Jordan Peele's Get Out: Invasion of the Body Snatchers Done RIGHT | READUS 101

[@Readus101]

All the links to the references I cite are in the description box, including the links on where to purchase the books I use which help out the channel if you feel inclined to purchase them!

[@marocat4749]

it can also shpws as cult of conservatism and faschisst, taking creativity, taking over insttitutions, yadayada, isolating people. ot to mentio comrcialism?! even the by reagan use sounds like projection did artists use that aware?!.

[@Bilbo490]

My kudos to you for this essay. You've wonderfully highlighted how whiteness can encroach in such an insidious fashion that it inspired me to make a significant, yet minor in the grand scheme of things, decision. I'm a Mexican-American born in Chicago, but my parents immigrated here. For quite some time, I chose to be white because I couldn't speak Spanish to save my life. I even felt a little ashamed whenever I couldn’t speak to my cousins in their native tongue. In later years, I grew more than just accepting of my heritage, I wanted to be part of why it's great in its own right. And why I feel that meeting the approval of white people was never the priority. Hence why I committed to paying for my ad-free Duolingo subscription instead of letting it run out. Like I said, small compared other, more significant efforts. But I made this decision because of you. How you pointed out how whiteness makes Black individuals, Queer Individuals, and POC individuals have to sacrifice aspects of their personhood to meet the arbitrary and fickle standards of whiteness. Many other factors made me realize this fact, but this essay pushed me to a decision that compelled me to make an effort to be closer to my culture. And I am grateful to you for that. Thank you, and please keep up the excellent work. 👍

[@Site_42]

“The threat of communism was simply used as a scapegoat.” Don’t you mean *”Communism was a red herring!”* 😂 Great video btw

[@MagraveOfGA]

A note about the "white people don't season their food" "but what about Italians?" thing... "traditionally" the anglo-normative whiteness excluded the Irish, the Italians, the Polish, Slavs, etc. until those social groups became """useful""".

[@daniellesve5595]

Those are literally all the white people I can think of what is there left??

[@MagraveOfGA]

@daniellesve5595 Well first there were the English as "default" white people. The English "highly encouraged" (re:forced) lots of Scots to settle in Canada (Nova Scotia) and in small pockets in the 13 colonies. They became "white" very quickly in America. There was also the French, which maintained their status as "civilized Europeans" from the proverbial 'good old days' and got a white card Then fast forward a bit and we get germanic people who only became "white" after they melded into Pennsylvanian religious communities. The Irish were *literally* segregated from much of 1800s society, very much akin to Black people. In many cities you would see 'help wanted' signs proclaiming that the Irish and Black people were not welcome to work there. It wasn't until Irish communities integrated themselves into the burgeoning police forces of the era and "proved" themselves through military service they became "white". To be honest, my knowledge of this particular bit of cultural history falls off as to when the Italians, Jews, Poles, and Greeks were "granted" the status of "white". Though Jews and Poles have a long history of discrimination, even in Europe. Iirc, even the father of the Haitian Republic described Polish people as, "the Negroes of europe." Before there was a fixation on black versus white, western Europeans had a fixation on excluding other Europeans from the "civilized Europe" club. Italians were on that list for a while, as were the Greeks. Poland never truly gained access to the club, and certainly not the Slavic people of Eastern Europe...

[@sharonoddlyenough]

​@daniellesve5595 the upper class English. Even the Welsh, Scottish, and working class English were excluded. The meaning of whiteness has expanded as it has become useful to expand 'us' vs 'them'

[@fanboy50]

@@daniellesve5595 In Colonial and immediate post-Independence America, being English, Scottish, Welsh, Dutch, and to some extent French were the ones regarded as properly white and 'civilized'. The lines got broadened, generally speaking, on class, geographic, and religious lines, radiating first outward to the Anglo-Scottish-Welsh working class, Anglo-Protestants, from the British Isles (excluding the Irish), and then working from Northern Europe to Southern and Eastern Europe. The lines got expanded outward to include Germans/Scandinavians, almost all other remaining Northern Europeans first, then Irish, with Southern Europeans (Greeks, Italians, Spaniards) and Eastern Europeans (Slavs) still generally excluded, until they too made up a critical mass of the working class and needed to be co-opted to prevent broad spectrum solidarity. You look at late 19th and early 20th century sources from the US and the stuff that gets written about Italians, Greeks, Slavs (and especially Eastern European Jews) in particular sounds very familiar. (Notably, you see Spaniards referred to in similar ways anywhere they made up enough of the critical mass of the working class to be noticed (the history of labor activism in Tampa Bay is instructive) but for the most part working-class Spaniards and Portuguese ended up in Spain or Portugals' colonies or former colonies, which have their own history of colorism, racism, and imperialism that's a bit too big of a topic to really get into here). You can still see remnants of it in how a lot of American Protestants (especially Evangelicals and Baptists) view Catholicism with a suspicion and hostility that has very little to do with the Church's actual misdeeds and everything to do with paranoia about dirty invading foreigners and "dual loyalty". During the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries, Christian sectarianism has been a (inconsistent, but common) dividing line between largely-Protestant Northern Europe and largely-Catholic-and-Orthodox Southern and Eastern Europe (and Ireland). It's noteworthy that while the Ku Klux Klan is, rightly, remembered primarily for its acts of violence and terror against Black Americans and their allies, their list of acceptable targets has typically also included Jews and Catholics, because for a long time the European populations that those religious groups were disproportionately found among were typically poor immigrants who were denied whiteness until the ruling class sniffed the faintest whiff of working class solidarity with Black Americans. All this is to say that 'whiteness' is not an organic category, and its boundaries have always been both politically-motivated and subject to change to make sure that the working class never achieves sufficient solidarity and class consciousness to make fundamental changes to the system.

