Voice of Success

One of the central themes of Sorry to Bother You is white voice. The white voice is first introduced to the film when Danny Glover, playing another black telemarketer, Langston, tells him that he won't find success if he doesn't use his white voice. The white voice is voiced by white comedian David Cross who uses his Burberry-Vineyard-Vines-MildisSpicy style voice to create the most stereotypical voice possible. Cassius rises to Regal View fame with is his success as we see through the epic, hell yeah, alright, that's tight high-five montage between Cassius and his semi-crazy manager. With his white-voice, it drives down the point that success is brought through racial status. A customer speaking to a telemarketer has no idea what the other person across the line looks like, but only know what they sound like and therefore that's their only judgment and if they're white then they must be better and more "legitimate".

The connection between success and the sound of someone's voice comes up later when Cassius is asked to rap at Steve Lift's coke fiesta. For the first time, he's told to not use his white voice and is pressured to rap. While he is pressured to rap after being racially stereotyped as someone who can rap he ends up finding that the only success is when he says, n-word shit constantly. Even his fellow white-voice African-American compadre, Mr. Blank, is baffled by Cassius. Yet this is the only way for Cassius to hold his stake in power after working being in poverty for so long. The final example of voice and success is Denver's white voice during her performance art. Denver has been working on the exhibition for a long time and is invested in the success of it and therefore, presumably, uses her white voice to make her exhibition sound much more professional. Imitating someone else's or some race's voice doesn't have to be bad necessarily as we see with Denver's exhibition but it does highlight the problems surrounding race.

Comments

  1. Lili BanihashemDecember 19, 2018 at 10:49 AM

    Yeah I thought the english accent in her performance was really interesting, and it almost seems like it's meant to seem hypocritical - she hates his white voice, but at the same time she has her own version of a white voice that she uses for her work. I'm really not sure what to think about it though.

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  2. SolomiaDecember 19, 2018 at 1:23 PM

    Nice post! I was thinking about the irony in the fact that Cassius using his real voice in front of white people is viewed as performance (aka the rap scene, or the scene where Lift asks him to tell the group stories about growing up in Oakland), whereas when he puts on the performance of “white voice” he is actually treated more seriously by whites.

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  3. Annemily HogansonDecember 19, 2018 at 3:41 PM

    Nice post! I'm not sure what to make of Detroit's white performance voice. Since she's using it to make her art more successful and so helps promote the themes of her art, it's an understandable means to a positive end. In that way it's similar to how Cassius uses his white voice to earn money that he needs pretty desperately (at first). It's sad that we live in a society that doesn't think Detroit's voice is professional though and it's interesting that she doesn't choose to address it in her art.

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  4. Ayah JaberDecember 21, 2018 at 12:57 PM

    Awesome post! I also think it is revealing that Cash's normal voice is automatically associated with rap by the white people at the party. Like what the other commentators have said, he is there as entertainment. There are no other entertainers at that party and I can't remember but I'm pretty sure there's no music other than Cash's "rap."

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  5. Emma H.December 22, 2018 at 12:59 PM

    I agree with Annemily about how Detroit and Cassius both use their white voices to become more successful. Nice job bringing together all the different times that voice is used in the movie to show something. Good post.

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  6. Ethan AshbrookDecember 26, 2018 at 8:35 AM

    Nice post! I found it interesting that when Cassius becomes a power caller, he's not allowed to use his normal voice on the high sales levels. While he could've switched onto it for calling still, it's odd that he has to use it at all times. I feel like it shows how white privilege and being white is associated more with success, even more than a black man making his way up in the ranks.

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