Boots Riley on Labor Strikes, Anti-Police Messaging in ‘I’m a Virgo’ and Working With Amazon as a Communist

variety.com:

Selome Hailu At the end of Boots Riley’s 2018 debut feature, “Sorry to Bother You,” Cassius (LaKeith Stanfield) gets stretched and mutilated beyond recognition until he becomes a horse — all in service of the film’s cutting narrative about how capitalism is crushing us all.

In “I’m a Virgo,” Riley’s new Amazon Prime Video series, that stretching comes before the story begins: 19-year-old Cootie (Jharrel Jerome) is 13 feet tall, and he ends up under attack when the city of Oakland learns about the giant living in its backyard — again, all in service of a cutting narrative about how capitalism is crushing us all. “I believe that people should democratically control the wealth that we create with our labor,” says Riley, 52.

The writer-director has identified as a communist since before he gained recognition for founding the political hip-hop group the Coup in 1991. “How do you get the working class to organize together?

Through them understanding where their power is, and under capitalism, our power is in the withholding of labor. There needs to be a mass, militant, radical labor movement that turns more radical as it goes on, until the people actually take over the places that they work and change the nature of society.” “I don’t know if my politics have evolved [since ‘Sorry to Bother You’],” he adds. “The thing that has evolved is my artistic approach to talking about the same thing.” Between Cassius and Cootie, Riley is clearly fascinated by extreme body imagery and depictions of sub- and superhumans. “Often, even with my music, I’m trying to make you feel something.