[@diddles3383]

Polish people are slavs but yeah

[@FearHimself666]

I love how you sighed when you said “Ronald Reagan”. My favorite political history fact I’ve ever learned is that when he was starting out as an actor he REALLY wanted to join the communist party. But they thought he was weirdly talkative and his love for America was offputting. So they told him to fuck off. That means that the summation of his entire career is the political equivalent of a guy calling a girl a whore for not sleeping with him.

[@emilyrln]

Lmaaaaaoooo 😂

[@hartthorn]

So I'm a white dude from the South, so it wasn't much of surprise when I found out I had an ancestor who fought in the Confederate Army. But it did also lead to a pretty wild story that I love sharing with the Traitor flag waving miscreants. Decades later, when he had become a grandfather, he was out at a park with his grand daughters when he came across one of the newly erected statues to Confederate generals in Georgia. And he was PISSED. He hated that they were trying to celebrate losers and successionists, and that the entire Confederate idea was always a pipe dream that just killed a bunch of innocent kids. And *I* know this story because those grand daughters told THEIR kids who were my aunts and uncles. Just to remind everyone how few generations back this actually is. He was probably still racist as fuck, but hey, I'll take the small win that even the soldiers who FOUGHT the war knew some of this was bullshit.

[@Lycandros]

Man fuck that "Melting Pot", I don't want a messy fondue or a shitty alloy. I want a stew, a broth seasoned and flavored with all the ingredients, each of which are distinct but still hold some of the flavor of each of the other ingredients. I want a fixture made of multiple metals, each giving to it a difference of form and function working together to make something simultaneously solid, beautiful, and functional.

[@Unknowngamer1138]

Not being American and not having the background of most of the media you mention here, I felt accomplished in reading Get Out as about cultural appropriation. Your explanation of how much deeper that that goes, both societally and within the themes of the movie was very enlightening. Also, the queer reading of John Carpenter's The Thing was not an aspect I had considered, and I'm gonna be thinking about that for a WHILE.

[@queenMABda]

In regards to the last bit, as a melanin deficient to other melanin deficients, you may not be to BLAME for the racism in our modern day, but you are RESPONSIBLE for doing the work you can to fix it.

[@Michelle58546]

When you explained Americanization it resonated with me as a Mexican American I’m from the East Coast where being bilingual is the usual. Now that I have moved to Texas I realized q lot of Hispanics but specially Mexican Americans like myself don’t speak Spanish or understand it and the reason I often get is because they’re grandparents of parents were badly humiliated growing up by classmates and even teachers for speaking Spanish and order to spear their kids of the same treatment they just simply didn’t teach their kids the language in order to avoid having an accent , makes me sad to know they have lost the heritage

[@BrigitteEmpire]

It’s a testament to the quality of Get Out as a movie (and yours as a KZbinr) that I’m still getting so much out of essays cantering it and its relationship to the rest of the genre years later

[@nerdtubewtf]

Really think JP's auidence for this film was all of us, and not necessarily the predominant US culture. So we could see in a way what we are not only doing to ourselves, but what we do to each other. While he wants us to recognize the horror, he does this in hope that we can see it and take steps. That the old ways were never going to work. The US is founded on exploitation for of capitalism which requires a permanent other if nothing else but to be the chump to sell stuff too.

[@SebastianSeanCrow]

29:46 around the time I learned about how a lot of black people are told their hair is “unprofessional “ a friend of mine from high school with long and super curly hair (for reference her hair is like Leona Lewis) had a job-with other curly haired girls who weren’t told these things, mind you-where her boss said she had to either straighten her hair (why?!?) or tie it back. For like “hygiene” or whatever. It was like an bakery job?? Tying it back, yes I used to work at a restaurant and everyone had to have their hair tied back and with either a net or a hat when they were making food. To keep it from getting in the food. But her coworkers were not told these things and her boss legit said she had to straighten her hair if she wasn’t going to tie it back. Like the fuck

[@FatalFrameAlchemist]

The final segment definitely hit close to home. My mom's side is Irish/German/Dutch while my dad's side is Russian/Polish/Norwegian creating a generic White Homogeneity that was discussed here. Over the years, I've become more or more distant to my dad as he seemed to go deeper into Conservative American politics. Two moments that still persist in my mind with him. One, which I'm sure he'd denied happened, was him saying he could never imagine dating a black woman. The second was when I came out as gay and he said something along the lines "It would be better if you weren't." I hadn't confronted him about this and at this point, I wouldn't care to talk to him anymore. My mother, on the other hand, I've still maintained a great relationship with. The discussion of reconnecting with ones cultural heritage hit close here because that was something my mom tried to do with her father. They wanted to make a trip to the Netherlands this year when it was confirmed he has throat cancer. Those plans ended up getting canceled due to a health scare.

