Scornful Beholding: Spectacle, Jordan Peele's NOPE and the Titan Disaster

Looking, Being Looked At, and Spectacle in Film and the News

Author’s note 1: The idea of putting Nope in conversation with reporting on the Titan disaster came from my husband Jon DePue. This is his idea, I just wrote it.

Author’s note 2: I realize there is something inherently clinical about interrogating the way a disaster becomes news and becomes content for media consumption. I think this discussion is worth having, but I am also aware that talking about the Titan disaster as a story mediated by the news and social media stands the risk of obscuring the fact that this was a real incident that killed five people, including a nineteen-year-old with his father. I wish to acknowledge out front that, in the incident I will be discussing here, actual human lives were lost in a completely preventable disaster, and that was wrong. Acknowledging this does not diminish the tragedy and wrongness of other deaths that were equally preventable. These are simply the five deaths I will be discussing for the purposes of exploring the theme of spectacle in public media.

I Will Make You A Spectacle

I’ve found myself fascinated lately by a question I engaged in a limited capacity in my last blog (which was also about the Titan disaster): why do some news stories hold our attention? What is it about certain news stories that fascinates us?

It’s often not concern or empathy. The 2008 trial of Jodi Arias for the murder of her boyfriend, Travis Alexander, became a media circus in equal parts because of the salacious details of the case and the fact that audiences at home could watch a live, unedited feed of the trial, including Arias’s own testimony. It’s hard to argue that any of this public fascination came from empathy for Travis Alexander, much less Jodi Arias. The trial included hours of testimony in which Arias testified in graphic detail about her sex life, and a tape of the murder victim having phone sex was played start to finish for the jury and the audience watching at home. The story of the murder and trial is now memorialized as a 2013 Lifetime movie. It doesn’t seem to me that the trial attracted thousands of devoted worldwide followers because the public had a disinterested yearning for justice for Travis Alexander. Murder trials come and go all the time. This was a gory, sexy freakshow.

And minus the sex and (premeditated) bloodshed, I don’t think the addiction to news coverage of the recent Titan disaster was significantly different. On June 18, 2023, five men boarded a remote-controlled submersible for the purpose of seeing the Titanic wreck. After an hour and a half, the submarine lost contact with the crew, starting a frantic hunt for the vessel before its ninety-six hours of oxygen ran out. On June 22, the U.S. Coast Guard found a debris field over the Titanic wreck, indicating that the five passengers had almost certainly been dead for days.

The search for the Titan quickly became a media sensation, not just because of the “ticking clock” element of the story, but specifically for the reason these men had come to be on the submersible and where the submersible came from. As it turned out, the men on board were extravagantly wealthy and had paid $250 thousand each to board the Titan. The Titan itself, built by CEO and doomed passenger Stockton Rush, was a terrifyingly amateurish machine constructed with at most a limited concern for safety. Reports indicated that Rush had specifically avoided hiring experienced engineers with military experience (a trait that seems valuable for people building a submarine) and fired a worker who pointed out, apparently accurately, that the submersible would not be able to withstand the pressures of deep sea diving.

The Titan, like the Titanic it was carrying its passengers to, played out in the public imagination as a fable. Overconfident magnates construct a watercraft of astonishing innovation, and use it to bear fabulously wealthy men, only to discover that nature ultimately has the final say over technology and no amount of wealth will change that.

This is not a news story. This is a news spectacle.

The 2022 horror/scifi blockbuster Nope, written and directed by Jordan Peele, is the story of two siblings on the fringes of Hollywood. OJ (Daniel Kaluuya) and Em (Keke Palmer) inherit their father’s business, Haywood Hollywood Horses, when their father is killed by a plummeting nickel. OJ and Em realize that the being that killed their father was a UFO, which has been hunting animals (and eventually humans) near their ranch and expelling nonorganic material. The two then set out to document and sell evidence of the UFO and thus secure their own place in Hollywood history.

Peele’s movies so far have all been as thematically rich as they are thrilling and entertaining, and Nope is no different. The movie is ultimately a meditation on the power of what academics like to call “the gaze” — the experience and power dynamics of looking and being looked at. To steer his audience towards this, Peele opens his movie with a title card:

"I will cast abominable filth upon you, make you vile, and make you a spectacle. —Nahum 3:6"

But what’s a spectacle? And what’s so horrifying about being looked at? And what does any of this have to do with the Titan disaster?

Let’s start with an overview of Nope. Be careful: from here on out, spoilers abound.

