Us: What Does The Ending Really Mean?
3. Why The Hands Across America Protest?
Of course, all of this plays into the Ttethered’s grand plan, which is, admittedly, a little weird. Not only does their uprising see them venturing to the surface, killing their doubles and taking their place, but taking part in a Hands Across America protest. After all this murder, they’ve adopted this “peaceful” act where millions of them hold hands and create a line across America.
Coming from the UK and not being alive when the original protest took place, the ending can feel unfulfilling and a little alienating, but after hearing Peele talk about it, the allegory and meaning becomes apparent, and ties into everything mentioned previously.
The protest was an attempt to raise funds for world hunger in the 1980s, which Peele has pointed out in interviews kind of highlighted the disconnect in the political climate of the time. It was a bit of a disaster as well, as while the event technically raised around $30million, after operating costs, only around $15million went to the actual cause. It was seemingly more about the publicity and celebrity of the event itself, rather than the aims and problems it was hoping to solve. It was about the perception that the country was joining forces and tackling big issues... without actually directly addressing them in any meaningful way.
The director explained to Vanity Fair:
“Hands Across America was this idea of American optimism and hope, and Ronald Reagan-style-we-can-get-things-done-if-we-just-hold-hands… It’s a great gesture — but you can’t actually cure hunger and all that.”
The dissonance between the public perception of the event's success and the actual reality of its failure is echoed in the in-movie Hands Across America protest. The Tethered have caused murder on a massive scale, violently striking down their doubles and sending the entire world into total anarchy. Then, after all of that, they think they can build a peaceful protest on top of it under the guise of solidarity. There's a pitch-black humour to their plan, and that's entirely intentional to draw a parallel to the very same dissonance found in the current political rhetoric, where lines of division are becoming even more pronounced.
To Jordan Peele, the original Hands Across America we’re-all-in-this-together-ethos of the protest flew in the face of the actual political stances on major social issues of the time, and in the movie it's the same thing, with the "peacefulness" of the Tethered's endgame contradicting the violence that proceeded it. Like everything in Us, it's another way for the director to explore the duality of the American consciousness, and draw attentions to the contradictions therein.