Master

 

During a nightmare that Jasmine has, parents of potential students are taken on a tour of the school. Jasmine follows this group unknowingly with them looking back at her until they get to Jasmine's room. This is how they stare at her as the tour guide confirms where they're going in. The tour guide shows her room, and she sees herself sleeping inside as they all gawk at the Black student. 

Part of being master of the college involves getting your portrait done. Gail is checking on hers in the attic, a place she is seen periodically throughout the movie, always finding strange and disturbing pictures of the school's past. Inside her own face is where she discovers the bug infestation. In a typical horror movie, this would likely be turned into a dream sequence, but here it's real. 

Significance: 

Master makes its audience believe that this is a traditionally supernatural style of horror movie during the first half of the film, with plenty of potential spooky ghosts and big showdowns, but all these terrifying occurrences are found out to be worse than what we hoped: there are no ghosts. Many of the most disturbing scenes in the film have nothing to do with the supposed ghosts and have all to do with how the school and largely white members treat the two Black leads. Gail and Jasmine are at opposite ends of the university experience, freshman and master, but they live a parallel existence, alone in a room with white figures of the past haunting them. Ironically, Gail believes for much of the runtime that she is changing the system, living a better life, and that Jasmine is having an easier time than she did, even going as far as to tell Jasmine these very things while the student is in the hospital. The final revelation of Master reveals that while Gail thinks she has climbed the ranks to change things for the better, there is no changing things from the inside, and that the position of master is only a position of a maid.

Discussion Questions: 

1.What do you think the purpose of including the Scarlet Letter and the nearby Puritan/Amish society is?

2. For a movie that heavily relies on natural lighting, why do you think they chose to make the dream sequence shrouded in specifically red?