"Sorry To Bother You"—But Here's A Major Dilemma

An essay by Sequoia Sheriff

I thought it would be easy to write this essay, to be completely honest. 

Addison (the founder of Mixedlife) sent me a kindly worded message asking me to write about being mixed race, and how that affected me as a film director, and I thought I could just sit down and the words would just pour out of me. I’d just have to edit for word count like how all my college essays had been. For goodness sake, I had made an entire two films on being mixed and how that affected me (and other mixed race people around me) in a modern day world, how could I not pump this out of me? However, the more I thought about writing it, the less I wanted to write it. The less I knew what I wanted to say. What Addison had been asking me? Well, it’s a conversation, an argument that I’ve been having with myself for awhile now. An argument that I believe many persons of color who are also filmmakers have with themselves.

Nothing sums it up better, however, than a conversation I was having with my friend Adesina on the very subject. It was the last few weeks of summer in Los Angeles, the air was hot and heavy and we had both decided to take refuge in a quaint little vegan restaurant tucked around the corner in Culver City to eat lunch for the last time together. We had sat down at one of the wobbily, uneven tables, with mismatched chairs scattered about the family-style room, and decided to share a bowl of mixed beans and sprouts that I believe was trying desperately to be a wrap of some sort but, I can’t really remember. 

All I really remember was how strange and unreal it felt to be sitting there with her, sharing some slightly tasteless greens, and talking about everything and nothing at the same time. We were about to part ways after three years of being together, off to separate colleges in New York state, to study separate topics. Although it was the end, it certainly did not feel that way. It was simply two friends, getting lunch together at an urban restaurant. Nothing more, nothing less.

Of course, as it is all I ever talk about, we were discussing about films we had seen that summer, and she brought up Boots Riley’s Sorry to Bother You, which if you haven’t seen it, is a phenomenal film about a young man in an alternate universe climbing a career ladder in a company while his co-workers, friends, and girlfriend revolt against said company. It was science fiction, satirical, and everything I had ever desired in a film wrapped up all in one nice little chunk of glorious goodness — everything that the vegan meal wasn’t.

“It’s a very important film,” Adesina had said, nodding with a mouthful of greens, her eyes twinkling intelligently behind dark rimmed glasses. And I agreed, it was important but, she wasn’t finished.

I feel as though it is important to interject briefly and say that Adesina is mixed as well as I am, and unlike myself, she constantly is making a point of talking about it, making an open race discussion for all those around her. It’s something I could never do but, in the quiet contentment of my own bedroom, with my laptop and the quiet click of my fingers against the keys. I wish I had her courage, her excellence, her brilliance. She’s so solid in her beliefs, it’s truly admirable. She never wavers against anything that anybody says against her when she knows she is right. She truly knows who she is. You couldn’t stop me from admiring her if you tried, and you couldn’t stop me from wishing I was more like her in nature.

She continued talking about the film, waving her hands about in a diligent manner that reminded me strongly of a politician succinctly getting her point across to an audience of millions, although it was only me, hunched over across the table, trying to cover up the fact that I had dropped a carrot onto my lap. I have a horrible memory but, it was one of the only things I remembered about our meeting together that fateful afternoon.

She told me about how important it was to have films like Sorry to Bother You in media now. How all films that have currently been coming out, created by people of color in the current mainstream media are all about race, centering around race conflicts. And why Sorry to Bother You stands out against all that. It’s a film about the dangers of economic injustice, cultural conflict, as well as racism. It’s not saying that talking about race is unimportant but, rather that there are several layered issues central to the film that include discussions of race within it, completely held within a dystopian science fiction world — complete with horse men, yes, literal men who are horses (sorry for the spoiler).

I listened to her comment on Sorry to Bother You, and looked into the mixed salad-wrap. I had always struggled with talking so openly about race like she did, because I was like that salad wrap meal. There were so many parts of me mixed together that I never knew what to say. I was definitely too white to join certain conversations but, definitely too asian, too “brown” to contribute to others. I thought about Boots Riley, and what it meant to be a director making a film about people of color, or having people of color as your main protagonists in the story.

