Nope (2022)

I am the eye in the sky… maker of rules, the radio used to say. When is a camera not like a gun? Susan Daitch’s 1985 novel The Colorist asks. In Be Holding, Ross Gay shows us a photographer in a window // he found open to the horror … // …shooting the woman / and the little girl // capturing her / staring at us. Jordan Peele’s Nope asks When is a UFO not like a camera? Or: When is an aperture not like a mouth? Characters must learn what actors know: Don’t look directly at the camera or you’ll fall in. Meanwhile, another question hovers in the sky: Must we domesticate what we capture? Or: Must we consume what we film? Horses are spooked, ridden, swallowed. The first man and horse to be swallowed are revealed to be in a lineage that ends in OJ, Em, and their movie horses. Meanwhile, a chimp refuses to be swallowed, a horse bucks its role, and a plastic horse refuses to be swallowed. A UFO resists being swallowed, swallowing everyone. All but Em, who goes to the mouth in the well. 5 out of 5 sacs of blood.

—J †Johnson