Ellison's Influence: Sorry To Bother You

   Sorry to Bother You is a film written and directed by Boots Riley, released in 2018. The movie deals with issues of class, employment, and depicts the way race ties into them. In this post, I will be discussing how Sorry to Bother You and Invisible Man relate to each other, and as a warning this post will contain minor spoilers for the movie.
    Sorry to Bother You follows a young man named Cassius Green. Looking for work, and living in his uncle's garage, Cassius eventually lands himself a spot at a telemarketing company. At first, he fails to achieve any semblance of success. Unable to maintain a call with a customer for more than ten seconds, he receives some advice from a seasoned coworker. He is told by an older black man that in order to sell products to his customers, he needs to use his "white voice." The idea is that sounding like a person with their life in order will make people more likely to buy what you're selling. Similarly, the brotherhood in Invisible Man sought to control the nature of which the narrator delivered his speeches to the public. Later on in the movie, Cassius is pressured to quit his job, and is at the same time offered a promotion. The narrator in Invisible Man was also offered a job he was at first compelled to reject, but changes his mind after realizing that it would supply him with the money he needed to repay the woman allowing him to live on her property. Cassius' arc is the exact same, as he accepts the promotion to repay his uncle, as well as to get a new place of his own. Once they have achieved their new positions, both characters are used as instruments to serve someone else's larger agenda by wright of vocal performance. In the case of Cassius Green, the performance is telemarketing with a white voice, and in the case of our invisible man the performance is delivering a speech. There are smaller parallels as well, such as the way Cassius and the invisible man are both asked to rap and sing at the social gatherings of their respective organizations.
    I think the similarities between the two works show both the influence of Ralph Ellison's work, as well as the importance of the issues the works cover. Invisible Man was published in 1952, sixty-six years before the release of Sorry to Bother You and yet the same strings of instrumentality, censorship, housing/class, and race are still present and very pressing. 

Comments

  1. SAhmad DastNovember 30, 2021 at 9:06 PM

    Your comparison between these two is spot on. The Brotherhood were definitely trying to warp the narrator into a people pleaser, by doing things such as changing what he said in his speeches so he would only promote their doctrine, or trying to prevent him from speaking about race the way he wants to. And just like how in Sorry to Bother You Cassius will suffer from low sales and the danger of losing his job if he doesn't continue to please his customers, the narrator faces the same dilemma. If he stops doing what the Brotherhood wants him to do, he will lose all his power and everything he worked towards - as demonstrated by them moving him down to a different part of New York. Overall, this is an excellent comparison and helps flesh out Invisible Man even more.

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