Black Skin, White Voices From Bad Faith to Strategic Essentialism in Sorry to Bother You

This article discusses Boots Riley’s Sorry to Bother You (2018) as a political dystopia in which its main character Cassius Green is torn between voluntary slavery and the mimetic desire to be a slave trader. The film is a reboot of Frantz Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks (1952), replacing white masks with white voices to expose the racial hierarchy perpetuated in neoliberal ideologies. In the film, Cassius adopting the white voice can be seen as Sartrean “bad faith,” a form of self-deception which defines him simultaneously as what he is not (white) in order not to be what he is (black). Furthermore, the film is discussed as an example of “strategic essentialism” by which the oppressed community can engage in resistance against the dominant system by embracing its subaltern nature as an essential feature. By embodying the notion of strategic essentialism, Sorry to Bother You renders its satirical vision as exceptionally poignant, thus propelling its social critique.