[@lbjcb5]

Thanks!

[@melaniey.5596]

Uh. Now that you put things into perspective, now it’s not so surprising that Jordan Peele’s first film was such a dark horse victory. The text was RIGHT there, but nobody did anything about it. It must have resonated with lot of people, beyond black people. It honestly would be pretty interesting for La’Ron Readus to one day cover the topic of reconnecting with broken/lost roots, because imo that’s a topic that has a lot explore and deserves it’s own video. I was introduced to the topic by a Chadwick Boseman interview when he talked about how working in the first Black Panther led him to taking the initiative to discover his Yoruba, Limba and Krio ancestry, and what that meant for him. It was pretty neat and made me a little teary eye, and I think that discovering your ancestry doesn’t mean discarding what is already there, but adding more to what is already there. Having a more clear picture with more context.

[@neilthunderhead2785]

Your videos are always so informative and insightful. I had no idea that the McCarthyism era was also one of especially rampant anti-queer bigotry, or that there was a potential queer reading of The Thing. Also, as a longtime Stepford Wives fanatic, I appreciate you mentioning its contribution to the genre as well. This video was brilliantly put together!

[@2duds1nspace39]

This is one of the most interesting, well made, eye opening KZbin videos I’ve ever watched. I feel like I’m gonna come back to it every few months to watch all over again and just…think. Thank you for making and sharing.

[@constantreader1422]

as a queer polish person who has always said "at least that's how it's been americanized" when i tell people how to pronounce my name, i super enjoyed this. you gave me a lot to think about today, thank you!

[@jnyerere]

This is hands down some of your best work. You had me shouting at the screen especially when you were talking about the "melting pot" and "Americanization." You ate this topic up.

[@itsartwithwords]

This is everything I wanted out of Shudder's Queer For Fear. Some great facts delivered by a charismatic host, and all built upon the foundations, viewpoints, and lived experiences of Black folks and other people of color. Loved this and I can’t wait to see more from you.

[@Readus101]

Appreciate the compliment and glad to have you on board!

[@stephenvelez9710]

This is an amazing video. Thank you, as always La’Ron, for laying down TRUTH. Invasion of the Body Snatchers is one of my favorite movies. I connect with it literally--what is scarier than people you love no longer loving you? As an allegory, I read the Pod People as exactly that, America and it's institutional racism, misogyny, homophobia, etc. They represent 50s white America. And they're already here. You rock, La’Ron❤️💪🏼

[@nerojones2280]

I think more white parents need to give there kids names with some meaning. My parents gave me a name strongly associated with a part of my heritage and I am always grateful for it. My sister got a crazily ubiquitose white girl name ended up hating so much she changing it. Its a small step to changing white ubiquity but its sturdy and lifelong.

[@Transitive_Shroom]

PSA: Many commercial genetic testing services share information with/allow access to law enforcement (and sometimes third parties)! I say this as most people don't read T&S. Thanks for an amazing video on one of my favourite horror subgenres, absolutely wonderful and as always much to think about!

[@veeisforvalentine]

Not usually the type of person to comment on youtube videos, but its nice to see another video from you, especially one that was posted two hours ago. 🎉 Love that you not only hit the nail on the head (the red scare and the body snatchers) but also scratch that itch, that tip-of-my-tongue feeling that can be really hard to put into words but is in plain sight in a sense (the topics of spicy whites and how capitalism inherently erases queerness) Thank you for your work ❤

[@youknow2145]

as a white latino ive never really understood this idea of conforming to an american idea of whiteness, maybe is because i don't actually live in america and i live in my country of origin, and i love my countries culture a lot, this is such a great insight and has taught me a lot about why that happens with groups of poc in america and even other white immigrants, and it made me understand it much more about, is so awful that you have to let your culture down just so you can fit in and have the same benefits as white americans do, is so bad, thank you for this video tho its very very good! (sorry im not good with putting my toughts into words hope this gets my point across and its not too ramblie)

[@nerdtubewtf]

because you have no choice. Saying this as a chica who was born in AZ and whose boomer dad was born in segregated mining town. We fit in cuz we need to survive. However, if you're like me, you can't hide that often and my mask slips. FYI for anyone curious, growing up in AZ in the 1970's & 1980's was brutal AF. The amount of redlining. If you've seen any sort of AZ politics in the last few years, remember there were towns in AZ still as sundown till 1978. AZ white peeps LOVE their power. Why Sheriff Arpaio whose family came in the 1920's were seen as more 'American' than my family who came here in 1911. My family was pale, but since they spoke spanish, they were permanent second class citizens. (one drop rule even for us latinx)

[@SebastianSeanCrow]

38:38 Eminem literally in one of his most popular songs says he’s “using black music to make himself wealthy” and like if his biopic is anything to be believed he grew up around a lot of black folk and in the projects and stuff but like yeah there’s a reason outside of skill for it that his music tops charts so quickly Like how long did it take for black rappers who we’d consider legends today to get there?