The Theme of Spectacle in Nope

Nope is the story of five people navigating the world of media and entertainment on the backdrop of a UFO infestation near L.A. They include siblings OJ and Em, descendants of the first man ever captured on a moving picture (a Black man riding a horse); Jupe (Steven Yeun), a former child star and the sole unscathed survivor of a terrifying chimpanzee rampage on the set of the 1990’s sitcom Gordy’s World; Angel, a recently-dumped tech salesman at Fry’s Electronics, and Antlers, a jaded old cinematographer.

Throughout the story, all the characters navigate the conflicting experiences of seeing and being seen. OJ and Em are proud of the fact that their great-great-great grandfather was the first man to be captured on film. However, both of them acknowledge that their ancestor’s name is not widely known. The real power of the entertainment industry comes not from being seen, but from doing the seeing — capturing something on film. This starts Em down her long road to putting her own stamp on film history — being the first person to capture an alien on film, not to be looked upon but to do the looking.

Jupe is, as an adult, the owner of the western-themed park Jupiter’s Claim, and a prolific buyer of foundering Haywood’s Hollywood Horses’… well, horses. We’ll find out why later. Jupe, as a child, was the object of a terrifying spectacle when the massacre and severe disfigurement of his co-stars was caught on live television. However, Jupe’s relationship with being an object is intensely mediated. The movie opens with a bloody chimp wandering around the destroyed sitcom set, but it’s not until later in the movie that Jupe tells us what we were seeing. When Jupe tells the story, though, he doesn’t tell the story of the sitcom massacre. Instead, he tells — in truly unnerving, enthusiastic detail — the story of an SNL sketch that parodied the massacre later. Jupe has been an object to be looked at: both an object of horror (in the original screening) and of mockery (the SNL spoof of the massacre). He has fully imbibed the mocking re-narration of his own trauma, so much so that when asked to recount his story, he tells the parody instead. He is also fully comfortable with having capitalized on it. He keeps Gordy’s Home memorabilia in his home (including the shoe his costar was killed in) and sells access to dark tourists as an extra stream of income.

But Jupe also has aspirations to be the one who looks. Jupe is also aware of the UFO, and has been buying his neighbors’ horses to use them as live bait for a show. Jupe uses the horses to bait in the aliens he calls “the viewers", and sells tickets to the alien encounters in a show he calls “The Star Lasso Experience.”

Angel sells the gear of the lookers, but he has also lost his girlfriend to the allure of being looked at. Angel tells the Haywood siblings he has recently gotten out of a “four year relationship,” and upon arriving at the Haywood ranch he immediately whips out his phone to show OJ photos of his ex. “Keep an eye out for her,” he says. “She’s an actress, model, booked a pilot on the CW.”

And finally, Antlers is a professional viewer, a man who captures objects on film. But by becoming famous at his craft, and by watching others become famous through his craft, he has become an object, and made others into objects — and it terrifies him. He warns the Haywoods that their dream of fame is “the dream you’re chasing, where you end up on top of the mountain, all eyes on you — it’s the dream you never wake up from.” Eventually, Antlers’ craving for the “impossible shot” — to be the ultimate looker — ends when the alien views him in turn, and then eats him.

Over all this lurks the alien, whom Jupe names “the Viewer.” The alien is the most powerful, and most ravenous, of viewers, and the movie consistently frames it as being like a camera — except this camera can literally eat, devouring animals and humans and spitting out non-organic material and occasionally rivers of human blood. Jupe merchandizes dolls and masks of the aliens that resemble the cameras that recorded the Gordy’s World massacre, and the UFO itself (which we ultimately realize is the alien itself, not its craft) also resembles a camera, with a square-shaped, devouring eye-mouth. When describing aliens, Angel immediately jumps to the image of “little guys with big eyes” — beings with prominent “lookers.” OJ realizes that the alien eats all those who look at its eye-mouth, because its behavior reminds him of his horses. His horses don’t want to be looked in the eye, and if they are, they get startled and attacked.

In the visual language of the movie, cameras, and eyes, are eaters. Aliens look, and also eat. Cameras look, and eat in their own way. Audiences view, and also consume. Viewing is devouring. Watching is consuming. Looking is eating. Being the one who is looked at is to become a spectacle. It is to being object. It is being consumed. Jupe has made peace with his fate; he has already been eaten, and his trauma has been processed into more palatable material for general consumption. An errant TMZ reporter (wearing an impenetrable reflective helmet, covering his own face) seeks to make a visual meal of Em — “Don’t you want to be on TV?” he asks, waving a camera. Being eaten is inevitable. For some, it is even desirable. For all of them, it is a horror.

