main creature in this movie apparently is "an animal" cosplaying a flying roomba that can turn into a cloud, into bed sheets but also into Sahaquiel the 10th Angel of Evangelion.

For people that don't know, Sahaquiel looks like a neuron and let me tell you, you're gonna need an extra supply of those if you decide to go watch this movie.

There's a specific scene in the movie where a bunch of people get "up close and personal" with the creature, it reminded me of the "don't be scared, we got clean wombs" meme.

This movie is about 2hrs long, you could farm in Dark Souls for the same amount of time and then purposely jump off a cliff twice in a row without retrieving your souls first, therefore losing them all forever, and somehow that would still be a better use of your time.

Jokes aside, I think NOPE is an extremely weird movie but I appreciate the clear effort that went into it.