[@Legato-2057]

Marvel’s current Secret Invasion TV show is also a (slightly dumbed down) version of the Body Snatcher story as well. Although it’s more directly about immigrants and terrorists.

[@willam123ful]

Ok, felt a little odd. This analysis helps me look at that serious clearly. I love it though

[@danielmcandrew979]

To the degree that I can reclaim in reality my own culture, my mom raised me on trying that out and it’s clear that even trying to do and maintain this doesn’t look functionally different than just trying to create community, be radically honest with myself and others, love history, and be a leftist. The Irish and Welsh were the training grounds for England to do proto whiteness. They changed so much grinding the Irish along that styles of dress, food, the fucking landscape, etc are vastly different than before Ireland was conquered. So I tell my son about his Irish and Sicilian roots. And I remind myself that my ancestors jacked rich English carriages to survive when they passed through the primeval woods until the damned English cut down all the trees and now even most Iran people think the miles of nothing but grass is natural cause it’s been that way for so long. Potatoes are dope and are the only vegetable you can have a healthy existence subsisting on with only minimal dairy and protein supplementing it. If that’s a plant from South America the English brought and forced my ancestors to farm. Then blamed us for the catastrophe their lack of taking action caused. I will never be Irish in custom, but I can be truer Irish in spirit than my mom, her parents or the ones before going a few or a lot of generations until you’re back in Ireland. I don’t have traditions, Irish is hard and will take me years to learn, and I do t know if I’ll ever meet another American with mostly Irish ancestry who gets into reclaiming their heritage who ain’t just a typical white american cosplaying to help ignore their own bigotries and complicitness in the evils of whiteness. But I can be some other kind of thing, cause the best Irish knew that it was the damned kings and nobles of England who put boot to their own people for greed and turned that peasantry loose as warriors to do worse to the Irish. The folk of the separate regions became one through this burgeoning leftist idea of fuck the crown, this island is ours. Then it became we have to do for each other or they’ll literally make us starve in the fields. But a lot of them that left Ireland to escape death forgot all that. They forgot the leftism to become the Bill O’Riellys of the past and present. I don’t think I’m Irish, and Irish American should be for immigrants from there, but I know I’m spiritually more Irish than a fuck ton of Americans. Unfortunately now a days by the looks of it, I’m more Irish in this way than a bunch of actual Irish people too

[@danielmcandrew979]

*irish, not Iran. Auto correct gets weird with it

[@danielmcandrew979]

Such a good video. The salad bowl metaphor I had forgotten but have made a note to use with teaching my kid. I mean, this whole video has some helpful succinct lines for explaining things I’ve been working on or will be working on in the future with my kid. Thanks for what you do, I hope if you see this you know that this thing you do ain’t just a good job that feels good to do but a just vocation. And besides the topics and effort you put in, it’s down to your care and your voice. I hope your personal life is being kind to you right now, much love to you and yours from a newish fan

[@liamfitzgerald1400]

I've been doing a lot of thinking about my own identity and culture. I have Irish ancestry on both sides, and recently spent about a year living in Ireland to do my masters. It was really meaningful to be able to sort of connect to that in a way, though I always had a certain fear of coming off as appropriative, and trying to find a balance between wanting to be part of it and not wanting to seem like another desperate American trying to claim something they can't have. At the same time, I am also an indisputably white-passing member of the Klamath tribe. I've made some efforts to visit my ancestral land and learn the basics of the language, and have been working hard to overcome the self-loathing that I had with regards to being white and not a "real Native". By all metrics, legal and otherwise, I am Klamath, and even ignoring how the blood quantum system is a tool of the same whiteness and Americanization you mentioned, I have the right and even responsibility in my eyes to engage with and embrace that culture as well. On yet another hand, I am a (still largely closeted) bisexual and nonbinary individual. Over the past few months, through both personal introspection and therapy, I've been working up the courage to come out publicly and live as authentically as I can. So I really appreciate the end of this video. I will never know or experience for myself the horrors inflicted on black people by this country, but I am the victim and unwitting perpretrator of a lot of horrors on myself and my own cultures, and this video has really aided in me internalizing that more. Thanks, teach. Keep up the incredible work.

[@SebastianSeanCrow]

13:50 oh man I just love how you brought this up cuz it just reminds me like this was MOMTHS ago but this girl on TikTok was talking about how capitalism and white supremacy just… sucks the life and culture out of architecture. Like a lot of big American cities are very samey cuz of this and the same with suburbs.

