![\"\"](\"http:\/\/sites.la.utexas.edu\/bpp\/files\/2020\/05\/sorry-to-bother-you-STBY-20170722-_H7A1002_R_rgb-1024x683.jpg\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
by Ross Trivisonno<\/p>\n
For the final assignment of the Best Pictures course in Fall 2019, students had the option to produce either a video essay or write a traditional academic essay. This essay is one of the latter; in it, Ross Trivisonno analyzes the form and themes of Boots Riley’s 2018 film<\/em>\u00a0Sorry to Bother You.<\/p>\n Mutant horsemen (like, actually, half-horse\/half-man things), and aggressive picketing labor unions, and exploitative crony capitalism, oh my!<\/p>\n So goes the prevailing smorgasbord of characters, caricatures, and themes in Boots Riley\u2019s latest societal critique of a film, Sorry to Bother You<\/em>. Perhaps ruthless socioeconomic parody is a more apt descriptor, though, seeing as “societal critique” seems all too soft of a genre in categorizing a picture that lunges for status quo capitalism\u2019s jugular so mercilessly and, contrary to its title, unapologetically. Put simply, this more-than-a-little Marxist film is utter madness: a dizzying array of comically archetypal characters, dystopian work environments, and socio-political parody, all the while using anything but<\/em> traditional, technocratic economic interlocutors in its argument against an unbridled market system \u2013 instead relying on the absurdist comedy of it all to persuade audiences, and ultimately deliver one knockout punch of a blow to the ironically capitalist film industry\u2019s unwritten moratorium on anti-capitalist pictures.<\/p>\n Make no mistake about it. Just like Spike Lee, Jordan Peele, Ava Duvernay and other prominent African-American filmmakers of Hollywood present, Riley, no stranger to the fringe, has an agenda; it is an agenda rooted in race, an agenda rooted in class, an agenda rooted in station, corporatism, privilege\u2014and the lack thereof. But unlike many films with agendas, this one doesn\u2019t miss the forest for trees in its quest to imbue the message it so proudly carries. Instead of getting bogged down by the granularity or potential clunkiness of each of its individual themes, Riley’s motion picture stitches them all together almost seamlessly into a cinematic quilt.<\/p>\n Clocking in at a comfy 112 minutes, Sorry to Bother You<\/em>\u00a0marries wit with scrappy and whimsical dialogue, led by vibrant performances by Lakeith Stanfield, Armie Hammer, and Tessa Thompson. Those features, along with a meticulously-crafted mise-en-sc\u00e8ne, represent key components of Riley’s Bernie Sanders\/Elizabeth Warren-esque institutional criticisms. If there is any one word to describe the thematic layering, it is intersectionality. Above all else, intersectionality is the belief in a certain universal interconnectedness, that everything racial, class-based, gender-based, religious, orientation-based, or regarding ethnicity, nationality, station, or creed et al. shares fundamental underpinnings, and are not mutually exclusive, independent matters, but rather deeply interdependent, overlapping systems, inextricably linked to the haves and have-nots of our world. Just as Get Out<\/em> \u2013 one of the most ingeniously-layered pseudo-comedies of all time \u2013 lies at the thematically “woke” crossroads of race, mental health awareness, and advocacy, Sorry to Bother You<\/em>\u00a0falls at the intersection of an even greater plethora of social themes. We\u2019re clearly dealing with some tremendously thoughtful, conscious material here.<\/p>\n Perhaps most remarkable of all is that Riley manages to communicate his complex message so effectively not in spite of production constraints and an incredibly low budget, but because<\/em> the big screen has a seemingly endless array of cinematographic devices to choose from, like tools in a toolbox. And Riley employs these techniques bountifully, from some savvy literalization via Kafkaesque mise-en-sc\u00e8nes and unique shot sequences, to audio dubbing and an overall expressionistic visual narrative (with a trope-laden metanarrative as well). Rather than providing a mere synopsis or critical review, I will analyze how the formal techniques listed previously, in no particular order, enable and enhance\u00a0the socio-economic, racial, and political themes inherent to the film\u2019s narrative and metanarrative successes. To do this, I will carefully breaking down a handful or so of the film\u2019s more significant scenes.<\/p>\n First, let\u2019s start with the mise-en-sc\u00e8ne of the opening interview, in which protagonist Cash (ironically and symbolically shortened from Cassius) is applying to work at telemarketing firm RegalView (also purposely-named). Everything we see in-frame is a tacky mess, from the junk-filled desk \u2013 topped with an all-too-anachronistic rolodex and boxy desktop computer \u2013 to the absurdly cluttered, mostly illegible, bulletin board backdrop of Cash\u2019s medium-close shots, and the corny poster screaming \u201cS.T.T.S.\u201d on the wall. We later learn that this means \u201cstick to the script!<\/em>\u201d Wall signs of similar short-phrased, autocratic, smarmy positivity are found throughout the workplace. Even the exaggeratedly large, so-called \u201cbootleg\u201d trophy Cash gleefully whips out of his bag, and the employee-of-the-month plaque he desperately hugs, seem cringeworthy, as does the scruffy appearance and foul language of his soon-to-be boss. It all just seems so out of place, while simultaneously also seeming perfectly on-brand for something as lowly regarded in America\u2019s tertiary managerial-service class as a pesky telemarketing firm. The boss says it best; after calling Cash\u2019s bluff and acting superficially angry, he merely laughs it all off in a quick about-face, saying \u201cthis is telemarketing, we\u2019re not mapping the fucking human genome here\u2026 I\u2019ll hire damn near anyone.