The Cinematic Subterranean: Investigating the Cultural Significance of the Underground through Film

Representations of the material underground are dominated by infernal imagery and vast catacombs, fantastic wizards and mythical beasts, sleek climate-controlled bunkers and modern transportation. As a lived space, the underground is home to labourers, socially ostracized populations, revolutionaries, treasure, toxic waste, and dead bodies. The multifariousness of the underground marks the space as a powerful location through which countless narratives, characters, and meanings are manifested. This Major Research Paper provides an initial step in understanding the underground’s cultural significance by primarily focusing on the representations of the subterranean in film. This research begins by determining three main characteristics of the space: marginalization, interment, and utopianism. These characteristics are subsequently analyzed through the genre of horror, specifically Jordan Peele’s Us (2019), which utilizes the monster figure as the embodiment of the repressed/Other to distinguish the underground as a marginal, interring and utopian space.