Critical Film Analysis
Sorry to Bother You Film Analysis
Introduction
A deeper understanding of a movie or a film requires an individual to analyze that particular video's content critically. In this discussion, we will conduct a film analysis concerning the "Sorry to Bother You" movie. The analysis will focus on assessing fundamental theories and concepts involved in popular cultural and sociological perspectives. Our assumption states that specific themes and theories emerge, affect, and are responsible for the social structure and change in a particular society in any given community. Therefore, our goal is to assess the film media beyond its surface-level meaning to depict the associated themes. The following questions give a starting point of the theories employed in this video: Would you give up your freedom for a job, food, and shelter for life? Would you run a workforce of slaves if the price was right?
Sorry to Bother You is a satirical comedy about code-switching and exploitative capitalism. Most importantly, it takes on capitalistic culture and how we usually ignore it. Therefore, in this study, we will focus on capitalism and racism (Critical Race Theory). Therefore, a clear explanation of the above themes will help us understand this film's essence and ass to our understanding of social problems. Besides, the theories will open our minds to unlimited thinking towards the issues the society encounters daily. It will play an essential role in developing techniques to solve or change the problems and understanding the problems in a new way or different perspective. Therefore, from what we learned from the class, the theories we learned will be critically used to analyze the film "Sorry to Bother You."
Overview of the Film
This movie is a comedy-type film in Oakland, where the main character discovers a magical key to professional success. Cassius Green, the central actor, gets a telemarketing job and finds the commission-paid job that causes someone to lose hope and enthusiasm. He is just a mere black man selling predominantly to the white people over the phone. However, everything changes when a veteran advises him to use his "white voice" and its attitude to make him more attractive and appealing to customers. Cassius follows the veteran's advice, and with a bizarrely high-pitched voice accent, he becomes successful.
Moreover, his colleagues form unions to help them improve their miserable and unprofitable businesses. Cassius is promoted to work as a "Power Caller," selling the most morally despicable but lucrative products and services. However, his involvement with abhorrent business weakens his connection between him and his girlfriend and his colleagues. Things take a different lead as his conscience arises, finds himself amid his boss' strange world of condescending, intolerant decadence, and his frightening plans to create the perfect supportive workforce with the help of Cassius.
Moreover, this movie has raised themes such as capitalism, greed, racial discrimination, and slavery. This film is trying to air out that black individuals can give out all they have for life and engage in bad businesses provided that the price is right. In this film, Cassius, however, succeeds in his abhorrent business after his promotion. Ultimately, Sorry to bother you film helps us understand that capitalism, race, slavery, and greed have severely affected blacks' activities and lifestyle patterns in Western countries. In a real-life situation, the film exposes how society is. For instance, when Cassius becomes a "power caller," his relationship with his girlfriend and friends is negatively affected. Generally, we clearly show how capitalism and racism can affect individuals' lives in real contemporary society.
Sorry to Bother You and Critical Race Theory
Recent events in the United States have prominently surfaced issues of race and ethnicity, a rise in hate crimes targeting black individuals (Ogbonnaya, Smith & Toyama, 2020). Racial bias is one of the main themes evident in this film. The main character, Cassius, originates from a poor background consisting of minorities. Cassius is black, and he needs to adopt his "white voice" for his promotion. The aspect of code-switching depicted in the movie as the character uses the white voice brings out the aspect of racism. Code-switching refers to the act of altering how individuals express themselves based on the audience, in this case, referring to blacks and whites. Therefore, this film has helped us understand that code-switching has emerged as a racial disclosure in the United States of America. How is this evident in the film? Soon after Cassius Green, the main character, begins his new job as a telemarketer, the business fails to make a single sale.
However, a black co-worker offers to give him a radical suggestion that dramatically brings success in the business. The co-worker tells him that if he wants to make some money in that region, he must use his "white voice." Cassius's new white voice that he copied from his father becomes the most significant asset in his business's success. What does code-switching help us understand in this film? The linguistic act of code-switching is complex. It is a social mobility tool, and for the black people, it is a tool for survival since the whites cannot buy goods and services after hearing the African voices on the phone calls. Racism has affected blacks' lives, forcing them to use code-switching as a defense against linguistic discrimination. So what should be done? In general, black individuals should love their natural forms of expression rather than criticizing code-switching.
Sorry to Bother You and Capitalism
Capitalism refers to an economy with a system in which the private investors own and controls the property according to personal interests, freely demand and supply, and setting prices in the market, thereby serving society (Sarwat & Ahmed 2015). In Sorry to Bother You film, capitalist society has been depicted between the whites and the blacks, with the main motive focusing on making profits. For instance, the co-worker tells Cassius if he wants to make some money, he should use his adopted "white voice," which worked for him favorably. Moreover, the film explores capitalism at different levels how surprisingly it manages to drive society.
Cassius starts to work as a mere telemarketer. He becomes more successful after using his "white voice," gets promoted, and life becomes more manageable. However, the company he works for uses a capitalist system just like all other companies, searching for profits. The company is only interested in making profits without considering what Cassius goes through. In the process, he even loses his girlfriend and colleagues. Cassius comes to his senses and begins to question his moral standing. He declares that he can no longer continue supporting their actions of turning human beings into equisapiens.
Conclusion
Generally, critical analysis of "Sorry to Bother You" film has played a role in understanding how capitalism and critical race theories are evident and influence social change. Besides, the theories help in understanding what society faces. This plays a role in dealing with issues in a new and different dimension as these are things that happen in a real-life environment. From the arguments above, we can conclude that racism is expressed in the film by Africans for their survival through "white voice." Furthermore, critical race theory is an approach that seeks to understand and combat race inequity in society (Gillborn & Ladson-Billings, 2020). Therefore it plays a hugely important role, which members of the majority population rarely recognize. It explores the social structuring of racism changing, complex and subtle, mainly benefiting the white people.
In comparison, capitalism has been used by the whites for their selfish interests. Apparently, the great virtue of s free market is that it does not care what racism is; it only cares whether you can produce a commodity you want to buy (Friedman, 2020). Hence it is an effective system of identifying individuals who hate each other, helping them deal with one another and help one another. Therefore themes and theories that exist in society today have both negative and positive intentions.
References
Friedman, M. (2020). Capitalism and freedom. University of Chicago press.
Gillborn, D., & Ladson-Billings, G. (2020). Critical race theory. SAGE Publications Limited.
Ogbonnaya-Ogburu, I. F., Smith, A. D., To, A., & Toyama, K. (2020, April). Critical race theory for HCI. In Proceedings of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 1-16).
Sarwat, J. & Ahmed, SM. (2015). "What is Capitalism?" Retrieved from; https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fandd/2015/06/basics.htm
Sorry to Bother You Film Link; https://cas.ryerson.ca/login?service=https%3a%2f%2flogin.ezproxy.lib.ryerson.ca%2flogin%3fqurl%3dezp.2aHR0cHM6Ly9tZWRpYTMuY3JpdGVyaW9ucGljLmNvbS9odGJpbi93d2Zvcm0vMDA2P1Q9QUw1Mjk0MDI-
