Some of the themes and readings my media-blind ass could extrapolate from Sinners. Take everything I say with a grain of salt because I'm a nobody with a high school level of education and poor memory. This is all based on one viewing of the movie the previous night as I quickly write down my thoughts before my terrible memory takes them away, wanting to get my thoughts out there before the opinion pieces and analysis by far more qualified people than myself come out and color my outlook of the movie. I say this to also excuse the atrocious formatting. So without further ado, some readings:
- Racism as represented by random acts of explosive violence on vulnerable people just trying to live their lives (the obvious one, and what I assumed the main point to be of the film based on my first viewing of the trailer. But it goes SO MUCH deeper than this and frankly I was pretty off base with my assumption based on the trailer).
- The fluid, adaptable nature of fascism, allowing it to adopt any aspect of its surrounding to mutate into a gestalt entity of vagaries to gain popular support, when regardless of its trappings its primary motivation is rooted in a self-serving desire of the fascist to maintain power over people (Remmick playing into the racist couple's racism to infiltrate their home by expressing racist language and using slurs, but then claiming an anti-racist perspective and even expressing a seething contempt for a known local power racist to cater favor with black people so they allow him into *their* space, and then even speaking to an asian person in their native tongue, not out of respect but in order to manipulate them into giving him what he wanted)
- How even bloodsucking monstrosities aren't as bad as white supremacists (Remmick not being the final enemy Smoke faces despite being the most dangerous, he's also far more cultured and outwardly pleasant than the klan members, amd as an irish person, would have also been targeted by the version of the KKK that sprung up around the era)
- The difference between the apparent, immediate danger and ugliness of the individual racist (Remmick being a huge, explosively violent threat) and the quiet, polite, yet just as threatening (if not more so) and sometimes twice as ugly threat of systemic racism (the grand wizard being a wealthy landowner that sells Smoke and Stack access to wealth in the area by selling them the property of the juke joint, ostensibly being "on their side" when they play by the rules, he is also the final confrontarion Smoke faces and the thing that does actually kill him.) If we go with this analysis, it could also be using their interplay on how these two forms of persecution feed off of and support each other. Remmick, playing the part of the "ugly" individual racist, is able to use the threat of the klan to attempt to goad his way into the juke joint, admonishing one form of racism and deliberately highlighting the danger the other poses to mask the other form that *he* contributes to and disguise the danger *he* poses. Usually, the situation is reversed, with systemic racism pointing to individual racists as the "main problem" to be dealt with, but the metaphor is reversed here and that actually highlights the point. The vampires *technically* represented a less total annihilation that the klan posed, because the vampirized people were still technically "alive", and they were primarily after Sammie, whereas the klan would have indiscriminately slaughtered every single person there, killing them on the spot with no attempts at empathy, convincing with sweet words, or even a false sense of community that Remmick tried. The vampires were death, but the klan was annihilation.
- a metaphor for culture vulturism, the appropriation of music and culture made by black americans by white people for self-serving reasons, despite having culture of their own they can claim for themselves, and how the art is wanted but the creator can be dealt away with (Remmick having deep cultural roots to his native Ireland but prioritizing Sammie's music not for thr value it has as an artistic expression or Sammie's potential as an artist (that eventually gets realized when he's able to choose his own destiny) but for the selfish desire to see his dead community again, and weaponizing the power in Sammie's music, with Sammie staying a creative or even alive being irrelevant. This point is even stated in the text: "They want black music but they don't want black bodies" also hammered home by Remmick literally just passing through, meaning he could have ignored the juke joint entirely (as the worlddoes black people in general) until he was drawn in by Sammie's music. His talent shown like a beacon, and made a white person with actionable power realize he could use that power to get something that he wanted but couldn't get on his own, and thus, notice Sammie and his community, to disastrous results. To go further, having asian artistic heritage in the music trance scene despite it the mood being created by a black american singing south americana depression era black blues highlights how art, when a genuine expression, can allow cultures to coexist with each other regardless of rifts when they give room for each other and welcome each other. Sammie's music created a temporary gestalt culture where everyone present was truly represented, everyone got to come as they were. The chinese couple got to be chinese fully and totally despite being in a black space because art welcomes everyone. But if Remmick does indeed represent culture vulturism, then the fact that he had EVERYONE that was under his spell abandon all of the various different cultures they were a part of, to sing a singular irish folk song, in *unison*, with no variance or personal touch from the individual, hammers home the homogeniztaion that eventually takes hold of art when culture vultures pick it clean.)
