A Metafilm from the Margins: Jordan Peele’s Nope (2022) and the Double Bind of Black filmmakers in Hollywood

Abstract: Nope (dir. Jordan Peele, 2022) explores the situation of Black Americans within Hollywood. As the fictional descendants of Eadweard Muybridge’s actor from The Horse in Motion (1878) encounter an alien, they decide to risk everything to capture it on film. Their ability to make this film comes to allegorize Black Americans escaping their historical marginalization in the industry and becoming central Hollywood figures. For that reason, one may view Nope as the first Black American “movie about making movies” (David Roche). This paper aims at examining how, as a metafilm, Nope defines the situation of Black Americans in Hollywood as a double bind. On the one hand, the film advocates for Black film workers to struggle against their marginalization within the film industry, but on the other hand, it portrays Hollywood as a nefarious industry spreading hyper-reality, so that Black Americans risk becoming corrupted by the very industry they seek to be a part of.