Brooke Obie Explains Jordan Peele’s ‘Nope’
From xoNecole:
*Warning: spoilers for the plot of Nope below!*
Not even my momma could make me go back to Bible study, but if there’s one thing Jordan Peele can do, it’s the seemingly impossible. So here I am reading the book of Nahum again because Peele has started his latest horror-comedy Nope with a quote from the minor prophet, and it’s the key to understanding the film:
“I will pelt you with filth, I will treat you with contempt and make you a spectacle.” Nahum 3:6.
In context, the “I” in this scripture is God and the “you” are the citizens of Nineveh, the prosperous capital of King Hezekiah’s empire. Nahum’s name may mean “comforter,” but his visions from God for Nineveh are anything but. Nineveh is a wicked city and Nahum’s God is “jealous,” “violent” “angry” and “vengeful.” “The Lord will not leave the guilty unpunished,” Nahum writes in chapter 1:3. “His way is in the whirlwind of the storm.”
It’s judgment day for the people in Nope. And God appears to be a flying saucer that hides behind an unmoving cloud in the sky over Agua Dulce, CA, about 40 minutes outside of Nineveh, er, Hollywood. Since the horror takes place in Agua Dulce, it proves that the monster of Hollywood is less about location and more about a system of beliefs and behaviors; an industry where profit is God, and God is fed by a steady stream of recorded images and performances, at all costs.
Our first shot is on the set of a 1998 TV show that’s being taped before a live studio audience. But when we enter the scene, there’s no audience. Only a woman’s legs are visible from behind a sofa, one Keds tennis shoe on, one shoe off and mysteriously balancing itself on its heel, a splotch of blood on the toe. A bloody chimp wearing a birthday hat, knocks against her foot to wake her. She doesn’t wake. He knocks his hat off his head. The party’s over, but the sign that says APPLAUSE still blinks in the background.