Further Reading

Podcast Episode

Chantelle Lewis, Tissot Regis and Saskia Papadakis, ‘The Sociological Review: Satnam Virdee’, Surviving Society [LINK]

Sociologists Chantelle Lewis, Tissot Regis and Saskia Papadakis interview Satnam Virdee, author of Racism, Class and the Racialized Outsider. They discuss how it is impossible to understand the development of capitalism without understanding racism. This is just one early example of the great work done on this podcast to explore race and class in an accessible way.

Magazine Article

Sagal Mohammed, ‘Boots Riley: “Capitalism must have poverty in order to exist”’, Dazed (2018) [LINK]

Journalist Sagal Mohammed interviews Boots Riley about the making of Sorry To Bother You and the film’s political significance. Riley breaks down some key Marxist principles here in a way which makes their relevance to the film clear.

Academic Article

Leshu Torchin, ‘Alienated Labor’s Hybrid Subjects: Sorry To Bother You and the Tradition of the Economic Rights Film’, Film Quarterly, 72:4 (2019) 29-37. [LINK]

Leshu Torchin discusses how difficult it is to identify the genre of Sorry To Bother You due to the multi-layered nature of the film. She argues that one way of categorising the film is as an ‘economic rights film’ – part of a genre of cinema which demands that everyone have the right to housing, food, medical care and all the necessities of life.

Academic Book

Eithne Quinn, A Piece of the Action: Race and Labor in Post-Civil Rights Hollywood (2019) [LINK]

Eithne Quinn has produced a study of the relationship between black representation on screen and the working conditions for black people in Hollywood. Her conclusion includes a brief analysis of Sorry To Bother You and how the politics of the film match up with the working conditions on set.

Background Reading

Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition (1983) [LINK]

This is a book which was very influential on Robin D. G. Kelley’s work. In it, Cedric Robinson critiques the Eurocentrism of Marxism and explores how including Black histories into an analysis of capitalism radically changes how one might approach labour organising and political action.