Jordan Peele’s Us holds up a mirror to a fear that we all share and don’t even realize it. The fear of our own shadow leads us directly into a subconscious Inner Civil War that we fight daily until we know how to escape.
Watch Now
Did Jordan Peele’s Us make you feel weird? Well, it did exactly what it was supposed to do.
Jordan Peele’s US makes us feel so uncomfortable because it holds up a mirror to a fear that we all share and don’t even know it, the fear of our own shadow.
We need to talk about the movie US.
Welcome to my latest series, Movies with a Message. My name is Kayla, and movies are how I feel, my feelings.
Enlightenment To The Duality of Man
The movie begins with a young girl named Addy, who’s at the beach in Santa Cruz with her parents. While she’s there, she’s drifting into the background while her parents are bickering in front of her. While they’re walking through this Carnival, the amount of symbolism about duality is unreal.
When her Dad goes to play the game with her. The games cost two tickets. When Addie is asked what prize she wants, she wants prize number eleven. Most people walking around at the fair are in pairs or on dates and you even see a couple playing rock, paper, scissors. And the most disturbing, we see a man holding up a cardboard sign with the bible verse Jeremiah 11:11 written on the front.
We watch Addy wander away from her parents and into a fun house called Vision Quest, where the slogan is, Find Yourself. And as she starts to explore this funhouse, the very first thing she encounters is an owl. Which, spiritually speaking, is traditionally a symbol of wisdom, intuition, and deep inner knowledge.
And then, in true horror movie fashion, Jordan Peele makes sure that we see the mirror imagery. Addy is terrified when the lights go out in the room full of funhouse mirrors, which is where she first encounters her doppelganger. This is where Addy and the audience are first enlightened to the idea of duality.
It’s symbolic of the inherent truth that we are both the traits that we love and the traits that we don’t. And that is the duality of man.
Transformation and The Shadow Self
While at the beach and in the scene after we’re given glimpses of who each character is and what motivates them, basically how they identify. We learn that Zora, Addy’s daughter, no longer wants to be a track-and-field star. She wants to do what her friends are doing, and practice driving.
Gabe, Addy’s husband, is very kind, nurturing, and loving to his family. But he also wants to be a “boat guy”. At the beach, he compares his boat to Josh’s as if it’s a competition of Masculinity. Josh even makes fun of him for not being prepared enough and having a flare gun.
We learn that Addy’s son, Jason, loves magic, but he’s not very good. He’s even criticized by his sister for not knowing how to get his magic trick started.
We even meet Kitty at the beach. She makes sure she tells Addy’s daughter, “oh, you’re so pretty”. And even playfully calls Addy a “whore” for not needing any work done. We even see Kitty open up and tell Addy that she (Kitty) could have been a movie star if her twins weren’t born at the wrong time.
And we even get some information that there may be some tension between Kitty and Josh and their relationship. And at the same time, all of this is happening, we’re shown multiple symbols that represent transformation. Before they leave, Addy encounters a Spider crawling across the coffee table. In the car, they listen to the song I Got Five on It, with number five in Numerology being the number of change and transformation.
Addy’s father says he only turned his back for five minutes. And together, all of these symbols allude to an upcoming transformation.
Because we’re learning all of these characters surface level identities so quickly, and are once again shown the symbolism of Jeremiah 11:11. We can probably start to assume that it has to do with the evil that we are all unable to escape, the evil within us.
Read More: 3 Hidden Ways Your Shadow Self Makes You Feel Stuck!
Creation of The Shadow Self
When we are children, we learn what is and what is not acceptable or desirable, primarily by depending on the environment around us. Since we need to be accepted by our caretakers and our peers for the sake of basic survival, we quickly learn to only nurture the parts of us society accepts.
But, what happens to those other parts? Those parts that are rejected and forgotten?
Addy continues to feel triggered about what happened to her when she was a child and how she fears that she’ll have to face it again. And to her horror, the lights cut out, and her son lets her know that she’s run out of time.
The Shadow is a collection of all those parts that we neglect. Once experience tells us that these inherent parts of us are something to fear or find undesirable, we ignore them, and we push them into our subconscious. Where they remain still active, just outside of our conscious awareness.
Jordan Peele uses US to show us how the Shadow is created. The Shadow or the Tethered live in the underground tunnel system. Away from society. They are meant to be the Unseen. They don’t talk. And they all wear the same outfit.