Being a film director, from my perspective, especially as a person of color, a mixed race individual, puts you in a position of telling stories rarely told in media. All that burden is put on your shoulders, and you have to do a way-better-than-good job because it is all riding on what you do, what you say, what you contribute to the conversation. You’re setting the tone for films like yours to be made in the future. Obviously, as a person of color director, a person of color filmmaker, you don’t want white people telling person of color stories, and a lot of the time, they don’t want to either because of their, well, whiteness. Filmmaking is political, it’s something to make a statement about, and I know for certain that a lot of white filmmakers in today’s political climate, don’t want to say something that will come back and horrifically bite them in the ass. Which, I believe, is fair but, on the opposite of the coin, everything falls back on people of color to tell these stories.

As a mixed kid, a mixed filmmaker, I love telling stories about people who are also mixed, people with differing backgrounds but, as with anything being done over and over and over and over, it can get tiring and exhausting after awhile, at least for me. I don’t want to solely tell mixed race stories from now until I drop dead — sorry but, it’s the truth. I want to be able to tell a ridiculous story about a mermaid who is the flipped version of a mermaid, with a fish head and a human body falling in love with a terrifyingly mindless seagull robot, or a story about a boy trapped in the zombie apocalypse and a horrible head trauma that forces him only to sing songs as though he’s constantly in a musical, while everyone else around him is normal (and wondering what the hell is wrong with this kid).

As a director, a storyteller, I love the diverse nature of the stories that I get to tell, and I don’t want to be stuck doing one thing. That would be horrible, in my opinion. That’s why I want to be a director in the first place. If you stuck me at a desk doing a desk job writing the same sentence over and over and over (“All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy”), I would surely drop dead in less than a week.

Instead, I want to have mixed people in my films but, not have their mixed-ness set them apart from their fellow characters, not let it dictate the plot completely. After interviewing my documentary subjects, and stringing their interviews together into a film, I feel as though if anything mirrors the mixed-race experience perfectly it’s the fact that for some people, it is never prevalent for them. It never becomes something that bothers them and keeps them awake at night, while for others, it is something that truly underlies all the choices they make in their lives. For some, it dictates how others treat them from day to day, and for others it is just something to tick off while filling out some government form, and even for some it’s a middle ground, a place in-between. It certainly is that way for me, I usually use my mixed-ness as an ice breaker comment during gatherings with new people, and sometimes it just never comes up. It’s just a part of who I am and I don’t tend to think about it at all moments of my everyday life.

My characters, in their mixed glory, don’t have to only talk about being mixed and how that affects their interactions with people. If anything, that makes them one dimensional and flat, in comparison to being a character who is mixed, but who also is a whole bunch more. In my documentary on the subject, I made it very clear that each of the people in the film were not simply mixed, they were well-rounded human beings who had their own loves and hates, likes and dislikes, and jokes to go along with it all. Mixed people are made of millions of stories, experiences, memories, and I hope that the characters in my films reflect that.

However, I do not think that this is a topic, a discussion that has a clean and clear answer. There is no right or wrong when storytelling, there are no rules. It’s something I’m sure that I’ll continue to debate within my very soul after I finish writing this garbage-tinged essay, and for years to come. In fact, even as I came up with my statement in this essay about filmmaking and diversity in filmmaking and what that means to me, I also completely did a 360 degree turn around and thought about when I screened my documentary at the Willows Community Middle School, about the little tiny middle schoolers who spoke up about how important it was to hear a story like the one I was providing them with about mixed-race individuals. I thought about how important it is for these stories to be told, because there are so many voices that desperately want to be heard, and nobody speaking for them. 

Why should people of color and mixed people be forced to tell a certain specific type of story — even if it is an important one? Shouldn’t we be given the same freedoms to tell our own wacky, out there chaotic, neon-flavored tales just like the thousands of white directors out there? Shouldn’t we be able to tell a story with an all person of color cast, and not have it have to be a tale about race but, instead have it be about aliens and dinosaurs and outer space?

I honestly don’t know where to start with those questions. I’m sure I’ll just be talking myself in circles forever and ever and ever, with no conclusion, and none of my films will get made in the process. But, oh well.

All I know for sure is that these stories about people of color and mixed race individuals deserve to be told but, POC directors and mixed race storytellers should have the ability to choose, not to be forced in one direction or another by studios or studio heads. There should be a variety of topics, concepts, ideas, stories, for young mixed people of color to choose from when they watch movies or watch television. It’ll help make their voices heard in a different way, to have there be a light at the end of the metaphorical tunnel, to have characters to look up to, who vocalize what they’re going through without them having the words for it. I know I would have loved to grow up in a world like that, and if anything that is what I want to be able to do for mixed race young people in the future.