The Flick

Though the three main characters of The Flick are carefully drawn and possess complex personalities, each character’s experience and self-presentation gestures to a particular type (and particular issues related to that type). As a young black man, Avery serves as a stand-in for issues related to race. These issues include the suspected racial biases of The Flick’s owners, who whitewash and deny racial issues in the workplace, as per Sam’s claim the “nothing bad ever happened” to former non-white employee Roberto (36). There is also the negativeassumption that black men steal, which ultimately leads to Avery’s dismissal from his job. As a more fully-formed adult in his mid-thirties, with no college education and no upward mobility in his career, Sam stands in for issues primarily related to class. As the only female employee we see in The Flick, Rose stands in for issues related to gender, sex, and female objectification, both unconsciously, as the object of Sam’s desire, and consciously, by expressing her internalized fantasy wherein she “looks so amazing” (95).

Baker’s script examines how these different sets of issues overlap and interact with one another in a workplace where all the low-level employees must navigate similar problems, including limited hours, dull tasks, and minimum wage pay that is not enough to live on.