[@SebastianSeanCrow]

4:13 I’m really glad you made this video it’s been a while since I’ve seen someone talk about this movie and the last video I saw about it I believe brought up the theory or idea of the colonization of the mind. But it was so long ago

[@pendragon_cave1405]

This idea of quitting whiteness... I want to explore this more. Any suggestions for resources on this topic? Edit to add: I lived in Europe and got really, really tired of people both making fun of our bland American non-culture AND when Americans say stuff like 'I'm Irish-American' and mocking people who are trying to identify with something more than the American 'culture'. So trying to reclaim a lost identity is not something that feels *right* (for lack of a better word).

[@marocat4749]

Which is a shame as itsway better than living in a country since forever and still insist you are not tha , you are that, mixed at least better. And it might sound weird but , honestly america is weird culturally, and no always the worst, ad people make fun of anything. Or people could find it weird to hang that strong on a nationality, but i would guess that would usually be more accepted anyways. Anyways dont lt that stop exploring . and maybe they just wanted to make fun of amrican to bgin with, i hope more teasing ?

[@lNoWayAroundItl]

It is always interesting tracking back horrible decisions that have effected us to this day for the worse. A lot of the time it trails back to Ronald Reagan.

[@zinkheroofyoutube8004]

Always fucking Ronald Reagan

[@JothanGurr]

Get Out’s horror and brilliance keeps deepening every time I think about it. Great video man! you pointed out so much I missed about this film and it’s context

[@nerdtubewtf]

IKR?! A whole hour that Readus did this video and it keeps giving. So much to think about. I don't comment this much, but damn, I mean, has he been in my head? Has he seen my life? How can someone who has never met me see me in ways that so few in society has seen me. I feel so seen here and crying tears: I'm not alone. Love you all here. You are all the hope that we can be the hope we need to see, to find new ways to exist without all this shite.

[@lbjcb5]

This is an excellent essay! I hope this gets shared everywhere. Well worth the time.

[@SebastianSeanCrow]

17:22 trying to explain that to other white people is so exhausting They literally say idk what I’m talking about when I say that what’s considered white today is very different from even 100 years aho

[@katherinealvarez9216]

21:13 and now I realized what School House Rock's Great American Melting Pot is from and probably is about even though that wasn't the intention of the writers. Maybe.

[@theunfortunateone7488]

This video is so good holy crap. This video made me realize something about myself that admittedly isn’t about the appropriation of cultures from anyone not deemed white but it feels important to me so I wanted to thank you. This really helped me understand why I never like to call myself Canadian. I’m a Newfoundlander so we are the most recent province brought into Canada. Like the US it’s a melting pot of cultures. Being so recent Newfoundland and Labrador are considered unique amongst Canadians. I never liked saying I was canadien even though it’s the nation I’m from and I am affected by it and don’t even hate it or anything. This video made me understand why, the idea of the melting pot of a country being the word I use to describe myself and culture felt insincere to me because Canadian doesn’t mean much of anything specific especially not to me. So thank you I always felt like maybe I was being dumb for having that internal separation between my nationality and where I will say I’m from but this perfectly puts into words why I felt this way. So thank you! ❤ with love from Newfoundland ❤

[@SebastianSeanCrow]

39:05 I’m still really disappointed there’s a UK drag race. I loved the show when I watched it religiously don’t get me wrong, it introduced to the concept of gendered art, gender play as an art, everything drag is, but I remember hearing about how the UK drag scene straight up didn’t want a drag race show there cuz they were worried it’d ruin/homogenize/commodify their local scene and culture like it has here in the US

[@isaacsuero9945]

A phenomenal essay. Several of the movies you discussed in this essay I consider to be amongst my all time favorites. I love how you weaved al of this intersections to make all these movies that on more meaning for me.

[@kerishaw8991]

This is the best video I have watched in a long while. Tysm🎉

[@PogieJoe]

I dare say this might be your best video. The way you tie in every theme and reference point you talk about is just excellent.

[@VelvetShadeBloom]

Woah this is such an awesome video! Thank you for your hard work!!

[@GuineaPig361]

I'm a white queer person, but your coverage of queer people has been very eye-opening to me. "Wait, so hating that I'm an adult who wears pink is homophobia?"

[@GaasubaMeskhenet]

I love twin rabbit's video about hand talk. Crazy how even ASL is part of the melting pot.......

[@josephvitaliano3226]

Another incredible commentary and analysis!

[@mandaautobee]

This has to be one of my favorite video essays from you so far. Thank you for this. Keep up the amazing work.

[@GaasubaMeskhenet]

When I first heard about salad over melting pot, I was confused. But I'm glad I learned to get it

[@SebastianSeanCrow]

15:29 so I feel like the joke of white people food is bland has a lot to do with the history and context of a lot of Western European food, Puritanism, classism… I mean a lot of very flavorful “white people food” is either stuff that’s been taken from like Eastern Europe or it’s like just poor people food. But that’s just a hypothesis from thinking about it for more than 10 seconds tbh. Cuz it comes from somewhere. It has to

[@wolfgirl535]

The bland food thing is a good metaphor for whiteness itself. Bland and boring. So, steal everyone else's spice. Great video, thanks for being here.

[@Shamazya]

Definitely some stuff to think about.

[@sylvia9290]

This video is everything! A must watch.

