The White Voice Scene (13:05 – 15:04)
“It’s not really a white voice, it’s what they wish they sounded like.”
Boots Riley’s 2018 film Sorry To Bother You is one of a few films approaching a new genre of Black dark comedy horror that combines a nod to blaxploitation aesthetics with themes of capitalism, white privilege and white supremacy. The film is a psychedelic sci-fi journey into a dark world of white capitalism, through telemarketer Cassius Green (played by Lakeith Stanfield) who becomes engrossed in the promise of success that his exploitative job offers him, despite the protests and unionisation that surrounds him. In his promotion, Cassius uncovers the terrifying truth behind his workplace’s corporation and its CEO, which involves warmongering and a bio-engineered form of modern slavery. Through his greed, Cassius becomes a cog in this system, and only after seeing the extent of its damage, joins his friends in protesting it. This film combines the discussion and presentation of important American politics with Afro-surrealism, addressing the racial injustice and hegemony of neoliberalism while uplifting black culture and art.
One particular scene that presents the film’s discussion of white supremacy and privilege comes at minute 13 – the ‘white voice’ scene. Still fairly new to the job at this point, Cassius is struggling to succeed in telemarketing. When he’s hung up on after introducing himself, an older Black man, Langston (played by highly commended actor and political activist Danny Glover), in the stall next to him begins to laugh. “Lemme give you a tip. Use your white voice” he says. Cassius’ attempts to be well-spoken and pronounced have failed thus far, and seeing his state of confusion, Langston continues; “It’s, like, sounding like you don’t have a care. You’ve got your bills paid, you’re happy about your future”. His description continues, and he demonstrates this ‘white voice’ with a high-pitched, cheery voice that mismatches his own – clearly dubbed by another actor.
This display and explanation of the ‘white voice’ demonstrates a key concept for the film; it is the reason Cassius reaches success and promotion and gets as far as meeting and becoming involved with the corporation and its CEO Steve Lift. By adopting this white voice Cassius wavers his morality for greed. This particular scene denotes the symbolism of the white voice for the film but also reflects the real-world concept of passing. Bernard Beck describes this concept and practice, ‘African Americans who “pass” are able to take advantage of the improved life chances known as “White skin privilege.” But they often pay a heavy price.’ (Beck, 2019). Much like passing, the white voice facilitates opportunities by fooling white people, and thus white systems, into believing that these individuals are one of them, revealing the premise that only white people can be successful in a dominant white system and environment. In its intangibility, the white voice signifies the symbolic violence and the immateriality of white supremacy. Passing is conveyed as something difficult to perfect; especially as Cassius believes he “talks with a white voice anyway” in his politeness and argot-less tone, something the old man tells him is just ‘talking proper’. This exchange reflects how specific the characteristics of successfully assimilating are, something reminiscent of the Shibboleth; the particularities that distinguish a member from an outsider. This is further presented by the use of a white actor’s voice dubbed over Danny Glover’s, which suggests Riley’s belief that truly passing and adopting white privilege and culture can never truly be achieved by Black people. What’s more, the predominant ‘white voices’ in the film, Cassius’ and Mr. ______ (purposely anonymised in the film to add to his dishonest character), are played by two well-known middle-class and ‘nerdy’ type-cast actors David Cross and Patton Oswalt. In a promotional comedy ‘bit’ for the film’s release the two ‘white voice’ actors spoke about their roles in the film, satirically talking about how hard it was to perfect their white voices, Oswalt jokes that he had to ‘Culturally dis-appropriate’ in order to perfect the part (ANNAPURNA, 2018). Using such well-known voices for the characters, which are almost caricatures of whiteness, further present how separated and different men and women like Cassius and Langston are from their white, privileged customers.
This overdubbed voice and the music that accompanies nearly every time it’s used is purposely unnerving, touching on the uncanny. As Alice Maurice writes, ‘Here, the white voice activates that ‘strange and vertiginous experience’…with the white voice taking over like the ‘living corpse’ integrated into the film.’ (Maurice, 2022). This depicts Cassius’ assimilation as immediately wrong, and as the start of something morbidly dark; Cassius’ use of the device eventually leads to not only his own ruination but the ruin of others too.
The white voice is not only a device used by Boots Riley to depict the social inequality between cultures and races in America; Spike Lee released Blackkklansman, another film that uses the white voice, the same year. In his film, Lee uses the white voice as a way for a Black FBI agent, Ron Stallworth, to get closer to leaders of the KKK in order to take them down. As opposed to Riley’s use of the device to show assimilation, Lee’s use is more about infiltration – a Black man using the white conformity required of him to dismantle a section of white supremacy. The same year as both films’ release, Riley tweeted an essay about his disapproval of Lee’s film, accusing him of sugarcoating a true story that is nowhere near as revolutionary as it seems. ‘The real Ron Stallworth infiltrated a Black radical organization for years… sabotag(ing) a black radical organisation whose intent had to do with at the very least fighting racist oppression.’ (Riley, 2018). With this in mind, you could consider the unsettling feeling that Riley creates when the white voice is used to extend to it’s use in Lee’s film and the real-life case, as even in its good intention it harms America’s black population.
Riley’s use of the ‘White Voice’ in Sorry To Bother You, introduced and described in this scene, displays the social inequality between cultures and races in America, and highlights the white privilege that actively exists in Western Society. The white voice becomes a device within the film that reminds the viewer of the necessity, yet immorality, of cultural assimilation in order to be successful in the racially hegemonic society of the United States.
Bibliography
ANNAPURNA. (2018). ‘SORRY TO BOTHER YOU | The Art of The White Voice’. Youtube. (online). Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJIBBGLKUA8&ab_channel=ANNAPURNA
Beck, B. (2019), ‘The Next Voice You Hear: BlacKkKlansman, Sorry to Bother You, and Crazy Rich Asians,’ Multicultural perspectives (Mahwah, N.J.), 2019-01-02, Vol.21 (1), p.19-22
Maurice, A. (2022) ‘Use your white voice’: race, sound, and genre in Sorry to Bother You, New Review of Film and Television Studies, 20:1, 88-100, DOI: 10.1080/17400309.2021.1968710Riley, B. (2018).’Ok. Here’s are some thoughts on #Blackkklansman’. Twitter. (online). Available at: https://x.com/BootsRiley/status/1030575674447212544?s=20
Culture of Youth 