The TMZ reporter

In fact, the only creatures that have the consistent sense to not want to be looked at in Nope are the animals. Lucky the horse kicks an actress on set who insists on looking him in the eye while they are filming a commercial. Gordy the chimp finally snaps on set when he is started by a balloon popping and puts an end to being an object for viewing once and for all. Jean Jacket the alien, named for Em’s horse, devours and destroys anyone who has the temerity to look at her.

And in the midst of this, Em and OJ come to realize that being looked at, being seen by the right person, actually is redemptive, not exploitative. Em fondly recalls her brother seeing, and gesturing he sees her, in a moment of heartbreak when they were children. In the climactic effort to film the alien, OJ and Em do this gesture to each other for what may be the last time. Being seen as an object by an audience is a horror, but being seen as a beloved human by family gives meaning and purpose. In the end, however, the movie reaffirms viewing — or at least, the viewing of a spectacle — as a kind of conquering. Em finally defeats the alien by tricking it (hilariously) into eating the ultimate symbol of Jupe-as-object — a massive helium balloon in the form of Jupe, which adorns the gates of his theme park. As the alien dies, Em takes photographs. Em’s ancestor may have been the first to be photographed, but Em is a first in a new, more powerful position — the one who photographs.

The Nahum quote at the beginning of the movie centers our attention on the word “spectacle,” and appropriately so: the movie is a spectacle. The visual effects are incredible (the shot of Jean Jacket dropping onto Daniel Kaluuya and giving chase is pure movie magic; watching it on the big screen I felt it in my toes and fingers) and the story is grand, exciting, and adventurous. But Nope, in addition to being a spectacle in itself, also has a lot to say about being a spectacle. It’s a judgment. It’s a horror. It’s being an object. And it’s like being eaten.

Being Made a Spectacle on the News

Why were so many people transfixed by the Titan disaster? Why did it entrance people the way that a significantly worse sea disaster, this one involving migrants attempting to cross the Mediterranean, did not? Is the general public particularly concerned about billionaires in danger?

Why did people watch eighteen days of live footage of Jodi Arias on the stand? Did this case impact any of those people at all?

No. We watched because we made them a spectacle. We have very strong feelings about who deserves to be a spectacle. And we all know it’s a judgment.

The fascination, and horror, comes from the phenomenon of someone becoming a spectacle. We’re not worrying about them. We get to watch, and watching us gives us power over them. We’re judging them. We’re devouring them.

Everything about the Titan disaster was offered to the public as a spectacle. We looked at the submersible, and its curiously, now terrifyingly bare insides. We watched Stockton Rush talk about the interior sub lights that came from Camper’s World, which felt emblematic of the DIY-home-submersible construction style that ultimately wouldn’t be able to withstand the deep sea. We saw that they were down there to be viewers themselves of the Titanic, which has itself become a spectacle through cultural fascination with the story and the 1997 blockbuster movie. They tried to become viewers, but now we will view them. They wanted to see, but we watched them. People who would have never otherwise known the name “Stockton Rush,” much less attained his wealth, got power over him. We got to watch him and judge him.

I’ve read a lot of material in the past week from people who see the media circus surrounding the Titan as evidence that we are culturally primed to care about the wealthy, not the poor. I think in terms of the actual response (two Navys looked for five men on the Titan, while it is not clear that the Greek Coast Guard made an effort to rescue the fishing boat), this is undeniable. But I don’t think this is comparable to the general public response. People are concerned about stories. They are fascinated by spectacles.

I ultimately think that the best explanation for the public fascination with the Titan disaster is similar to the conflicting motivations at the heart of Nope: we enjoy the experience of consuming a spectacle, but we are also terrified of becoming one. We feel horrified for people who have been made a spectacle, but we also can’t help but partake. We don’t want to be looked at, and we realize that being looked at is a terror. But we also really, really want to look. And we love the power of being the lookers.

This disposition of consuming, judging, looking, and devouring is simply not pleasurable in the case of those we cannot justify making a spectacle of. Like the alien in Nope who spits out spare change and car keys, we vomit them back out. We don’t want to look at drowning migrants, climate disasters, political corruption, and entrenched poverty. This is to our detriment. If we can’t face it, we can’t solve it. And we keep choosing not to look - not to consume and enjoy, but to be honest about it and tackle it and stop it from happening.

But five billionaires in a jerryrigged submersible on their way to an infamous, hubris-laden nautical disaster?

That we can make a meal out of.