[@CthulhusBFF2]

I remember a teacher back in middle school trying to explain America as a melting pot vs. a salad bowl to us but most of us not getting it, probably because she didn’t go into detail on the racial component. To be fair to her though she might not have felt safe getting ‘too political’ in a mostly white school district in the middle of a red state. Thank you for clarifying these concepts 🥘🥗

[@melaniey.5596]

What you said about white supremacy pressuring POC into abandoning their culture, what made them unique, stealing it and reselling it to white people and POC (or even making it out of reach for the POC that it originated from), reminds me a little of what is happening in my country Peru. Being Native American, or cholo as it’s derogatorily called (thou there is a movement in Peru to revindicate the cholo or choledad), is seen badly, so people, specially those in cities, have tried to erase that part of their identity, like not teaching their children quechua or other native language, not using Native American looking patterns ma or not teaching them the custom of the chacchado (keeping in their mouth) of coca leafs. But recently there has been a resurgence of those practice. A lot of it is the people of Native American descent revindicating their own culture, but another part is also white people reselling it. For example there are a lot of hotels and coffee shops in Cuzco that use an “Inca” theme, but most of them are owned by foreigners and not locals. There is also how ayahuasca has been bastardized from an spiritual practice, to a fancy way to get high. It’s a little depressing, but oh well at least Peruvians (cholo or not) may benefit from it , and if it leads to an appreciation and revindication of many indigenous practices and part of the culture, the better.

[@tuushietime]

Wow. That was a mouth full.

[@andreap9319]

GREAT VIDEO!

[@SageOfLimitlessHands]

Kinda lost me at The Thing and Queerness but interesting take none the less. I feel like i have to go back and watch that movie to see what other things i may have missed

[@oddanderson9131]

Can I just say I think it’s wild that they will have a straight drag queen on RDR before they ever even thought about putting dragon king on there maddening.

[@billy32burno]

Glad to watch this from somebody that's from Detroit #ados all day keep up the good work #bodysnatchers #whatupdoe

[@sharonbaker3007]

Very interesting analysis La’Ron!💙💙💙

[@actualgamerowned]

I love Jordan Peele's films and I cannot wait for this video

[@daltongrowley5280]

Another incredible video!

[@nikkipappas9064]

I love the way you told the story of America through this subgenre! Thank you!

[@naih3315]

This one right here! Wonderful work

[@HoneyGregory-rv2wv]

The author wrote the book with no political slant or agenda. He said so in several interviews. People came up with that idea on their own.

[@ElQueNoSale]

this is one of your best videos so far

[@clarapilier]

You have outdone yourself.

[@dreddiknight]

Thanks as usual. Love the way you tie all of these threads together.

[@CharlesCChatman]

bars / thank you for this

[@IncendiarySolution]

I'm 4th generation Italian American. I'm sitting here reflecting, and I'm going through all the stories my grandparents told me as a kid. They stole our culture from us. They stole our language.

[@jojohanna8795]

I wonder how the ideas of reconnecting to culture and a lot of the historical nuances could be applied to Australia and how much things differ.

[@allisonmartin3982]

Even as a white disabled person, I’ve been cut by the sword. The idea of being praised for being normal by some and being spoken to like a child by others. That idea of “we did so” is familiar.

[@Boahemaa]

Why do the Klan women and every white woman in box braids and a deep tan keep flashing before my eyes anytime you say the body snatchers?😅🤦🤷‍♀

[@Alex_v_Mizu]

36:56 The crazy scary thing about American slavery is that most black people can trace there Lineage to the founding fathers By just following the last name, Coleman, Johnson, Adams, Lincoln just to name a few Connected to my family.

[@nerdtubewtf]

Been thinking of this film strongly for the last week. That the horror of this movie is that society has us do this 'get out' to ourselves. As a disabled, bi, neurodivergent passing chicana. The amount of masks I've worn and during this time of Covid and me being HIGH risk & immune compromised, saw this. BTW, even my MD's right now, have been given societal acceptance top consider my very life existance, worth less than their comfort. Look to see how we criminalize ANY sort of emotion in public if it's not white approved. Think of when you're sick and the feeling that you are 'useless' if you are not working or doing something(See any of Biden's talks about 'working class' and towards ANY person with any sort of disability, it ain't good. it's coming from both sides). Felt the director was also warning us to what we do to ourselves and each other. Look at the 'model minority' and how white peeps have us using this against each other. Like in this movie, but we do it to ourselves to survive, not realizing what we are doing.

[@nerdtubewtf]

need to rephrase the M. Atwood quote akin to" White cis het christian males (and allies attached to them & their power) are afraid the world will laugh at them. The rest of the world is afraid, they will hurt, torture, enslave, and kill us.

[@nerdtubewtf]

damn, this video is on fire. now at the vibes of the neighborhood. Thinking of when my abuelo died in the mining town when my dad was 6 and the barrio community and how they ALL helped each other, without any sort of expectation of getting stuff back. Same with my friends who grew up in the migrant farm communities of CA. We help each other out cuz no one is coming to help despite all their 'christianness' and the pain you get if you even DARE to ask for help. They hit you and then because you cry, they use that as an excuse to hurt you more. Methinks a lot WHY so many want to separate out emotion from reason. There is NO separation (I'm a scientist who teaches anatomy & physiology). The reason we don't like emotions, is that it give the exploiter ease to exploit us and use that as justification for their cruelty.

