Apart from Jordan Peele’s Nope being a sinister “love letter” to Hollywood moviemaking and all the spectacle it can provide (where at-home streaming still cannot), another glaring theme is the sense of surrender not just to the “beast” in the sky, but the beast that is capitalism. This much is clear from the very beginning, with a reluctant Otis “OJ” Haywood Jr. (Daniel Kaluuya) forced to carry out the legacy of his father’s ranch, Haywood’s Hollywood Horses. In the wake of Otis Sr.’s (Keith David) “freak accident” of a death, OJ is left holding the bag, if you will, all while still trying to fill another proverbial bag that seems to contain nothing but ever-diminishing returns.
OJ’s sister, Emerald a.k.a. Em (Keke Palmer), appears far less concerned about financial affairs, a divide between the two that will become more crystallized as the film goes on, and is already apparent from the outset as a result of her laissez-faire attitude toward the “seriousness” of work. She reminds OJ after they’re fired from the film set, however, that this is her side hustle, not the other entertainment-oriented pursuits she happened to mention to the rest of the crew during her introduction about the company. How can she be expected to give that much of a shit about something she’s not passionate about? The answer being, of course, that everyone is expected to do just that sooner or later when their “passion” doesn’t translate into something monetizable. Just another subtle manner in which Nope illuminates how money and the making of it is the source of all tension and contention. Not to mention the root of all exploitation.
And, speaking of “monetizing,” that, too, is one of the overarching motifs of Nope—how people feel the constant need to make a profit off something no matter how grotesque and in poor taste it is. In fact, that’s often how they “cope” with their “pain” over the matter. The logic being, “Might as well get something out of it, right?” That something being, of course, money. The thread of this theme begins with Ricky “Jupe” Park (Steven Yeun), a former child star who is among the sole survivors of a chimpanzee mauling the cast of a short-lived hit show from the 90s called Gordy’s Home (the chimpanzee in question being “Gordy”).
Even in the moments when it was happening, something sick within Ricky (reflective of the sickness that society infects every individual with) instinctively tells him, through his terror, to grab the blood-stained shoe in front of him for “posterity.” So that he might one day showcase it as a collector’s item, of sorts, in a private museum behind a secret doorway in the place he calls Jupiter’s Claim. It’s an amusement park centered on the theme of the Old West, itself a concept California has been cashing in on for centuries. Regardless of the “ick factor” it entails in terms of pulling at the thread of that “myth” to unravel how everything about the Old West relates to mercilessly exploiting previously “virgin” territory. Or, at least, virgin to white people, who saw fit to plunder it for their own financial gain, and fuck the Native Americans who were living there first in harmony. A large bulk of that harmony stemming from subsisting on the bartering system rather than capitalism.
It also feels fairly tailored for Peele to set his story in California. A state that, despite its reputation for liberalism, has long been a bastion of what capitalism represents. Namely, pillaging the environment until there’s nothing left and selling one’s soul for a fast buck (this being most overt in the California Prison Industry Authority). And perhaps one could trace that back in its most modern form to the building of the railroad, which many a robber baron espoused in their day for the sake of glaring personal benefit. Then there were those supporting news articles, like “What The Railroad Will Bring Us,” that would become required reading in California schools for decades to come. As Joan Didion would note of this in Where I Was From, “I used to think that Henry George had overstated the role of the railroad, and in one sense he had: the railroad, of course, was merely the last stage of a process already underway, one that had its basis in the character of the settlement… This process, one of trading the state to outside owners in exchange for (it now seems) entirely temporary agreement to enrich us, in other words the pauperization of California, had in fact begun at the time Americans first entered the state, took what they could, and, abetted by the native weakness for boosterism, set about selling the rest.”
This speaks candidly to the matter that Nope illuminates throughout its narrative. For one could say that the entire plot is driven by the Haywood siblings’ desire to secure the “money shot” (or what OJ calls the “Oprah shot”). So, in effect, the plot is centered unavoidably around capitalism—cashing in at all costs both literal and metaphorical. And Jordan Peele choosing to set Nope against the backdrop of the abyssal Agua Dulce ties back in to how California won’t stop until it sells every part of itself (the meta aspect of that being how many tax breaks Peele received to film the movie there).
Nor will OJ, even in the face of how dangerous this sentient spaceship reveals itself to be, raining blood down on the house at one point to fully delineate the extent of that biblical line shown at the beginning: “I will cast abominable filth upon you, make you vile and make you a spectacle.” Thing is, people already make an effortless spectacle of themselves in their constant and obsessive pursuit of money. Having no shame or sense of self-worth in placing all worth, instead, on the getting and having of money. An ultimately ceaseless search that somehow manages to make people forget all about any such quaint notions as “dignity.”
OJ is the most willing to represent that reality when Em urges him not to go back to the ranch and simply give up on the idea of capturing the creature/spaceship on film. The “money shot,” to her, no longer feels like it has the same value as their lives. Yet when Em reminds her brother of how dangerous the endeavor is, he replies tersely, “I got mouths to feed.” On the surface, he’s referring to the horses at the ranch, but, in truth, it’s a statement that addresses a larger unavoidable truth. The one where we’re all at the mercy of capitalism not just because we have to feed ourselves, but because most people have others to support in some way as well (no man is an island, and all that rot). Thus, OJ is willing to, as 50 Cent once said, get rich or die trying. Because, in this life, we have all been told and sold the constant aide-memoire that a life spent in poverty, living from paycheck to paycheck, is tantamount to a kind of death anyway.
