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Detroit's Performance Art


When we started Sorry to Bother you on Monday and the scene with Detroit’s performance started playing, I was really confused. I missed class on Thursday, so I had no idea what had happened in the last 45 minutes and I didn’t understand why people were throwing blood-filled water balloons at Detroit.

I watched the rest of the movie today so I understand the context of the plot of the movie but I still have a lot of questions.

Detroit quotes lines from The Last Dragon, which she describes as a “timeless Motown movie.” According to Wikipedia “the film was a critical disappointment but a financial success, and is considered a cult classic.” It’s about a black man who aims to become a great martial artist. In the scene Detroit quotes, a singer leaves her boyfriend because he’s kidnapped someone to help her career and she doesn’t want anybody to get hurt because of her.

The theme of breaking up nicely reflects the state of Cassius’s and Detroit’s relationship. The line “You’re nothing but a misguided midget asshole with dreams of ruling the world” nicely applies to how Detroit might see Cassius for breaking the picket line.

I’m not sure how the audience throwing things at Detroit might fit in. In the world of Sorry to Bother You, people seem a lot more okay with casual violence (I’m thinking especially about the “I Got the Shit Kicked Out of Me” game show). Maybe it represents how the larger world attacks people who stand up for moral actions and decisions. From a plot perspective, it does set up the confrontation between Detroit and Cassius but I think the confrontation is supposed to show how Cassius’s morals don’t align with his actions at that point in the movie.

The theme Detroit emphasizes isn’t her relationship though. She says the performance is about coltan, which is used in cell phones. There have been multiple wars in the Democratic Republic of Congo over Coltan mining. The audience throws cellphones, bullet casings, and blood at Detroit so I think the bullet casings and blood are supposed to be a visual representation of the conflict that produces cell phones. I have no idea how the Coltan theme of the performance is supposed to fit with the relationship theme or how it relates to The Last Dragon.

Maybe I’m taking the performance too seriously or literally, but I just thought it was interesting and I’m interested in what you guys think. If you know more about The Last Dragon or if you have any ideas why Detroit was talking in a posh accent for the performance, fill me in in the comments!

Comments

  1. Lili BanihashemDecember 19, 2018 at 10:27 AM

    This is such an interesting blog post! Thanks for doing some research on the scene, because I was also really confused but the way you explained it makes a lot of sense, especially the part about the world attacking people who stand up for what it is important. One thing about her performance that I found interesting was the fact that she does it in an English accent. I'm not sure I would exactly call it a "white voice" because obviously even non-white people in England speak with English accents, but nevertheless she's changing her voice to a more "posh" one. I thought this was really interesting especially considering the significance of Cash's white voice throughout the scene.

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  2. SolomiaDecember 19, 2018 at 1:06 PM

    I also thought Detroit’s performance art was interesting. I could see how it related to the plot of the film, but personally the actual significance of her work was unclear to me. Who was she representing as she read the monologue? Who was the audience supposed to represent? I can understand the visually shocking scene of her being bloodied and hit with cellphones, but the metaphor is not very clear to me. The fact that the passage is from The Last Dragon is also interesting, as it doesn’t seem to relate to coltan mining too directly.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Ayah JaberDecember 21, 2018 at 12:42 PM

    This is a really cool post. I also took it as the world (specifically white people in power) trying to silence people who are standing up against capitalism and/or racism. Tbh I think there were a lot of scenes in the movie that could be better understood if it were watched for a second time, and like you, I also missed Thursday so I was even more confused.

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  4. Emma H.December 22, 2018 at 12:06 PM

    I missed the first part of the performance art, and now that I've seen this post, I'm interested in watching it to see what I missed. At the same time, I wouldn't really get the references so I'm not sure how much of an impact it would have on me. Nice post!

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