silly little boy

"You want some?"

We have one more white oppressor who presents himself as a saviour. He inflitrates a black community, coming with the promise of... equality, community and freedom from death. But those promises come to fruition in a very specific manner. Remmick is the leader, for all the equality he promises. HE is the one who sets the tune the rest are singing. HE is the one whose pain is felt by every member of this 'community'. Every person that is turned connects to him in a hive-mind of collective memory and experience that HE controls and is able to use to his own convenience. Moreover, this is a collective that does not exclude the KKK-alligned family that was part of the plan to slaughter an entire black community.

AND BEFORE ANYONE STARTS; im not saying you cant like remmick, he's a very interesting character, a great villain, and jack o'connell gave a great performance playing him, nor do i care if you think hes sexy, I think hes sexy

but i think to come out of a movie where vampires serve as a metaphor for how black american communities have the life sucked out of them by white people via cultural appropriation (remmick wanting to use sammie's gift to summon his own ancestors) and forced assimilation (all the turned vampires singing and dancing along with remmick's irish folk song and dance juxtaposed with the blend of cultures during sammie's song in the juke joint) and for your main take away to be 'aww the main villain is just a misunderstood sadboy' or 'idc abt the atrocities he looked sexy doing them (when the atrocities in question were racism)' then youre just being so disengenuous and antithetical to the whole point of the film?

and dont come at me with the 'let people enjoy things' bullshit, sinners is a movie FUNDAMENTALLY about racism and racial dynamics in the united states, and i do think focusing on your little y/n x [whiteboy of the month] fics and 'hes so babygirl' posts do actually stunt your own critical engagement with the message this movie was trying to convey to its audience

i think its also a disservice to remmick's character; the moral nuance that comes to light when you consider his position as an irish immigrant to the US, a victim of the colonialist british empire just like the black main cast (although in a very different way) and how, whilst his desire to reclaim his ancestry and heritage is understandable and even relatable, his pursuit of sammie and willingness to kill literally everyone else at the juke joint is allegorical for how, regardless of their own marginalisation, white people will prey upon and steal from black culture(s) and destroy/disenfranchise black communities to serve their own interests, and the movie is NOT subtle about this either, delta slim literally lays it out for us "white folks like the blues just fine, they just don't like the people who make them"

you can be oppressed, and still promote and maintain the very same systems of oppression onto other marginalized people. being oppressed in one dimension doesn't allow you to be exempt from oppressing in other dimensions. the "villain" of the movie, remmick, being from the time period of the english colonization of ireland, all the while wanting to take a piece of sammie's own culture from him, use him for it. and this plot point coming after remmick witnesses the significance of sammie's playing within his culture, for his ancestors and how it would shape Black culture in the future.

even in today's society, ive noticed that people treat Black people like a commodity. our worth is only as much as other people decide it to be, and that's usually dependent on how much the oppressor can take from us. for example, the controversy of"internet slang" and how it is blatantly just AAVE with a bad disguise on

do you listen to Black musicians? do you watch Black movies? do you engage with Black creators? do you defend the racist tendencies you notice in your friends, in your family, or do you stay silent? do you listen when Black people tell you you've said or done something racist? do you actually care about not being racist, or do you just not want to look like you're racist?

i just think people have a very specific take on what racism is, and that if they're not committing KKK-levels of violence on people, then they're not racist. or if you've experienced oppression in one form, you cannot possibly be engaging with oppression in another form. but the ways in which we interact with other people and the world will always be through the lens of race, because that is simply what it means for oppression to be systemic, especially in the US and our current political climate

the main characters in sinners are well acquainted with the danger they face everyday, and the vampires can’t initially break through this to get his way.

one fear the vampirism is manifesting as is cultural erasure. when they show up and try to join the party (i.e. drink them) they play their own music and are generally weird and get turned away, but blame the refusal on reverse racism. remmick needs to turn sammie, because he needs the musical power for himself. when he begins turning people they sing irish music, leaving behind the blues they previously sang. they are a reflection of remmick and his culture rather than their own. later after they have turned the majority of people and its the final confrontation, remmick brings up christianity. and ultimately it is true that people preaching christianity are responsible for the deaths and oppression of both black americans and irish people.

but this is not shared to connect the two and understand the relationship that exists there. instead we have a vampire, the psychological predator, who is using this information to try and level the field between him and sammie. he does this with the express purpose to turn him as well and steal his musical power. he does this to force assimilation. furthermore it’s revealed at the end that the klan would be targeting them anyway. vampires are not the only villain of the movie, they are simply the representation of the danger everyone is facing in this society.

the vampires prey on this fear by offering them eternal life, essentially posing that the lives they have now are not worth living. and this is typical vampire movie talk, but here the deeper meaning exists because this group of people were not safe before the vampires came. remmick comes and speaks a lot of this fear out loud, and uses it to manipulate them.

there’s so much to be said in much better ways about this; especially how sammie turns down the assimilation of vampirism AND christianity later in the film. but these are just my thoughts that i haven’t been able to shake since seeing it.

do not crash out

your feelings are NOT valid

do not send that text

don't kill yourself. lock in