This February, Midnight Social Distortion will be celebrating Black History Month by honoring Black horror characters, in particular Black horror survivors, throughout the twenty-eight day period. Each day will feature one black male and one black female survivor in horror and sci-fi to bring light to the positive, albeit still problematic, black champions of representation in horror. Some disclaimers first: obvious spoilers ahead, and not all horror survivors will be featured this go round, but will appear in later posts down the line.
Chris Washington (Daniel Kaluuya)
Character Arc:
Photographer Chris Washington has been dating his girlfriend Rose Armitage for a few months now, who happens to be white. As any black man dating a white girl knows, when it’s time to finally meet her parents, all sorts of awkwardness could ensue. Chris was prepared for all that. What he wasn’t prepared for was being brought before a cabal of white people who literally were snatching the bodies of black folk to sustain their warped version of a fountain of youth. After being betrayed by Rose, Chris endured being trapped in The Sunken Place, but fought back and completely took out the Armitage family with his bare hands in one of the most satisfying third acts in modern horror history for this black man’s eyes. And to add the cherry on the top, Chris lived, becoming the modern black male horror hero and rightfully so.
Fun Trivia
There’s a wealth of trivia for not only the character of Chris, but Get Out in general. However the one piece of trivia that is well-known, but sticks out for me is the original ending where Chris was arrested for the murders of the Armitage family with no way of getting out of jail. The scene, which is found on the blu-ray, was somber as fuck and took the air out of me even though I know it wasn’t considered the official ending.
Final Thoughts:
I don’t think I can do any justice to what has already been written about Chris Washington, his contribution to black horror history, his contribution to black history, and what Get Out has said about the black experience as a whole. No matter how many times one watches this movie, they pull more and more context from it and it goes to show why Chris Washington and Get Out matters in today’s social climate. It’s timely, it’s timeless, and it deserves all of the respect, accolades, and scholarly attention that it’s getting to this day. Chris Washington is the prototype for not only the black modern horror hero, but the black modern horror aesthetic as a whole. Ben (Duane Jones), the hero of George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead and the original torch-bearer and forever symbol of the black horror hero, would be immensely proud.
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