- how defensive/retaliatory nationalism can be just as bad as the regular kind if you forego intersectional solidarity and don't take steps to not use the same tools as the oppressor in the process (Remmick's primary reason for attacking the juke joint for Sammie was his desire to reunite with his dead irish community wiped out by christian missionary colonizers by using thebpower of Sammie's talent, an understandable, sympathetic position, but he's willing to get that community back by making a new family that is even race-blind (potentially not out of equality, but of convenience and power. Considering this metaphor as a possible interpretation, Remmick might not even be aware he is doing this for this reason). He does this by terrorizing and annihilating another community of equally vulnerable people, vulnerable from the same people no less, and turning them into bloodsoaked thralls of his will, literally killing them (as his community was) and damning their souls for eternity alongside him to get it back, both in a metaphorical and literal sense, making a new family from his drudges but also looking to resurrect his old family with a sacrifice. He uses violence to get his culture back, but ends up being a replacement for the entity that took that away from him in the first place, just for another community that he didn't belong to. To go back to the irish folk tune in unison scene, the song, Rocky Road to Dublin, is about a poor man leaving the home he was born in to make a dangerous headway to another place. It could literally be read as an anthem for immigrants or struggling folk, and is practically a word for word retelling of the *Twins' life story*. Here is Remmick, using his victims to sing and center *his* pain, *his* grief, as an irish immigrant in depression era America, ignoring THEIR pain, THEIR sorrow. Hell, the song is a weapon against the homdouts in the juke joint, because he's using the loved ones of those people to tug at their emotions and inflict more pain to get what he wants. This could also tie into a metaphor about how marginalized communities will sometimes infight during times of major crisis instead of banding together to resist the original problem, with a secondary critique of individual successes for marginalized people within an unequal society can blind those success stories from solidarity, creating greater struggle for marginalized people with less success and sabotaging their OWN success by cutting them off from the support of their community, the "black capitalism" problem. Remmick got a little bit of power from his vampirism, and decided to use that for his personal satisfaction and desires rather than his claimed goal of getting back at the people who directly wronged him or lifting other people up)
- the opportunistic nature of white supremacy and facism and how it can creep into the cracks left by moderate positions of outreach and compromise (born from people blind to the real nature of fascism and white supremacy, usually due to privilege) to fully infiltrate and destroy a movement, colonizing a position and moving it more comfortably into its wheelhouse and normalizing its ideas (represented by the first domino falling that would seal everyone's fate against the vampires being the one white person in their community trying to reach out and be empathetic to the white strangers posing innocently at the door at night, who then proceeded to poke holes in her mental and tugging at her vulnerability, and take advantage of her physical as well as her emotional isolation reaching out to the middle of the aisle, in order to turn her to their cause, who then infiltrated back into the original space she was in as a new convert and making things worse for everyone with her newly dark (read: radicalized) position. It could even be a good metaphor for greed and capitalism, or even how desperate people can be swayed to radical positions during times of crisis by one charismatic promising a way out. With this framing, Remmick gets in both times by offering people a frankly extravangant amount of wealth for the time period out of "generosity". It works on the racist couple, and it works on Mary, who is aware the juke joint is GOING to go under and it hasn't even been one night)
I am very much curious to see the coming analysis vidoes and writings, because this movie was a deeply moving and powerful experience and I wamt to hear as many experiences people had with it as I can. The movie was incredible. If this is Coogler's first "original idea" as he called it, I look forward to his work even more, because dang. Michael B. Jordan also proved his pedigree as one of the acting world's top talents from this film. This was an oscar worthy performance from an actor that has cemented himself as a top name in the slowly growing stable of fresh new talent in the industry. I encourage everyone to see it, especially longtime horror and vampire fiction fans. It is THAT good.
