Director Boots Riley
SORRY TO BOTHER YOU B
USA (105 mi)
2018 d: Boots Riley Official
site
Being black in
today’s America can best be expressed through horror movies, apparently, as
after the success of Jordan Peele’s Get Out
(2017) last summer, this is what’s gaining the most traction at the box
office. In just his first feature film,
indie rapper/producer/community activist Boots Riley has produced the ultimate
protest film, in keeping with the times, where being black requires vigilant
protests against shooting deaths resulting from police brutality, voter
suppression, racial taunts and insults hurled with renewed vigor during the Trump
administration, where it’s like the President of the United States is the Grand
Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan, emboldening all manner of brutally disturbing
racial vitriol, where at least in the eyes of a substantial number of white
people, just being black is apparently a crime.
Trump’s utter dismissal of anything accomplished during the Obama
administration, leading a lengthy Birtherism conspiracy theory refusing to
accept Obama was even a U.S. citizen during his presidency, then leading
campaigns to diminish the rights of anyone of color, describing Mexican
immigrants as criminals and rapists, referring to El Salvador, Haiti, and
African countries as “shitholes,” closing the border on Syrian refugees fleeing
aerial assaults initiated by their own governmental, temporarily banning the
arrival of immigrants from six Muslim-majority nations, but also ignoring the
citizens of Puerto Rico, who are also U.S. citizens, refusing to offer any
major assistance in the reconstruction following the utter demolition of the
island from Hurricane Maria, their worst disaster on record, where power
outages over much of the island remained six months afterwards and beyond, and
hundreds of deaths related to that outage weren’t even counted as disaster
related since they didn’t happen immediately afterwards. From targeting specific minorities from
entering the country, legally or illegally, there has been a continued drumbeat
“against” anyone of color. This kind of
white nationalist fervor is not only highly disturbing, but insulting, throwing
whatever modest social gains that might have been made backwards in time,
especially following our first black President, suggesting the future of black
people is appropriately grim in America.
If you are a person of color, you are living an alternate reality to
anyone white in America, and this film goes to great extremes to show just how
bizarre and absurdly ridiculous it gets, becoming a social satire that turns
wickedly weird.
That being said, no
black film made during the Trump presidency will be viewed absent the influence
of Trump, just like during the era of Obama black-themed films were more
hopeful and optimistic, even those dealing with brutality and racism, as they
tended to be solution oriented. Instead,
like hitting a brick wall, examples of what we’re likely to see under Trump are
the surreal nightmarish hallucinations of this film and Spike Lee’s upcoming Blackkklansman (2018).
This is a film made for people who are sick and tired of black
realities, whose moral outrage is beyond the point of no return, who in the
words of an angry newscaster from Network
(1976), “I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore!!,”are
forced to witness a daily litany of neighborhood shootings for years on end,
add to that hundreds of black boys and young men gunned down at the hands of
cops, where they run into the smug and dismissive white attitude of yeah, but
who cares, so little if anything is being done about it. Ignored like they’re an alien species by
larger society, blacks rely upon themselves to understand and grow from these
experiences, but in a democracy where majority rules, with blacks comprising only
14% of the population, they need help from the majority to advance their own
causes and political agendas. Thus the
titular phrase, “Sorry to bother you,” which is a polite way of asking if you
can get their attention for just a minute before being relegated to the trash
bin. Set on the mean streets of Oakland,
California, Cassius ‘Cash’ Green (Lakeith Stanfield) has been out of work for
months, living with his artist girlfriend Detroit (Tessa Thompson) in his Uncle
Sergio’s (Terry Crews) garage, driving a dirt bucket for a car that requires
manually moving the wipers with a string attached, while buying gas (“Forty on
Two”) that actually means forty cents.
