On the other hand, Get Out contains many of the traditions of horror filmmaking, which Peele handles expertly. This mastery of horror directing comes in handy when Peele uses horror tropes to portray the menace of casual, microaggressive racism. Grounding prejudice in familiar genre trappings works as a tool to help the audience empathize with the plight of its Black protagonist. Peele faces stacked competition, though, with the Oscars nominating some of the best working directors in Hollywood. However, Paul Thomas Anderson, Guillermo del Toro and Christopher Nolan have plenty of time to earn the Oscars that they should have already won. While a win for Greta Gerwig’s Lady Bird would also be deserved, Peele’s ability to mix skill with important commentary must be rewarded. None of the other nominees managed to capture the current zeitgeist as well as Peele did, and it is fitting that the director of the most relevant film of 2017 should be rewarded now rather than later.
Best Director: Jordan Peele
By Marco Cartolano
Awarding Jordan Peele the Oscar for best director for his debut feature Get Out would be a major step forward for the Academy for a variety of reasons. Peele would be the first Black person to win Best Director, an infuriating fact when considering the stellar filmographies of directors like Spike Lee, Steve McQueen, Barry Jenkins and Ava Duvernay. Get Out is also a horror movie, a genre that requires a deft directorial hand to pull off, one that has been mostly ignored in the directing category. Jonathan Demme won best director for Silence of The Lambs, a film that swept the top five categories at the 1992 Oscars and the last horror to win. However, Silence of The Lambs straddles the line between horror and thriller while eschewing traditional horror tropes for a more realistic setting.