\u201d Well, good to know that ethics and qualifications have no place in a short-sighted, profit-first, capitalist society! \u2014 or so Riley\u2019s message goes. From the get-go, we can see the first signs of this film\u2019s symbolic parody.<\/p>\n The messy artifice of objects in this scene\u2019s numerous frames signifies not only the fraudulent nature of Cash\u2019s resume and qualifications, but the unabashed nature of all that is to come. The embellished, inflated trophy literalizes Cash\u2019s (and the firm\u2019s) initial embellished truths. Cash lies to get the job and yet his boss doesn\u2019t give a damn because all that matters is the bottom line; the ends justify the means when big dollars are talking. We see even more amplified instances of this as the film progresses. That is the dystopian parallel reality \u2013 all too familiar to 2019\u2019s corporatist America \u2013 that this film takes place in: what we are soon<\/em> to know as an Oakland-based, cubicle-riddled front where everything is merely a put-on, a nefarious corporate syndicate, a firm to rival John Grisham\u2019s The Firm<\/em>.<\/p>\n What makes this cold open truly so unique is the influence of the formal elements on its figurative nature. Without such a carefully crafted mise-en-sc\u00e8ne, without the nascent knowledge that this is something of a slimy workplace, would Cash and his boss\u2019s dialogue, their narrative, work so well together \u2013 would his lies be glossed over? It\u2019s hard to see this interview happening \u2013 or somebody as supposedly unqualified landing any job \u2013 in a Wall Street company\u2019s executive board room \u2026 or is it<\/em>? Perhaps this a subtle allegory of the grey-collar\u2014white-collar capitalist line, implying that regardless of one\u2019s organizational station, regardless of the outside reputation of the business, regardless of what side of the train tracks we\u2019re on, irresponsible capitalism is the same in every nook and cranny of American society. It matters not what color collar you wear, or how many digits your paycheck may be, or what side of the Bay you work on (Oakland versus Silicon Valley):\u00a0 corporate capitalism is corrupt and exploitative regardless of context or circumstance, to any and all within its bounds. Period. End of story.<\/p>\n This sequence is loaded with allegory, but unfortunately it\u2019s over before it even begins. Cash scrambles out of the office, and we get an interesting long shot of the room as a backdrop to the larger call center cubicle hall, the office\u2019s warmth contrasted with the coldness and corresponding arduous monotony of the hall. Furthermore, the smugness of this office\u2019s (rather uncouth and unkempt) managerial class is contrasted with the discontented masses of its working class; hot versus cold, the cinematic imagery speaks beautifully. Then the title sequence rolls, whimsical and bold-faced. And we\u2019re done. But yet, this appears to set a thematic tone for the rest of the film, giving us a brief glimpse of the contrasts Riley hopes to strike in the coming two hours.<\/p>\n This is an early and admittedly minor\u00a0example, though. Not much later on in the film, we get a short glimpse of Cash finally at work, sitting in his cubicle adjacent to an older black man named Langston, played by Danny Glover. (It appears that the vast majority of the call-workers are non-white, while the three managers\/supervisors are white, an accurate reflection of American society\u2019s occupation-based demographic breakdowns.) In a line that sounds all too much like something out of an Uncle Drew<\/em><\/a> commercial, he encourages \u201cYoung Blood\u201d Cash to bring out his inner white voice, meaning not to merely sound audibly nasal, but rather to act laid-back, to not try too hard, to act casual with veiled but not-too-veiled privilege: to be<\/em> white, not simply sound the part.<\/p>\n Enter the rhetorical trope of whiteness, portrayed via sound design throughout\u00a0Sorry to Bother You<\/em>. Heeding Langston\u2019s advice, Cash somewhat easily picks up this essence, unlocking the dormant seeds of so-called “whiteness” that presumably lie in every person ever exposed to white culture. Riley\u2019s definition of whiteness in this context indicates that it is far less about skin tone and superficial identity than it is about lived experience and socio-economic privilege, something that even the blackest or brownest of individuals could (and likely do) possess to at least a partial degree so long as they carry themselves as Cash begins to: smooth, confident, carefree, worry-free, WorryFree<\/em>\u2122 (more on this later). The white voice,\u00a0Langston notes, \u201cis what white people wished they [had] \u2026 what they think they\u2019re supposed to [have].\u201d It is almost purely theoretical in nature in its exaggerated tenor. The audio of this hyperbolic white voice is actually not Stanfield\u2019s own, but rather a white actor\u2019s (David Cross) dubbed over Cash\u2019s lip movements, making a significant portion of the scripted audio throughout the rest of the film almost cartoon-like, or puppet-like. As Salvador briefly notes in a later scene, it feels as though, like a puppet, Cash is being possessed by whiteness, possessed by an unsinkable spirit of power-calling, profiteering success, possessed by\u2026 capitalism? Are these all one and the same? Does one lead to the other(s)? These are the essential, perhaps unanswerable, questions that Riley flirts with throughout the film. And the audio editing does him great justice in this pursuit. By using the dubbing effect, Cash\u2019s perpetual eminence front of “whiteness” is seen as the fa\u00e7ade it truly is, further honing in on the permeating attitude of artifice that this entire picture operates under.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/sites.la.utexas.edu\/bpp\/files\/2020\/05\/stby1-1024x433.png\")