Sorry to Expose You

If you don’t give a damn about wage justice or anti-capitalism, then this article isn’t for you because you’re obviously rich and indoctrinated into the ideologies of capitalism, so I already know you think the fry cook at White Castle doesn’t deserve to afford housing outside of the “hood”

 Reading some stuffy book written by some academic that you’ve never heard of about labor unions and the devastation that capitalism causes on anyone who isn’t wealthy sounds like so much fun, right? The movie, Sorry to Bother You, exposes the greed of corporations and the humans who are foolish enough to believe that these corporations are going to be their saving grace.

 Boots Riley took some key ideas about anti-capitalism and put them into an entertaining visual form so that those who are less enthused about reading may also observe some necessary critical commentary that keeps the majority of us working full-time jobs while renting apartment units that can’t seem to evict the roaches and rodents but want double your paycheck to live there.

 The more money you make, the more likely your money comes from a source of social evil.

 When I think of cities such as Oakland, I think of places with evidence of some social progression, which I saw in this film. I noticed how the main character, Cassius, was casually seen taking a piggyback ride on his girlfriend’s back. This dynamic is uncommon because it’s normally a man giving a woman a piggyback ride, but that whole gender role norm is thrown to the wayside in this film. If we can let go of these strict gender norms that damper people’s quality of life, then maybe we have the power to give up capitalism, which is also a social norm that dampers people’s quality of life.

 The horse species represents how ridiculous capitalism truly is and how it dehumanizes people. You clearly see how Cassius was coerced into using his “White” voice to be a more successful telemarketer. This suggests that his Blackness needed to be blotted out to move up the corporate ladder. Even Detroit, the girlfriend of Cassius, used a British voice to help sell her art, so she, too, is proving that assimilation into whiteness is lucrative.

 I couldn’t help but notice the depiction of drug use and its association with wealth. It seems as if these wealthy, mostly White, people can normalize illegal drug use that poor people cannot get away with. Society tells us that if we work hard and stay out of trouble, we will be surely rewarded. We don’t see that happening here. We see a bunch of corporate people who are okay with facilitating the sale of weapons that perpetuate United States imperialism while having fun doing illegal drugs who are being rewarded. If these were a group of Black people in an impoverished neighborhood smoking weed and glorifying street violence, then they would be painted as something that doesn’t deserve to be rewarded.

 The film shows us that marginalized people, especially Black people, are not immune to causing societal harm. He knew that moving up the corporate ladder would necessitate the abandonment of his comrades who were protesting. Is he doing good or bad? I’m not sure.

Are you surprised that an impoverished person is abandoning his morals to become wealthy? No, you shouldn’t. That’s what capitalism does, though. It prioritizes wealth and money, and people do whatever they have to do to attain it, so we shouldn’t be too quick to judge people for surviving the system the best way they see fit.