Smooth Criminal was the original Sinners.
Walk with me now... In this essay I will describe the similarities.
SPOILER ALERT!!!! - if you haven't seen sinners.
Smooth Criminal Michael Jackson and Sinners movie by Ryan Coogler are the same, doing the exact same message.
Both of them drop you into a 1930s club. Club 30s in one, Club Juke in the other. In both scenes, the club is the one place where these people get to be fully themselves with the doors shut and the world locked outside.
MJ describes it as an act of "rebellion", the music communicating our emotions "what we've always wanted to say to the world," he emphasized this scene was about "passion, anger, and fire".
Michael discusses that here: (One of my fave MJ clips)
In Smooth Criminal he flips a coin into the jukebox and the entire room changes. Everybody moves at once, like the song took them.
The lean is a symbolism that this music does something the physical world should not permit.
Sinners does the same thing. The message conveyed is that music is a sacred gift we brought back home pre-colonization, that the blues is a rebellion against evil forces such as white supremacy.
Sammie starts singing and the room tears open. Ancestors walk in and so do the descendants. There are African drummers standing next to a DJ standing next to a girl twerking standing next to a ballerina, all in one shot, all inside 1932. Same idea exactly. The gift is real and it bends what is possible.
In both movies, somebody from the outside always comes for it.
In both Sinners and Smooth Criminal the club gets invaded and the whole thing turns violent.
In Sinners the vampire turns up at the door specifically because he heard Sammie play, and then gets invaded as well. He wants the boy's gift so he can reach his own dead with it. As well as the KKK coming for it in the morning. Both show forces who have historically shown up when Black music gets too powerful to ignore.
In the dance scene, the juke joint is symbolically on fire, a representation of the history: burning juke joints was a real thing that happened to Black people in the Jim Crow south.
Coogler takes that image and flips it. The fire stops being terror and becomes proof that the music could not be contained.
Michael's club gets destroyed too, as well as Club Juke in Sinners.
Two pieces of art almost forty years apart, both about a room of exclusivity, the reality bending of music, and how music is a sacred gift, an act of rebellion, sexual liberator, and a reality bending medium.
Thank's for coming to my Ted Talk. Let me know what you think! - DN777