So desperate for a job that he brings fake awards and trophies to his
potential telemarketing employer, Regalview, the boss, Anderson (Richard
Longstreet), immediately catches him in a lie, but offers him the job anyway
because he meets all the basic requirements (“You have initiative, and you can
read.”) Selling encyclopedias over the
phone is not so easy, quickly reaching a dead end, until he receives a bit of
advice from a fellow worker. Inspired by
his own experiences working as a telemarketer and doing telefundraising in
California, he needs to drop all signs of blackness and use his white voice to
find success. A radical device initially
seen in PUTNEY SWOPE (1969), which also helped jettison the advertising career
of a rising black star, this has the same effect, like talking after inhaling a
helium balloon, thriving at his new job and his career literally takes off,
reaching hallowed ground when they move him upstairs to become a coveted Power
Caller.
A show stopper that
hits with blunt force, this film is not afraid to go cartoonish, exhausting all
outlandish methods to drive in their points, like when Cash is making his calls,
he literally drops into the living rooms of the people called and confronts
them directly. Escorted by a mysterious
unnamed black character with an eye patch (Omari Hardwick) to the top floor, a
gold elevator awaits Cash, using a security code that has about a hundred
numbers, where a woman’s voice (Rosario Dawson) sensually identifies him and
speaks of his surging sexual prowess, yet what they’re selling upstairs is
altogether different, selling weaponry and human labor to an agency known as
WorryFree, which dominates the television advertisements, promising a free and
easy better life with them, suggesting they’re a new workplace model (actually
modeled after 19th century employers like the railroad or lumber business),
providing communal living with bunkbeds and free meals so long as you sign a
lifetime contract guaranteeing your labor, using slogans like “Each day you
awake you’re already at work.” Despite
the all-too-perfect nirvana appearance on TV, a stab at Silicon Valley, always
promoting a perfect world, workers know a scam when they see one and organize a
union, taking strike actions to gain public traction, with Detroit and all his
former coworkers joining in the protest, but Cash ignores what they’re doing,
thinking he’s actually “making it” for the first time in his life, allowing a
police strike force to pulverize the heads and bodies of the protesters with
Billy clubs, clearing a path for Cash to get to work and continue the company’s
business. His uncle’s house finally
saved, he and Detroit are suddenly living in that perfect home that resembles a
glossy magazine spread, thinking all their problems are behind them. Detroit, however, isn’t like that, as she’s a
sign twirler on the corner of the street, a performance artist and social activist
decked out in outrageous outfits, such as a T-shirt that says, “The Future is
Female Ejaculation,” or home-made jewelry, like super-sized earrings of a man
in an electric chair dangling from each ear, or highlighting words like MURDER
MURDER MURDER or KILL KILL KILL, all in good fun of course. Wearing glitter, she’s a particularly witty
and inventive character, down to earth and fun, with terrific chemistry with
Cash, but she’s losing patience, thinking he’s selling out. She’s actually an excellent barometer for the
temperature of the film, as she spends plenty of time on the front lines of
demonstrations and social protests, which have become the heart and soul of
today’s black communities, much to the chagrin of a white America that couldn’t
care less.
But white America is
exactly who the director is targeting (wondering what will it take to get their
attention?), as the film gets even more surreal as Cash achieves more success,
though a video of him getting hit in the head with a can of soda thrown by a
protester goes viral, wearing a bloody bandage around his head for the rest of
the picture, which is in contrast with his plush surroundings in a comfortable
white world. When Cash is invited to a
party thrown by Steve Lift (Armie Hammer), the CEO of WorryFree, it’s like an
invite to the Playboy mansion and Hugh Hefner in a robe, surrounded by a bevy
of girls, where he’s the token black star, the supposed savior of the company,
where both work well together and are so hilariously over the top. Gleefully asking him to share in a bowl-sized
snort of cocaine, Lift is the frat boy at the top of the food chain, the guy
who always had all the advantages, got all the breaks, and became ridiculously
rich, doted on by the media, yet what he’s truly skilled at are the
humiliations of the economic system that keep the lower classes in their place,
allowing the privileged to remain at the top.
