BlackKKlansman is better known and is already on my list though I have yet to watch it. I did not realize that this film, made by Boots Riley who is mostly known as a musician, shares such similar themes with it. But then after a while I realized that this isn’t about white-black racism at all, even if it seems so initially, but really about criticizing capitalism.

Cassius Green is black young man with a beautiful girlfriend named Detroit and no money. He finds work in a sleazy telemarketing company but has difficulty landing any sales. Then a veteran at the firm teaches him to make his calls using a ‘white voice’ and his sales go through the roof. Even while his friends and co-workers are organizing to protest for more pay and better conditions, he is promoted to an elite Power Caller, working out of the top floor. He is initially concerned that he is assigned to sell the services of WorryFree, effectively a supplier of slave labor but is assuaged by the large salary he is offered. Meanwhile Detroit is revealed to be an activist fighting against WorryFree and his former friends become estranged from him for crossing the picket lines. However as Cassius continues to rise up the ranks, he is introduced to CEO WorryFree and learns that they have far, far more sinister plans.

I started watching this without knowing much about this film other than the ‘white voice’ thing and so had a very mistaken impression about what it was all about. Indeed it’s not about racism or black people needing to act white in order to get ahead so much as a general condemnation of capitalism and how the drive to maximize profits at all costs leads to dehumanizing workers. In this case, very literally so. Indeed the world here is depicted as a very stylized dystopia that the posters on Broken Forum liken to Terry Gilliam’s Brazil. To me it looks exactly like a film set in the Grand Theft Auto universe which satirizes everything, complete with how there are seemingly only three television channels which show the same awful shit. For example, the Asian co-worker Squeeze is the main labor organizer. At one point he gives an impassioned speech about being exploited and then also works in a creed against sexually transmitted diseases. Sure it’s funny but the irreverence pervades through everything so it’s hard to decide if the film is actually being serious about its main message.

On one level, it makes this seem an awful lot like a film that throws a ton of ideas at the wall, each one an angry scream of outrage that is also darkly funny but goes nowhere productive. It’s angry and at times clever but I’m not sure that it’s particularly insightful or that the characters engender much sympathy. At the same time, there are signs that the film is even more insidious and cynical than it appears on the surface. For example, it is revealed that even Detroit uses a white voice when marketing her work and her performance art seems ridiculous rather than sympathetic. Then there’s how the CEO of WorryFree wants Cassius to be the Martin Luther King Jr. of the equisapiens and that is exactly what he is at the end of the film. It raises the question of whether there are any genuine heroes in the film at all if they are all still part of the system. That would make the film impressively nihilistic but I’m not sure that it makes me like it more.

For a film that is about being ‘woke’, it strangely seems to do Detroit’s character a disservice, treating her as if she were a reward for being socially progressive. I’m also leery of how Cassius is so poor that he can’t afford gas for his car but they never seem to lack the money to hang out in bars with pumping music. Anyway I’m not a big fan of this film but I have to admire the creativity and energy that went into it. I would also consider it a more interesting, more relevant dissection of capitalism than something like the staid I, Daniel Blake.