They got so powerful, and their leadership was actually radical, that they started striking on behalf of community organizations. They were able to win the things that they wanted. Not necessarily a radical union, but a militant union. They got the gangsters out, and in the 1960s they became a very militant union. When the union started out, in the 1950s, it was run by gangsters - people that worked with the bosses. There’s a documentary called Rocking the Foundations about the Building Labourers Federation in Australia in the 1970s. It is also one that has the potential for exacting compromise from power. To the extent that there is a spectacle in it, it’s a much clearer spectacle than going out on the street and just saying, “This is all fucked up” or saying, “We’re against this one thing.” It’s a spectacle that teaches. It is those kinds of actions that teach the people involved and the onlookers how capitalism works.
The interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.īecause that is where the wealth is created. Jacobin recently sat down with Riley in Washington, DC before a screening of Sorry to Bother You to discuss his widely acclaimed film, the role of art in anticapitalist struggles, and what kind of political action the current moment calls for. And it doesn’t merely show us what we’ll accept when we think we can’t do anything - it shows us just what we can do to fight capitalist exploitation. It’s one of the rare films that meaningfully depicts collective labor struggles. It’s also one of the best anticapitalist films in recent memory. Sorry to Bother You isn’t just an entertaining, mind-bending film. As Riley explains in the following interview, this bending of reality shows “how we will accept anything if it’s packaged in the right way and we don’t think we can do anything about it.” While the world of Sorry to Bother You is similar to the one we inhabit, it contains elements of magical realism. In the movie, the company Worry Free promises workers freedom from the worries of unemployment or want of food and shelter by allowing them to sign a lifetime contract. They’re then housed in a prison and receive no wages for their work.
#SORRY TO BOTHER YOU FILM MOVIE#
The movie - which Riley both wrote and directed - follows Cassius “Cash” Green, a young black man who makes his way up the ladder at a telemarketing firm by using his “white voice.” At the same time Green is ascending, his fellow telemarketers, fed up with low pay and no benefits, are organizing a union - creating an explosion of collective labor action rarely shown on the silver screen. But with Sorry to Bother You, Riley has made his first foray into film. As both a longtime activist and the lead vocalist for the hip-hop group The Coup, Boots Riley is no stranger to politically charged art.
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