Sorry To Bother You: Why Mr. Blank's Name Is Bleeped Out
In the 2018 film Sorry To Bother You, Boots Riley doesn't skimp on social commentary but does it through an extremely surrealist lens, leading to why Mr. Blank's name is always bleeped out. Boots Riley's directorial debut, Sorry to Bother You stars LaKeith Stanfield as Cassius "Cash" Green, a young Black man who finds success working at a call center by using a "white voice." Riley originally came up with the concept for the film in 2012, but didn't release it until six years later. The story is a surrealist take on the intersection of race and capitalism in the United States that ends on one of the weirdest movie moments of the 2010s.
Sorry To Bother You opens with Cash, who ironically is broke, interviewing for a job at Regalview, a call center sales company that peddles encyclopedias to uninterested customers over the phone. After meeting his new coworker, Squeeze (Steven Yeun), and learning how to use his "white voice" from an older Black man at the company named Langston (Danny Glover), Cash is quickly promoted to Power Caller and gets to work upstairs. There, he meets a mysterious man named Mr. ______ (Omari Hardwick), who seems to be the lead Power Caller on the floor. He gives Cash a rundown of the place and what the Power Callers sell, which is much worse than what Cash had been selling before.
Every time Mr. ______'s name is mentioned in Sorry to Bother You, it's censored with a bleep and the speaker's mouth is blurred. While Boots Riley has never given a definitive answer about Mr. _______'s name (other than that it is spelled with seven spaces), there are a few ways that this choice could be interpreted. Mr. _______ could be a figment of Cash's imagination that is an extension of himself, similar to Elliot Alderson's delusion in Mr. Robot. His lack of identity also symbolizes losing himself to the company, which is exactly what happens to Cash when he accepts the Power Caller role.
What makes it likely that Mr. _______ is just an extension of Cash is that he seems to mostly interact with Cash, or indirectly with people with whom Cash is interacting. Mr. _______ represents what Cash believes that he needs to be in order to be taken seriously in the Power Caller role. The first thing that Mr. _______ tells Cash is to use his "white voice," provided by David Cross, at all times on the Power Caller floor. That voice got Cash to where he is, but it also serves as a mask that Cash quickly learns to hide behind. Like Mr. _______, Cash gets caught up in the glamour of being a Power Caller. When he finds out that Regalview is selling slave labor for WorryFree, a company that offers its workers food and housing in lieu of pay, he continues to work for them because of his high earnings.
Alternatively, Mr. _______ could be a devil figure, who is specifically there to seduce Cash into the Power Caller role by showing him what he could have if he does exactly what Regalview asks without question. He represents the shady business dealings of Regalview and WorryFree. He is a seductive character, manipulating Cash into ignoring his morals, even when it means selling out his striking colleagues by crossing the picket line. He is also the person who delivers the invitation to Cash to attend the party given by Worry Free CEO Steve Lift (Armie Hammer), who Cash discovers has been turning workers into Sorry to Bother You's horse/human hybrids called Equisapians, a literal representation of the dehumanization of WorryFree's laborers.
While the ending twist is a little on-the-nose, Sorry To Bother You paints a surreal image of what it's like to be a worker in America today. Cash is forced to decide if he will stand up for the rights of the Equisapians, or will become another agent of the company. Mr. _______ represents what Cash could be if he loses himself to capitalism, as well as an indicator of how much of himself he's already lost.