Addy’s Tethered Red describes, in detail, all the injustices that she faced in contrast to the amazing things Addy experienced. When Addy ate, she had warm tasty food while Red was given raw, bloody rabbit. Addy was able to marry who she wanted. While Red had no choice. With this, Jordan Peele shows us that our Shadow follows us through life, whether we acknowledge it or not.
Jordan Peele Exposes Our Inner Civil War
Carl Jung, the psychologist who coined the term The Shadow, describes the Inner Civil War as the battle between who we think we are and the characteristics of us that are active behind the scenes. He even says, “If we condemn ourselves for having a dark side, we don’t just oppress ourselves. We deny our humanity. The contents of the Shadow will not disappear through repression. On the contrary, it will revolt.”
When the family is peeled off one by one, it becomes evident that each member must battle their own shadow.
Gabe Battles His Shadow Abraham
Gabe, the sweet, gentle, nurturing husband, must battle his shadow, Abraham, who is rough, aggressive, and kind of brutish. When he’s confronting his tethered and losing, Abraham takes him to the boat. The boat that was a show of his macho competition with the family friend Josh.
Zora Battles Her Shadow Umbrae
Zora is the only one in the movie who must run from her super-athletic tether. Hinting at the track and field life that she so willingly gave up in order to learn how to drive. Her Shadow also has a super creepy, permanent smile on her face, in contrast to Zora, who for most of the movie looks very solemn.
When Zora and Umbrae battle, the reference to cars is always present. When her Shadow returns, she’s able to win out using a car while her parents are riding with her, for parental supervision. Which is exactly what she asked for in the beginning.
Jason Battles His Shadow Pluto
Jason’s shadow, Pluto, takes him to the closet he normally gets trapped inside. Pluto can effortlessly set fires while Jason struggles to get his magic trick to light.
While in the closet with Pluto, Jason realizes that his shadow mirrors him and that he’s able to keep his Shadow under control once he realizes that it’s a part of him. Which is how he’s able to win out over his Shadow without force.
Josh and Kitty Represent Shadow Projection
Before Addy in her family arrive at Josh and Kitty’s. We are shown that they are no match for their Shadow Selves. We see that Gabe is not only able to defeat his Shadow, but also confronts Josh’s. And where does that battle lead? Josh’s boat. He even tries to use the flare gun that Josh made fun of him for not having.
While this is all happening, Kitty’s Shadow is upstairs playing in makeup. Jordan Peele paints a picture of Kitty’s insecurities using her shadow. Her shadow not only cuts her own face but also threatens Addy’s and Zora’s beauty. Both of these scenes show that sometimes it’s not only our own shadow that can affect us, but also the projection of other people’s shadow as well.
Jordan Peele Illustrates The Collective Unconscious
Addy and her family travel back to the City and notice all the tethered holding hands like in the Ad for Hands Across America.
The collective unconscious is the idea that there’s a subconscious layer within us that is not created by ourselves or our own experience but is simply inherited by what society already is. When we live together in a community, a lot of us can share shadow characteristics, which is why they are depicted holding hands.
They are United, there’s a solidarity there that the people up above don’t have. Sometimes shadow traits are decided for us before we can even experience anything. If society as a whole were to look into their deepest shadow traits, we would realize that we are more alike than different.
Because most of the things that we suppress are suppressed because they would be harshly criticized by our community.
Jordan Peele uses this as an opportunity to comment on the shadow of America as a whole, and in my opinion, a country that was built on violence yet tries to hide it any chance it gets is bound to have a pretty dense shadow.
Blurring The Lines of The Shadow
The end of the movie is by far the most confusing and jarring part of it all. Addy and Red fight it out. Addy wins out and returns to her family. Once in the car safe, we see Addy have a flashback. In the flashback, we learn that Addy actually switched places with her tethered back when she first met her in the Fun House.
Revealing that while the audience has been rooting for Addy this entire time, we realize that Addy is actually Red.
Jordan Peele has stated in many interviews that he’s left the ending up to our interpretation. So here’s mine. When we enter that phase of transformation, where we finally acknowledge our true self, using intuition, wisdom, and deep inner knowledge. We are destined to confront our Shadow self.
The revelation that Addy switched places with her Tethered at an early age represents that when it comes to integrating these parts of our Shadow, the lines between good and evil are blurred.
And that the Shadow is fully capable of functioning in society as long as we nurture it and give it a healthy outlet. As psychologists Carl Young once stated, “The patient does not feel accepted unless the very worst in him is accepted to.” With that, whether we’re healing or we’re hurting, we will always remain one soul shared by two.
Thanks for watching! If you liked it, make sure you subscribe and as always I’m sending love and healing your way.
Leave a Reply