Movie of the Week: ‘Sorry to Bother You’ Boots Riley’s vibrant call to political action
Modern capitalism has bastardised contemporary morality so much that to navigate society in 2023 is to contend with flagrant self-serving politicians, big businesses devoid of ethics and financially-stricken individuals just trying to keep their heads above water. As such, the world of cinema has responded with ‘Eat the Rich’ movies like Ruben Östlund’s Triangle of Sadness and Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite, satirising and deconstructing modern capitalism.
Still, no film better reflects the social disparity and cultural absurdity of such a time better than Boots Riley’s Sorry to Bother You, a vibrant comedy-drama ripped from the same DIY playbook as the French filmmaker Michel Gondry. As if adapted from a comic book, Riley’s film is stuffed with colourful surrealism and snappy wit and is set, not in the festering pit of the fictional Gotham city but in the poverty-hit streets of Detroit, one of the USA’s most deprived cities.
Self-described by the writer and director as “an absurdist dark comedy with aspects of magical realism and science fiction inspired by the world of telemarketing,” Riley’s story was influenced by his own time working in the industry in California. It is a fascinating genre hybrid that engages with the current political conversation in unique ways. Starring Lakeith Stanfield, the 2018 film follows a young man, Cassius Green, who discovers a magical key to professional success, adopting an affluent-sounding ‘white voice’ at his telemarketing job to get ahead of his colleagues.
Though he has started to excel at his job, Green joins a union formed by his co-worker Squeeze (Steven Yeun) and participates in a protest alongside his girlfriend Detroit (Tessa Thompson) and friend Sal (Jermaine Fowler). Expecting to be fired for taking a strong stand against his own company, Green is instead promoted and introduced to a world of conspiracy, where he learns of his company’s dealings with military arms dealers and the slave labour corporation ‘WorryFree’.
Offering a radical and satirical analysis of modern capitalism, Riley wrote the screenplay for the movie under the Barack Obama administration, despite the film being released when President Donald Trump was receiving widespread criticism for his policies. Drawing some disturbing parallels between contemporary America and the previous President’s reign, Riley’s film focuses on the battle of personal agency, where one must align with individual wealth or organised labour.
Reflecting the hyperreal aspects of the modern world, where the truth is twisted and distorted to reflect something that doesn’t exist, Riley joys in the absurdity of his heightened world where business owners attempt to excuse morally bankrupt practices under the guise of constructed rationality. Though, despite the prominence of corporations within the story, Riley has recentred his pronged subtextual attack on modern capitalism on several occasions.
“My film is not a critique of the tech industry. My film is a critique of capitalism. And this same stuff has been tried for a long, long time,” the filmmaker told Junkee in an interview about the film’s protest about modern values. Continuing, he adds: “The way the tech industry leaders try to present themselves as cool, and new and innovative, that’s the same way, you know, a lot of these robber barons were presenting themselves,” no doubt throwing shade over such modern ‘hip’ billionaires as Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos.
The other side of the coin to Ken Loach’s 2000 movie Bread and Roses, which called for organised labour in the director’s familiar naturalistic style, Riley’s call to socialist arms is one optimised for Generation Z. Playful, vibrant and politically charged, Riley’s Sorry to Bother You tunes into the radical political retinas of the modern youth, and even appeals to their subversive artistic side too.