[@nerdtubewtf]

now at the end. wanted to share our family story. to come here, we had to give up even our peoples. My family had to give up claiming their indigenous roots so they didn't lose their kids esp in the early 1900's due to Residential schools for the indigenous population here. So my family and so many here in AZ mining towns had to give up one identity to survive. True horror is that evil itself is not an external force, but a purely HUMAN one.

[@dragonsmccreepy6589]

Very interesting video, I tried to listen and take in everything said, but did find myself distracted by wondering the meaning of 'whiteness' outside of america. I'm white british, english infact so the worst kind haha, and when I hear about whiteness in america subsuming culture its interesting but alien since I feel more strongly 'british' than i do 'white', and around europe i feel like that remains true to each country, but regardless 'whiteness' and racism still definitely exists here!! though a lot of europeans deny it. Do any other commenters know any black europeans that have made videos on whiteness and racism in europe?

[@eckoschreiber]

"I'm just a plain, old, hetero-normative gurll!" The teacup scene really got to me, loosing myself when being with others... So the sunken place is like Mind palast''s cellar? Or like the underground of Doom Patrol's Crazy Jane but less crowded?;o) Other body snatchery from the top of my head, World's End (Cornetto Trilogy) though more of a side hustle and Gregg Araki's Now Apocalypse, hot and shrill, but different othering. Also Dark City felt dystopian lab ratty. Them? Invader Zim?;o) Oh and the "bestet by black man" bit now seems like a presidential allegory... (just seen the Wednesday essay) did you enjoy the movie "American Carnage" with it's current, less subtle implications? And don't scenes like the Werewolf election in Bobcat Goldthwait's Misfits & Monsters or the body snatching (ha, circle j... thought) in Brain Dead '16 (series with Tony Shalloub) seem almost prophetic, yet utterly depressing?^^ Fab essay(s), cheers

[@Bohemianstory]

I just subscribe to you and I'm a witch. I have taken upon myself to look at all the witchy books and there's one that's strike me a little bit uncomfortable and it's about a book that's referring to taking melanated people into there was actual ritual practices. This is an actual book that I saw on Etsy. You might have to investigate that because I'm not buying that book.

[@marciaharvey9533]

Good lord I'm so glad that you made this video! FINALLY someone talks about how we're all being, and have been forced to, join the white soup.

[@italosblogtalkradio4279]

Never had I realized where the “melting pot” phrase came from till today and I’m grateful I came across this video. It’s interesting how Europeans “melted” into one “white race” and gave up their individuality and culture resembling what the body snatchers threatened to do in the science fictional first movie. Question here is who are the real “body snatchers”?

[@semajsga]

Comment for the algorithm

[@alexschaap8390]

So. Apologies for potentially not the best phrasing, just needed to get some thoughts out on some stuff at the end of the video and it's a little rambly. As a European with some American heritage, I have some thoughts on the reconnecting to culture based on genetic testing thing. Because I very frequently see white Americans that are doing exactly that because they feel like they have no culture of their own, but they're not really looking into the cultures they're trying to reconnect with at more than a surface level, and then us over here in Europe watch baffling bastardisations of our cultures pop up and be claimed as people's cultural heritage, when like... what is that? You made that up wholesale, with imagination and a sprinkling of stereotypes. Like, they're doing the same coveting appropriation shit to existing European cultures. It's one thing to deep dive and research your heritage and the associated culture and try to reconnect with that, and I do respect people's efforts to do that. But a lot of the time when people do the "figure out heritage from genetic tests" thing, responsible or well-researched is not what we're seeing. And even when it is - when these people are 200 years and many, many generations away from that heritage it does feel a bit like putting on a costume and playing pretend. On the other end of it as well, my mum is American, as was her mum, and her mum's dad was Irish. He absolutely refused to talk about it and denied it and we only know he was due to some rather obvious evidence. Like hell do I feel comfortable claiming any Irish heritage. Irish culture is not my culture, has not shaped or influenced my life or family or worldview in any way. Dutch culture, the culture I grew up in and surrounded by, absolutely has. The west coast American culture that my mum hails from and I have spent time in and around, both agricultural region california rednecks and big city San Francisco shite, has also shaped and informed parts of who I am. Irish culture, despite "Irish" being in my genetics, has not. It has had no bearing on my life. No matter how much I look into it and research it, that is not *my* culture. Neither is Swedish culture (great-grandma), and neither was English/British culture (mum can trace her dad's family line back to 1600s England) before I moved to England and became immersed in it. However, that's not to say white Americans don't have cultures to claim beyond "white". The regional variation in culture across the US is vast. The "American" culture of where my mum is from that I knew growing up is vastly different to the "American" culture of someone that grew up in North Carolina, or Maine, or Florida. And someone who grew up in Houston will grow up with a different culture to someone growing up in small town Texas. They have cultures, and cultural identity. It's right in front of their noses. They just can't see it because their culture is just the default and norm to them. Hell, I didn't fully realise that my cultures were in fact that until I moved elsewhere and was confronted with the differences, the presence of unfamiliar things and the absence of things I took for granted. Tl;dr: I don't think we need to tell white Americans to find where their ancestors hail from. I think we need to encourage them to examine the culture of their families, their neighbourhoods, their communities, and take pride and find community in those (while also recognising and working on the problematic parts). Same as I do with the small town northern California, various Dutch, and various British cultures that I have been a part of and are a part of me.

