Sorry To Bother You Voice Sound Analysis Film Theory Term Paper

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Sorry to Bother You and Voice


Sound is an important element in any film, but especially in Sorry to Bother You (2018) where it plays a central role in the plot. Sound is an active force “which possesses the power to attack, invade, or manipulate, rather than just being a transitory aural whiff carried by the wind.”[footnoteRef:1] Nowhere is this seen more than when Cassius Green applies his white voice in a scene that encapsulates his acceptance into the corporation, his own sense of pride, and simultaneously his own descent into selling out as he and his manager Johnny celebrate with a montage of high-fiving while rock music plays in the background reinforcing the feeling of acceleration into a new phase of life. The scene combines sound, voice, and ear as well as the body in film and really embodies the idea that Chion gets to in his assessment of sound usage in film: “Chion\'s examples highlight the dark side of sound\'s ability to embody agency, a fact also present in another practice, namely ventriloquism. A voice originates not in the face or the mouth but apparently in another part of the body.”[footnoteRef:2] The scene is an act of deliberate ventriloguism as white voice is dubbed over the actual speaking voice of the actor playing Cassius Green, who mimes along with the voice but is not actually heard. The very act is surreal in and of itself and also reflects the surreal nature of film—how with the introduction of sound, the experience of watching and hearing a film changed so that now it is “difficult to decide whether the cinematic experience takes place \'inside\' or \'outside\' the body.”[footnoteRef:3] [1: Chapter 6: “Cinema as Ear—Acoustics and Space,” 157.] [2: Chapter 6: “Cinema as Ear—Acoustics and Space,” 157.] [3: Chapter 6: “Cinema as Ear—Acoustics and Space,” 158.]
The scene begins with Cassius attempting to land his first sale over the phone with white voice and as the camera pans over to capture Cassius at his cubicle in the act, the viewer sees Cassius engaged in the call with his headset on, as he uses a pencil to make points in the air as though he were conducting a silent symphony inside his head. We hear the white voice, but then the film cuts to a surreal interplay between Cassius and the person on the other end of the line together in a room. Cassius is still at a desk acting as a caller but the white person is now in front of him (on a phone to emphasize the fact that he is receiving the call)—but the fact they are together emphasizes the overcoming of space that the white voice has enabled.

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This is exactly what sound in film was able to do—play with space in such a way that we feel more connected to the images on the…

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…Was that Visa or Mastercard?” all while manager Johnny leers at him in ecstasy from behind the wall of another cubicle.[footnoteRef:5] Cassius is only half Cassius here—just as he will be half-Cassius at the end of the film after his transformation into a horse—but by transforming into a half-horse he also regains a sense of his own humanity. He regains his own voice having lost all outward ability to fit in as a “good” human. He is free to return to his activist voice, a role that prevented him from being a “good” human (in the eyes of the corporation). [4: Chapter 6: “Cinema as Ear—Acoustics and Space,” 163.] [5: Boots Riley, Sorry to Bother You. Focus Features, 2018.]
The scene of Cassius’s assumption into the world of “white voice” is pivotal to the theme and plot of the film in this way, and sound, voice, ear and body are all used to convey complex ideas about what is going on in the movie, how film itself relates to the audience, how the viewer connects to the images on the screen, how the viewer himself is a consumer, and how the filmmaker too can be an activist. The film is ultimately about using voice to make changes, and here the scene shows how voice can be used wrongly for an artificial or superficial purpose. Sound is manipulated to give the impression of voice—but what is real? The film itself asks this question and invites….....

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