Once Cash gets wind of what’s up, he goes on all TV networks to expose
this massive fraud, but all it does is rally the stock market in WorryFree’s
favor, becoming even more astronomically successful. Veering into a sci-fi world, Lift’s forced
labor system is little more than a Pinocchio-style
Pleasure Island slavery system of those at the lower rung of the ladder, where
the poor suckers are engulfed in a culture of obedience and complicity, where
conformity is the rule, with
Lift envisioning Cash as the champion of the lower classes, someone who could
mix and mingle and undermine all efforts to unionize, allowing Lift and his
company to triumph into the new world as mega-billionaires. While you might always suspect some people
think like this, but to hear it with such unvarnished delight, showing no
interest whatsoever in the fate of the affected workers, it’s clear Lift
already views them as nothing more than company property, where Cash can help
him keep them down. Turning into a
twisted and distorted anti-capitalist take on MAD MAX BEYOND THUNDERDOME
(1985), which was itself a recreation of Fritz Lang’s METROPOLIS (1927), where
underground-dwelling workers toil to operate the great machines that power the
city, keeping a slavish worker state underground while the rich roam free,
never having to do a day’s work in their lives.
Lift’s hare-brained scheme is like something concocted by mad Nazi
doctor Josef Mengele, increasing human productivity through genetic
experimentation, then using a Sonderkommando infiltrator to keep the overworked
underground workers in their place. While
this grows more and more ridiculous, and strangely uncomfortable, like a bad
hallucinogenic acid trip, straining all levels of credulity, at the same time
it asks the question what has to happen before an apathetic public will
actually take interest? Does it have to
literally reach sci-fi levels of proportions, suggesting reality is already at
their limit as we speak. What’s truly
remarkable is framing this entire story through a work stoppage, using union
agitators to demonstrate for something larger than work, blending deplorable
working conditions with much needed social activism, where the soulless race
for profits creates unchecked billionaires that steal us blind and rob us of
our humanity, with no one batting an eye.
It all speaks to an abominable Orwellian future that boggles the mind,
created out of indifference and neglect, that will only happen if we let
it.
In a strange way,
this is a modern era update of Spike Lee’s Do the
Right Thing (1989).
Examples of black-themed movies made during
the Obama administration:
Tanya Hamilton’s Night
Catches Us (2010)
Dee Rees’ Pariah
(2011)
Tate Taylor’s The Help
(2011)
Shaka King’s Newlyweeds
(2012)
Ken Burns’ The
Central Park Five (2012)
Danny Green’s Mr.
Sophistication (2012)
Ryan Coogler’s Fruitvale
Station (2013)
Eliza Hittman’s It
Felt Like Love (2013)
Lee
Daniels' The Butler (2013)
Brian Helgeland’s 42 (2013)
Justin Chadwick’s Mandela:
Long Walk to Freedom (2013)
Steve McQueen’s 12
Years a Slave (2013)
Ana DuVernay’s Selma
(2014)
Gina
Prince-Bythewood’s Beyond
the Lights (2014)
Yoruba Richen’s The New
Black (2014)
Tate Taylor’s Get On Up
(2014)
Chris Rock’s Top Five
2014)
Alton Glass’ Cru (2014)
Stanley Nelson The
Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution (2015)
F. Gary Gray’s Straight
Outta Compton (2015)
Spike Lee’s Chi-Raq
(2015)
Rick Famuyiwa’s Dope (2015)
Barry Jenkins’ 2016 Top
Ten List #1 Moonlight
Ezra Edelman’s 2016
Top Ten List #4 O.J.: Made in America
Ken Burns’ Jackie
Robinson (2016)
Jeff Nichols’ Loving
(2016)
Denzel Washington’s Fences
(2016)
Theodore Melfi’s Hidden
Figures (2016)
Richard Tanne’s Southside
With You (2016)
Nate Parker’s The
Birth of a Nation (2016)
Quasim Basir’s Destined
(2016)
Raoul Peck’s 2017
Top Ten List #3 I Am Not Your Negro
Dee Rees’ Mudbound
(2017)
Jeremy S. Levine and
Landon von Soest’s For Ahkeem
(2017)
Sabaah Folayan and
Damon Davis’ Whose
Streets? (2017)
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