Date of Event

2018-01-03

Title

Bothersome: An Afrofuturist take on the Film 'Sorry to Bother You'

Brief Description

Cassisus Green, a black man in Oakland, California, is on the verge of bankruptcy and desperately looking for a job. He gets employed at a telemarketing firm and utilizes a white persona to climb up the ranks of the capitalist firm, where he gets into conflict with his friends protesting corporate oppression, and his morals.

Location

Oakland, Calfornia

Student creator name(s)

Rehan Sahu

Afrofuturism Canon

AfricanFuturism

Tag(s)

AfroFuturism

Dystopia

Abstract

My goal, as an international student, upon taking part in this afrofuturism course, has been to study oppression and the impact of segregation, and acknowledge how creative the hurting peoples’s culture can get when when the subject of matter is the future. One story that spontaneously caught my attention was a satirical film called ’Sorry to Bother You’. I felt that this film addressed a couple of very concerning issues, including racial bias, capitalism, and the future of slavery, that needed attention, and I feel like the satirical elements in the film encapsulated and portrayed the cases efficiently.

One very powerful allegory utilized in the story was the ‘white voice’. As a desperate Cassius (Cash) lands a job at a telemarketing company, he begins unsuccessfully, until he’s told about sounding like a white person and climbs the socioeconomic ladder using it. It’s vividly shown how people are more willing to accept and purchase from someone who sound white. According to multiple consensuses, there is still prominent structural racism in employment despite improvement in the labour market. In terms of employement, stability, and benefits, blacks are inferiorly treated than their white, educated counterparts (President et al., 2022). This discrimination was very apparent, as is shown in another scene where he forgets that he isn’t speaking in his normal tone. His conforming to providing the majority (white) with what they want to hear, to thrive, and forgetting his own character for this sake was a very emphatic aspect of what the future beholds. In the midst of everything we are, the only way we can walk forward in life is by adhering to a standardized normalcy enforced by the elite of the majority.

Beyond all else, Sorry to Bother You addressed the major issue that capitalism has to do with race. Worry Free’s CEO Steve, after selling slave-labor, intends to turn humans into ‘equisapiens’, half horses and half humans, to make efficient workers. This mocked the insatiable hunger for money and the extreme measures capitalists are willing to take to make more wealth. Just like that, if the clients have a certain preference towards a white work force or any biased matter, there would be nothing stopping capitalists from implementing the demanded change for money.

Race is seen as a tool and objectified to serve a solitary, steotyped purposes. One of them is entertainment. There’s a scene when Cash has worked his way to the top, and when he thinks he’s finally free from the financial constraints now that he’s rich, but realises that he is bound by by a fixed social view. He enters a highly coveted party, and since he is the new ‘black guy’, people assume that he has shot a gun, killed someone, or that he can rap, and they begin chanting, forcing him to rap. This scene showed their deteriorated moral character, and how people have restricted themselves from understanding others as they already have a preconceived notion of what individuals are like from their race.

All in all, Sorry to Bother You had one of the more intriguing takes on the future that I have read because it showed how the remnants of segregation have branched out and how they could continue to divide society. The movie perfectly depicts the effect of slavery and how the cycle could repeat itself. It all started by wanting to exploit all sorts of resources, utilizing the people for service and faster growth. With the growth and power came the hunger for more power and superiority. This idea of power today is money. With an appetite for this power, morality is the sacrifice that most of those who’re already experiencing it are willing to make, hence their actions. Through satire, these effects of segregation were shown in this film and make the concerning issues crystal clear.

Sources
President, Julia Cusick Interim Vice, et al. “African Americans Face Systematic Obstacles to Getting Good Jobs.” Center for American Progress, 19 Jan. 2022, https://www.americanprogress.org/article/african-americans-face-systematic-obstacles-getting-good-jobs/.