Twice as Hot: Duplicity and the Second Person in The Bribe

Detours, episode 5
Twice as Hot: Duplicity and the Second Person in The Bribe
Stephen Broomer, October 18, 2021

Situation wanted with someone, but who? The question is sung to a crowd of tourists and locals in the fictional Carlotta, an exotic island off the coast of Peru. Government agent Rigby is sent to the island by his superiors to break up a graft ring; in the process, he is compromised. Much of The Bribe is accounted in medias res, with Rigby admonishing himself in the second person for having allowed himself to be coerced. In this video essay, Stephen Broomer addresses The Bribe in terms of Rigby's role as self-loathing narrator in search of redemption, and the film's concomitant representation of pathetic, clumsy evil.