During one of the Friday Film events, I had the pleasure of watching Sorry to Bother You (2018). The film by Boots Riley followed Cassius “Cash” Green, a man living with his girlfriend Detroit in his uncle Sergio’s garage and simply trying to survive in the capitalist United States of the 21st century. I enjoyed the film mostly because of its fascinating characters — I sympathized with Cash’s sentiments in the first scene of the film that he wanted to do something meaningful with his life, and I enjoyed watching Detroit create her art (and seeing what kind of wild earrings she would wear) throughout the film. In addition to the characters, however, I also believe that the film provided a powerful message: it can be too easy to become fixated on the idea of being wealthy. Even if one has good intentions at the outset as Cash did (i.e. earning enough money to pay off his uncle Sergio’s house and to provide more material comforts for himself and Detroit), one can easily go beyond doing good for oneself and others and become greedy, as Cash did by crossing the picket line at Regalview. The film showed that greed can backfire spectacularly, from when Cash got hit with a soda can and became a meme online, to when Detroit left him, to when he was transformed into a half-horse, half-human “equisapien” by Steve Lift, the CEO of WorryFree. Lift wanted to use Cash as a false revolutionary figure to suppress the other equisapiens, but I was happy to see that Cash went back to his friends at the end of the film, declining the offer and losing his job, even though it paid well. I also appreciated, despite its bizarreness, the resolution that occurred at the end of the film — after inadvertently becoming an equisapien, Cash and many of the other equisapiens stormed Lift’s house (presumably to take revenge on him and/or force him to turn them back into humans).

I feel that this film conveyed many messages beyond the one that I described, but I think that its anti-greed message — although incredibly hyperbolic– is especially useful at a less extreme level for college students who have chosen or are choosing their major and are pressured into considering stem or business careers, despite having other interests. I think that it will also be useful to keep this anti-greed message in mind long after college, where one might be faced with ethical decisions involving money versus personal values in the workplace.