The Creepy 'Get Out' (2017) Bingo Game Auction for Chris Scene Finally Gets Explained
Jordan Peele's Get Out is currently the movie everyone seems to be talking about, with the bingo scene being one amongs many of the film's more surreal and intriguing parts. The film stars Jordan Daniel Kaluuya as Chris, an African American guy living in the city who's dating a white woman called Rose (Allison Williams). Chris goes to meet Rose's parents for a weekend away in the country and it turns into the getaway from hell.
That's merely scratching the surface of this clever and very original horror film, however—which is also a biting dark social commentary. Peele is more famous for his Comedy Central sketch show Key & Peele with partner Keegan-Michael Key than creating horror. But horror and comedy do share common ideas and explore similar themes, just at different ends of the scale. With comedy you die laughing and with horror, well, you know.
Get Out Mixes Horror With Social Commentary
“The reason they work, why they get primal, audible reactions from us is because they allow us to purge our own fears and discomforts in a safe environment." Peele said in an interview with the Guardian recently. "It’s like therapy. You deal with deep issues that are uncomfortable with the hope that there is a release.”
The resulting film Peele has created nods to movies like Rosemary's Baby, The Stepford Wives, and Halloween. For all these movies the suburbs are a creepy, menacing place, and for Peele that's also what they can be like for a young black man. If you haven't seen the movie yet be warned that the video above has spoilers.
But in Get Out everything is not what it seems and that deception includes the characters too. As such it's one of those films where repeated viewings are required to fully grasp what mysteries lie within. And even then you might still never fully know. Which makes it such a fascinating and enjoyable film experience.
So What Was Really Going On In The Bingo Game?
One of the film's many intriguing scenes was the bingo game auction for Chris at the party. The fact that they seem to be placing bids on Chris and that it resembled a 19th century slave auction was no coincidence either.
Also of note is that everyone seemed to be holding a red or blue colored card (red for women and blue for men) while the Asian guy was holding a yellow one. The colors could reference the US political system, perhaps, and point to the fact Asians are underrepresented. Whatever is going on it's definitely not your ordinary bingo game.
As we all know the traditional game of bingo is one of chance in which players must attempt to match numbers pre-printed in different arrangements on 5×5 cards with the numbers the game host draws at random (or if you are playing the more popular version nowadays, which is an online bingo site, and in that case the numbers are called by a computer), marking the selected numbers with tiles. A player wins by completing a row, a column, or getting a diagonal. Once you have this, a player calls out “Bingo!” to alert other players they have a winning card, and so can collect a prize or jackpot.
Which means it's not difficult to observe that something else entirely is going on in this surreal game scene.
For one thing all of the player's cards already have 'bingo' scored on them, which could point to the fact that due to class privilege these people are already seen as the winners in society.
The fact that they were bidding on a black man is the darkest twist of all and not what you might first think is the obvious answer. Without giving any spoilers away this scene is quite possibly the darkest (and most horrific) twist in the whole film, as up to now it has been playing on obvious racial prejudices.
But as Jordan Peele wanted to convey, this scene opens up the door to something much darker as the film moves on from here and the real meaning of the story unfolds. It's a genuine horror story and Peele's a genius.
The video above, from the fittingly named Movie Endings Xplained, gives some more details as to what it all means. And you can check out the trailer for Get Out below.