ABSTRACT

Looking primarily at Boots Riley’s Sorry to Bother You (2018), this essay explores the way race informs the relationship between the ‘body genres’ of comedy and horror. Riley’s film works through genre hybridity and ‘genre switching’, and this essay examines the links between the film’s genre reflexivity and the other kind of reflex – the ‘involuntary bodily response’. By locating its critique – by assaulting genre – at the level of sound, the film offers a way for us to think about our own involuntary responses, our own reflexes, when it comes to racial categories and racial identity. Looking particularly at the ‘white voice’ device, I argue that the film’s formal and stylistic strategies also enact a deeper critique, revisiting and re-activating the ways in which the basic conditions of the cinematic illusion have been suffused with racialized meaning in American film. In particular, the film’s strategies reflect how an imaginary Blackness has worked to generate genre and to animate the links between genres – especially comedy and horror. By reflecting on embodiment and disembodiment – and the synchronization of sound and image – Sorry to Bother You exploits genre, working it like a puppet, or like a monstrous filmic body.

摘要

主要看 Boots Riley 的《抱歉打扰你》（2018 年），这篇文章探讨了种族如何影响喜剧和恐怖的“身体类型”之间的关系。莱利的电影作品通过类型混合和“类型转换”，本文探讨了电影类型反射和另一种反射——“不自觉的身体反应”之间的联系。通过将批评——通过攻击类型——定位在声音的层面，这部电影为我们提供了一种方式来思考我们自己的非自愿反应，我们自己的反应，当涉及到种族类别和种族身份时。特别关注“白声”装置，我认为这部电影的形式和风格策略也制定了更深层次的批评，重新审视和重新激活电影幻觉的基本条件在美国电影中充满种族化意义的方式. 特别是，这部电影的策略反映了想象中的黑人是如何产生流派和动画流派之间的联系的——尤其是喜剧和恐怖片。通过反思具身化和无形化——以及声音和图像的同步——抱歉打扰你利用类型，像木偶一样工作，或者像一个巨大的电影身体。