Movie Review : Sorry to Bother You (2018)
* This review contains spoilers *
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Working in a call center is rather insidious. It’s not difficult to be good at it, but it also doesn’t really matter if you are. Because it’s even easier for management to find someone that will do only an OK job. Whether you’re invested in it or not, the machine keeps going. You’re not incentivized to care, so you either eventually leave or it destroys your soul. I guess this is precisely why Boots Riley chose a call center to discuss capitalism in his film Sorry to Bother You.
It’s the bottom shelf of Western capitalism.
Sorry to Bother You tells the story of Cassius Green (the immortal LaKeith Stanfield), a young man desperate for a pay check who takes a telemarketing job at a place called Regalview. He’s almost immediately great at it. Perhaps the greatest person to ever do this job, which quickly becomes a problem. Because the working conditions at Regalview are terrible and Cassius needs to decide if he wants to pursue his own success to help his co-workers unionize.
Boots Riley’s directorial debut explores two ideas that are dear to my heart: capitalism and success. It also does a great fucking job at it. Let’s get into it.
Capitalism is fucking crazy
An important idea in Sorry to Bother You is that maximizing profit and seeking wealth at any cost is fucking crazy and terrifying. There are a lot of subtle and not-so subtle allusions to this in the movie: there’s a television show called I Got the Shit Kicked Out of Me where people get beat up for ratings (and therefore generate ad revenue), a company called WorryFree exchanges housing and feeding for eternal labor through lifetime contracts *, stuff like that.
My favorite scene in that regard is when the CEO of WorryFree Steve Lift (the equally immortal Armie Hammer) reveals to Cassius his plans of transforming workers into equisapiens. Cassius tells him something along the lines of : “You want to transform your workers into horse people… for money?”, which Lift answers to with: “Yeah… I didn’t want you to think I was crazy.” To him, maximizing profit is a good enough justification for fucking with people’s DNA.
This scene is both hilarious and terrifying. The idea of using horse people as a more performant and obedient workforce is so fucking insane, it’s silly. On the other hand, the cold-bloodedness with which Armie Hammer delivers this line is bone chilling. In his mind, Lift is not doing anything wrong. In his mind, he’s innovating. The fact that horrible bioengineering will create wealth makes it completely justifiable. If that doesn’t terrify you, I don’t know what will.
Equisapiens are obviously an allegory, but they’re a stand-in for the victims of a logic that not only exist, but that is also celebrated in our culture.
The more subtle stuff
The condemnation of capitalist as silly, James Bond villain-esque pursuit is the big, in-your-face argument of Sorry to Bother You, but it treats other cool ideas in a more subtle, symbolic way. Notably the idea of success. Cassius ** seeks the job at Regalview because he is seeking status. In his own words, he wants to make himself more interesting to his girlfriend Detroit (Tessa Thompson). Yep. He’s a guy named Cash in love with a woman named Detroit.
Sorry to Bother You is that kind of movie.
Cassius is not really interested in financial status. He’s interested in succeeding at something and shed the self-image of being a loser. This is best exemplified when Cassius moves out of his weird garage bedroom and into a swanky apartment. Suddenly, there is no trace of himself where he lives. The walls are white and have expensive art on them. No more family photos. No art made by Detroit. It’s just a blank slate that you see in magazines.
Cash’s apartment symbolizes capitalism and status alienating him from himself. It’s kind of heartbreaking to see him pursue something that he really wants and yet making life miserable for everyone around him. When he becomes a PowerCaller, Cash’s entire social circle is highjacked by work. His identity has been usurped by Regalview and WorryFree and if he’s not generating wealth for them, he’s a nobody to the world around him.
If it feels so terrible watching it, it’s because it reflects the sacrifice that many of us in the workforce make every fucking day. That’s this movie’s gift. It’s distant enough from reality not to feel moralizing or too disturbing to want to think about, but it reflects in its own whimsical way realities we’re almost all subjected to. At no time it makes you feel dumb to play the game of capitalism, which is what makes it feel so goddamn impactful.
*
I’ve wanted to review Sorry to Bother You for two years now. I’ve worked in a call center from 2008 to 2012 and I’ve lived through shit over there that I’m still angry about to this day. It’s terrible because you’re asked to mindlessly to a task a trained monkey could do, but also because you’re mostly asked to surrender your time and youth for shit that makes the world noticeably worse. That is absurd and Sorry to Bother You captures the essence of that absurdity.
8.3/10
* You know, slavery.
** Nicknamed Cash in the movie. Cash Green. Oh ho! You didn’t see that one. Didn’t you?
