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never gonna be over the vampires showing up and going “hi we are regular normal people!! let us sing you a regular normal people song about eating somebody :)” guys come on now. we could at least try and be subtle

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When Sinners said "white people have oppressed aspects of other white people's culture but that does NOT give you the right to enter Black people's spaces just because you want to"

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The Blues scene with all the generations of music being summoned at once and everyone dancing in a trance and the Irish river dance scene with the haunting music and the hypnotising dance and the other Blues scene where the singer's belting and the dancers feet smacking the ground coordinated perfectly with the violence in the other room were literal masterpieces like these three scenes deserve an Oscar in Directing Cinematography and Music they were incredible

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im thinking abt sinners and The Scene: how Sammie played so beautifully that the house caught fire and showed the people inside, but he wasn't the center of it - there was so much movement in that scene!!! so much to SEE - no two people danced the same way - you're focusing on the spirits of the old and the new and how Together everyone looked even without four walls around them.

And then you have Remmick and his song. There's uniformity in the dancing!!! in the singing!!!! in the movements!!!!!!! Those same people who were dancing so freely and expressively!!!!! Now following remmick step after step!!!!!

Whiteness as vampirism!!! Leeching away individuality!!!! culture!!! freedom!!! ughhgghh this movie !!!!!¡!!! so good !!!!!¡!!!!!!!

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Okay... So I'm in a way right now with the red tide and hormones..... But I did want to say some things about SINNERS while I have a little bit of mental energy.

Stack and Smoke are two sides of the same coin, yin and yang, red and blue, Italian and Irish gang clothing style... etc.

Some people are getting carried away with analysis and it's giving more projection of what you want it to be vs. what is.... Coogler himself has cited great fun tropey horror films and pop culture touchstones like Salem's Lot (the book not the movie) and Puss in Boots: The Last Wish (which I love that that's a reference) he has said his most important takeaway is "ownership of art."

The act structure that gave us that classic "caper" set-up of all kinds of characters listening to the plan and then going "you sonavabitch, I'm in." for the juke joint was my favorite part of this TBH.

It is NOT a Christian "Come to Jesus" movie and I LOVE that about it. In fact, it's the opposite.

It's a "be true to self and your gifts in the face of any god or devil", movie.

BOTH women love interests (white presenting and full-figured and unambiguously Black ,--back to that yin and yang of the twins) were beloved by a twin, both fit the elemental nature of said twin, and both had to traverse death to be with their love.

As an aside.... loved hearing a southern accent from our Asian cousins, seeing the "not my problem" energy from the Choctaw hunters, and the reminder that there was actual ancestral cultural community before "whiteness" for white people too, and why many no longer have it...

LOVED LOVED LOVED the cultural details in the character work, setting, energy, etc.... ESPECIALLY Delroy Lindo's vocal cadence.

I loved what Coogler chose to NOT show to make the energy more impactful and palpable in both sensuality and scares.

I'll be the weirdo who prefers the pure blues vs. the remix but I LOVED seeing all the ancestors and descendents come and vibe with the music...I used to have recurring dreams of a multicultural ancestral world jam session, so "that scene" hit me hard.

Remmick just follows in the tradition of Coogler villains being compelling af, but ultimately WRONG because of an essential flaw in their logic (i.e. Killmonger's misogynoir and colonizing techniques and funnily enough Remmick's colonizing techniques, klan and black using vampire telepathy for a faux community peace)

I have seen no one else mention this, but I chuckled at Saul "List of Demands" Williams playing the preacher, aka Sammie's dad

the vampire nerd part of me absolutely rejoiced at all the "traditional" vampire warding aspects, ESPECIALLY the silver, something that is often wrongly asserted as being just for werewolves

loved how filthy and raunchy the language was when it came to desire... because that's real (and I hate purity culture which is very much now tied to the alt-right white Christo-fascist pipeline right now) AND centering women's pleasure and, in many cases audacious initiative. (ahem, I see you Ryan and I see how Zinzi's in the current state she's in, congrats!! *cough* this is the healthiest type of straight man sexual energy BTW)

BE WARY of the takes out there that are overly-projecting. It's neither religious nor hotepy. It's a Southern Gothic fable/folktale about a musician with a gift surviving a magical night....

YES it's full of ancestral energy, but ultimately the central message is about being true to self when it comes to ancestral gifts and community

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Remmick, Ryan Coogler's vampire in Sinners, is written so well. You have a white, Irish vampire from the time of the colonization of Ireland by the english who is trying to deal with his own loss and 'hunger'. He wants to use Sammie. He wants to take away Sammie's music, his tradition and to use it for his own gain.

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.

Remmick represents a seemingly politically correct, predominantly white globalization. He presents himself as well-intended. He may even BELIEVE that he is. But what he offers is the death of individuality, of culture and tradition.

