Back in 2017, Jordan Peele released his directorial debut, “Get Out,” about a young black man who unearths the shocking truth about his white girlfriend and their family. While the film went on to become the tenth most profitable film of the year, it also secured Peele as the first black winner for Best Original Screenplay at the 90th Academy Awards.
In addition to all the accolades, the film also introduced the world to the idea of the “Sunken Place,” which, according to Peele, himself, is to be held captive intellectually, to be marginalized. In the film, Peele described the idea as a brainwashing technique that mutes the victim’s consciousness and linked it to the longstanding racial tensions between black and white people, which in turn, sparked conversation within the Black Community.
In fact, many accused Kanye West of falling into the Sunken Place following his alignment with Donald Trump. But, when it comes to Peele’s dissection of West’s shenanigans, the creative in him believes West is just trying to “tell his truth,” according to a recent interview with Rolling Stone.
“The Sunken Place is a new term we have to aid us in the discussion of what appears, to me, to be black people choosing an ideology that is racist against black people,” he said before addressing the bittersweet moments surrounding West’s antics. “However frustrated I am with what he’s doing, the artist in me is like, ‘He saw my movie!”
“The thing about Kanye is, it feels to me that, whatever he’s going through, he’s trying to tell his truth. And there’s something magnetic about people who are trying to tell the truth. I might be wrong, but my feeling is that even when he’s saying something I disagree with, he’s trying to tell his truth, and that’s more than you can say about 90 percent of people.”
Elsewhere in the interview, Peele also discussed his forthcoming projects and the highly-anticipated arrival of ‘Us.’
