Cult

     Something that immediately struck me about Sorry to Bother You was how much WorryFree resembled a cult to me. And yet despite this and the ever increasing backlash against it, ads for it continued to be run on television and billboards stayed up, albeit often with a little touch of graffiti. Not only that but congresspeople are shown celebrating after it is revealed that WorryFree is turning people into horse people. I think the director, Boots Riley, definitely trying to make a point by doing this.
     But first I want to start with what about WorryFree seemed like a cult to me. First of all, their message is extremely suspicious. They claim that they will solve all of your problems if you just join them and sign a lifelong contract that prevents you from leaving. And if that doesn't sound like a cult I don't know what does. Second of all, it is undoubtedly exploiting people. This made me think of a flowchart I saw about whether something is a cult. One of the questions leading up to the answer, "definitely a cult!!", was do people get exploited. And if the answer was "yes but no stuff" then it was a cult. And this is what is happening in the case of WorryFree. Everybody who is signing up is being exploited for their labor and receiving almost nothing in return. Another sequence in that flowchart was the question "is it a cult" and one of the answers was "it's a movement". While nobody every calls WorryFree a movement, the creator, Steve Lift, calls it the future which is eerily similar. The final thing is about Steve Lift. He just looked like a cult leader to me. I don't know what it was but while watching the movie, the first time I saw him, the first thought that popped into my head was, "he looks like the leader of a cult". 
     That brings me to how despite the obvious signs that WorryFree is a cult, the ads continue to be run and people still continue to support it. I think the most revealing scene in that regard is when the congresspeople are shown celebrating with WorryFree when their stocks increase after it comes out they are turning their workers into equisapiens. My best guess is that Boots Riley is trying to criticize how people are willing to do anything for enough money. This also matches pretty well with how Cassius Green is willing to be a power caller despite how horrible it is simply because it pays enough. 

Unreliable Narrator

     Something that I've been thinking about a lot is how trustworthy of a narrator Gunnar Kaufman is.  The main reason I've been asking myself this question is that the narrative voice is Gunnar from the present when he is the messiah and renowned poet. This means that he isn't telling his story as it happens but what he remembers it as. As such it is vulnerable to him altering memories of the past of even interpreting his experience differently than he did at the time. We had a similar discussion about the Narrator in Invisible Man and how we weren't sure whether we could trust him for similar reasons.
     The other reason I have trouble trusting the narrator is it seems like he is embellishing the story to at least some degree. Take for example the scene when he is recounting how he told his story of his entire family tree when he was in elementary school. For one, I find it hard to believe he can remember what happened in elementary school clearly, because I, for one, know that I can hardly remember anything from them. But putting that aside it is still strange. For one he is surprisingly eloquent for his age. I'm pretty sure there was no one at my elementary school who could speak that well and I'm pretty sure I couldn't even now. The other thing about that story is when Gunnar is telling it he uses words most elementary schoolers would use. Just a few examples are quintessential, daguerreotype, and honeysuckle. One other example of something that seems embellished is his introduction to the sport of basketball. However, at the same time, Gunnar in the present has sold 126 million copies of a book of poetry so maybe his childhood isn't as embellished as it seems.