By Tristan Pagan
“Green Book” was nominated for best picture in 2019. I started thinking about that movie again when the story came out that amid BLM protest the movie “The Help,” based on the novel of the same name, was one of the most watched movies on Netflix. What does the “Green Book” have to do with “Sorry to Bother You”? This movie should have been nominated in its stead.
“Sorry to Bother You” is the surrealist comedy masterpiece that is the directorial debut of the rapper Boots Riley. The movie is a political satire in a comedy trench coat about the exploitation of workers. It uses absurdist imagery as metaphor.
In one part, the horse people the company character Cassius is working for are a metaphor for exploited laborers. Illegal slave labor is represented by those being turned into horse people. Get it? Like work horses.
Did I mention this movie was a comedy?
This theme of people being taken advantage of runs throughout the movie. Cassius rants to his landlord about being overcharged. Cassius’ boss seems like a sellout, but it is later revealed that he is just doing this to get ahead and he never cared about what he could do to change things. He just accepted what is and tried to make money.
The only real villain of the movie is the guy at the top named Steve Lift. Everyone else is just a victim with bills to pay. The reason why Steve Lift wanted Cassius is because he relates to people. Cassius is part of a union and can influence people to prevent them from making real change, an obvious parallel to real-life labor politics.
The oppressed underclass through riots and protest strong-arms the company to stop using slave labor because they have something to lose. Real social changes don’t come from the upper class. They come from the oppressed underclass who are directly affected by the thing they are protesting.