[@danielmcandrew979]

Sorry to be slightly off topic but I can’t help but think of my POS dad’s mom. She came here from Ireland and put NONE of her culture into her two kids. She grew old bitter cause she thought becoming American was what would put her on easy street and she was a political conservatives in a still leftist leaning nation at that time so of course she’d jump at the chance to throw out her culture and give her kids nothing but the cane and whatever white southern nonsense her husband ginned up. The broken man she made is out there somewhere addled and I luckily got raised by a single a great single mom… but her family has these skeletons too. I met my dad’s mom once before she died (I saw her a few times as a baby but I obviously have never remembered that). Despite the awful things my mom had told me of her, my mom was actually too kind. This wretch of a person was the antithesis of my loving grandma and grandpa who raised my mom and 5 other kids in the north. But as I’ve grown the last 24 years I realize theres some things my grandpa and grandma, and their parents, had in common with my dad’s mom. They all willingly set aside cultural touchstones of their irishness. Some at my grandpa’s mom’s and my grandma’s aunt’s teachings (“they taught us there’s no use hanging on to things that do you no good”), and there was some remorse as Grandma wished in her elder years she knew more of these things she’d fogotten or never been taught after both her parents died. Things she wished she’d counseled her husband to hang on to, but they were gone. It’s a difference of cartoonishly throwing off a cliff vs torturously making the wrong decision, but my grandparents I’ve idolized have this one bad thing in common with my dad’s mom; they bought the Faustian bargain of whiteness. I tru to teach my son about the places his ancestors come from, islands not too much farther apart than the states his parents grew up in. Both places where people who came to this country from there weren’t treated well at first if they weren’t coming here with wealth. But unlike my grandparents or parents generation I don’t then go on to mythologize a melting pot. I tell him that they threw away their culture to become American because they thought they’d be powerful and that it’d be good. “Was it?” “No. All but a few stayed about one set up from where they started. Now, many of us are falling off that step.” We can’t claim to be something we weren’t raised in; we only have some traditions and food from his mom’s side, nothing that ain’t just white American from mine. So we say we have such and such ancestry, but why we are is American. And white. We have to fight the evils of whiteness in ourselves and our country. And along the way maybe the identity of American won’t be such a loaded and negative thing to have as your only “true” cultural identity.

[@ToneKoneFrmDet]

They want to call it Detroit until they start scheduling. Bus plans to run to their suburbs.

[@harley-owo]

re: Italians as white, Italian whiteness is selective and regional. Where I'm at you're white if you're pale and towing the line but referred to with a casual, semi-reclaimed slur if you're southern Italian and behave in any way stereotypically. If an Italian-Australian starts explaining the history of anti-migrant racism their parents and grandparents experienced, white people will quickly inform them that they're white. If they do anything remotely stereotypical of Italians like idk speak above a polite Queenly whisper or move their hand one iota mid-sentence, however --

[@FuzzyPanda962]

So @readus101 idk how you feel about this but...KZbin decided this video was a good fit for reccomending that I rent The Green Book 😂

[@ambriaashley3383]

❤

[@MayBarros]

As a Brazilian that lives in Brazil, this video just gave me an entire new perspective about what whiteness means in the US and SO MANY THINGS MAKE A LOT MORE SENSE NOW (it still sucks, but understanding it makes me more likely to be able to push against it)

[@relaxedbro]

👍🏿

[@petalchild]

It's weird to me that you think Turks were allowed into the American white club like all the other groups your mentioned lol most Europeans dont even consider Turks European and the majority of the country is in Western Asia (what most would consider the Middle East).

[@availanila]

But Armenians (and a few others) were welcomed. It's the Islam I tell ya!

[@thrillfiction]

Bit of a genius you.

[@angelaa7388]

As a homogenous white person, I appreciate this video. However, homogenous as I may be, I have an Italian last name. When my family moved to Indiana from the east coast, white families wouldn't let their kids play with us because they apparently thought we were mobster informants being relocated for witness protection or something like that. So whites are racist against other whites. My non-italian grandma used to always describe me as "dark." I am white as hell, I just have dark hair and dark eyes.

[@JacksonKawasaki]

Exactly, is disgusting how in the past they’re did like doesn’t exists black people, I watched this 1956 movie Body snatchers, and has no one single black people, that’s impossible coz Santa Mira is a fictionally city in the state of California

[@WhimzyInteractive]

The skrulls in that show are really antisemitic

[@pinkpunther]

Recently found out in 8% spanish