After seeing Sinners (2025) last night, I'm having a lot of thoughts about Remmick's accent. I knew he was Irish going in, and I kept expecting the facade of his Southern accent to be cast aside as a ruse and replaced with his real one. But it never is. The only time his Irish brogue really comes out is during his performance of "The Rocky Road to Dublin." And I've realized that choice serves as shorthand for Remmick's transformation from the oppressed into the oppressor.
"The Rocky Road to Dublin" is a 19th C folk song about the discrimination Irish people faced, which makes it a deeply ironic choice for Remmick to sing while surrounded and accompanied by a racially diverse crowd of Americans he's forcibly converted to vampirism. He's a Irishman, yes, but he's also a white man in the Jim Crow South, and his accent reflects who he is now. His literal feeding on Black and Chinese people is another part of his assimilation.
All the kudos to Ryan Coogler for giving cultural nuance and complexity to all his characters, including the villain. He could have just made Remmick an Evil, Racist, White Southerner (and this film has several of those!), but instead he recognizes that all the peoples of the American South came from somewhere, that we all have a heritage that lives on in us but does not absolve us of the choices we make.
In short, Coogler is not coming for the Irish in his representation of Remmick. He recognizes the history of oppression that led to so many Irish immigrating to America. But he is commenting on the way Irish-Americans historically bought a seat for themselves at the table of American power through exploitation of other races, notably Black people.
