“It’s Probably the Neighbors”: Identity, Otherness, and the Return of the Oppressed in Jordan Peele’s Us (2019)

Jordan Peele’s Us (2019) is a philosophical and political film with themes ranging from the uncanny nature of self-identity to specific current political issues such as extreme inequality, the repression of history, and migration. It is also a jeremiad about class, in which a failure of ethics leads to a potentially apocalyptic insurrection. The hinge between the ethical and the political, and between love and justice, is the figure of the neighbor as portrayed in the Christian Bible and theorized in Kenneth Reinhard’s essay “Toward a Political Theology of the Neighbor” (2005). Through an early but crucial turn away from empathy, followed by the repression both of this turn and of the very existence of the oppressed, the film’s protagonist Adelaide, like the Priest and the Levite in the parable of the Good Samaritan, loses her status as neighbor and opens herself to vengeance. So too, the film implies, the US middle class has lost their status as “neighbors” and has hence left themselves open to the fearsome possibility of becoming the victims of a violent and nihilistic revolution.