Have you seen Sorry To Bother You yet? Excellent! Now you can read my featured essay in the July/August copy of Film Comment Magazine. (BTW--NO SPOILERS here)
"That first screening of Sorry to Bother You I attended was framed by the release of Childish Gambino/Donald Glover’s “This Is America” music video, directed by Hiro Murai, which at the time was being celebrated and widely parsed on social media and podcasts. There are relevant parallels between the sardonic music video and Riley’s satirical film: both are entertaining and disturbing at the same time—highly designed, layered, and musically structured works with fluid transitions but odd shifts in mood. They are consistently surprising and even shockingly dark. Stanfield is another common denominator between the film and Glover’s video, linked via his role as laconic and vaguely magical Darius in another project by Glover, the Emmy Award–winning TV series Atlanta, for which Murai often directs episodes. In Sorry to Bother You, the actor has the opportunity to create a full, sympathetic leading character (as much as a satirical film can withstand), and his deep relationship with Detroit, the love story at the core of the film, prevents its polemics and lampoons from pushing any sense of alienation into extremes. Furthermore, his presence evokes the work of Jordan Peele, who featured Stanfield as the expropriated, youthful black body of an elderly white man in his Oscar-winning “social thriller” Get Out."
But wait, there's more! Here's a link to a STBY podcast, a conversation between "white voice" me and Film Comment's Editor in Chief, Nic Rapold. We vainly attempt to wrangle additional details about the film that couldn't be included in the article using words and without spoiling! like the below:
"As the film grows increasingly bizarre there is scene that provokes queasy laughs leave a bitter aftertaste. At a debauched house party straight outta of Eyes Wide Shut, Steve Lift (a quasi Jobs/Zuckerberg figure as played by Armie Hammer) cajoles Cassius into attempting to "free-style" for his guests. Initially, the all white crowd is bewildered by his awkward rhymes, only accepting (and joining in) Cassius rhythmically shouting a racist epithet, in a desperate and reductive parody of hardcore rap, as his authentic “black” voice."
Keep Print Alive!
To read the full article, please buy a print copy of the magazine.