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One of my favorite aspects of Sinners how they use the musical scenes to build tension. Because they start out small, with just Sammy and Stack in the car, then the performance with Slim at the train station, and then working up to the scenes in the barn.

The first juke sequence is the most visually stunning, of course. It's chaotic but overwhelmingly positive, beautiful, and joyous. When we move to Pearline's song, things start to darken. The thumping stomps are timed with the twins beating the man with the loaded dice. We've already seen violence in the film, but this is a steep escalation intentionally set to music.

Then, we think the tension is going down when the ******** show up (no spoilers 🤫), but they are so immediately unsettling that we never feel at ease. Their music is sweet and their voices are soothing, but it's a front, one that fractures pretty quick but shatters completely with the Rocky Road to Dublin.

Rocky Road is a perversion of the first juke scene, twisting the joyful chaotic energy of the dance into a masterfully disturbing parody, where the full evil and madness (and twisting of spirituality) of the ******** is put on display.

It's just such a good way to build the narrative. I love love love how serious they were about making music the keystone of every filming decision.

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thinking about the vampire remmick in sinners coming from a same place of oppression as the people he's terrorizing, thinking about him using the music that his oppressed ancestors played to perpetuate the cycle of domination that they were a victim of, thinking about him trying to use his background to make sammie think they're on the same side when he's trying to take his gift for himself and use it for evil, thinking about him using his talents to destroy communities instead of healing them and bond his people together the way sammie does, music as the vessel of love through generations of black people against a white man that wants to take it for himself, vampirism in the movie being represented as a continuation of the south's racism, one that wants to appropriate the culture ("your memories become my memories") by using it to destroy the community, ryan coogler... genius i'm afraid

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the comparison of the Irish experience to the Black experience, finding out that Remmick comes from a time when the Irish were colonized... while still acknowledging that he was able to use that privilege to escape the vampire hunters... and the first thing he did was un-racist those fuckers in the home he ran in to.

and the absolute juxtaposition of Sammie escaping the vampire hivemind with his life, only to go back home to the church where he is expected to give up the music of his life to assimilate into his father's church

FUCK

Ryan fuckin Coogler the man that you are

i'm not going to shut the fuck up about this movie

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remmick and the vampires present a false dichotomy

Hogwood (the man who sold the twins the mill) and the KKK are very obviously bad, they are outright malicious bigotry, they use the n-word and plan to lynch the moore's and their community, they are so blatantly racist and hateful it's unavoidably obvious

remmick and the vampires however say that they believe in equality, say that they want to create a community, and yet remmick's goal throught the movie is to both metaphorically and literally steal sammie's ability for his own goal of reconnecting with his irish ancestors, a white man wants to harm a young and upcoming black man and use talents for his own goals without giving any regard to said black man's autonomy or agency

when sammie sings 'I lied to you' in the juke joint and calls forth the spirits from the past and future, it's a blend of cultures; west african, east asian, native american, and african american song and dance blend together across time and space to tell the stories of blues; where it takes its inspiration from, the music genres it then inspired, the complex history of black american culture and its intersections with other peoples of colour in the USA

when remmick and the vampires kill and turn the people in the juke joint, and then perform rocky road to dublin, only remmick's irish culture is on display, there is no influence from the black and asian people he has forcibly assimilated into his song, it's juxtaposition with the earlier scene is blatant, remmick is more than happy to assimilate people of colour into his 'community' of 'equals', and yet its only whiteness that is celebrated, that is normative

remmick claims that he's doing people a favour by turning them immortal, conviently ignoring that he literally has to suck the life out of them to do so, trapping their spirits on earth, he claims that he's the good guy, that the KKK were gonna come and lynch everyone at the joint in the morning anyways, conviently ignoring that he's doing the exact same thing; a white man leading a mob to kill a bunch of black people

in the final confrontation with sammie remmick repeatedly dunks him into the river, a forceful baptism. both the celtic irish and enslaved west africans had their religions suppressed and destroyed by colonialsm, had christianity forced upon them by the british empire, and in that scene we see remmick repeating that cycle, using christianity to inflict harm, and sammie reclaiming christianity, despite all the complex emotions he has arround it, as many colonised peoples have and still do, when he recites the lord's prayer

remmick and the vampires are no less racist than hogwood and the KKK, are no less predatory or evil, they're just less blantant about their bigotry, they represent the system, the normalised white supremacy that is seeped into the very foundation of culture in america, the point isnt that remmick would call any of the black characters in the movie the n-word, i dont think he would, the point is that his exploitation and desacration and inserting-himself-into-when-he-wasn't-invited of the juke joint is a microcosm of what white people have done to black american arts and culture since ever since there have been black and white people in america, and even before that

theres a reason vultures are shown early on in this movie

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The funniest part of Sinners was when the Native Americans just said “yeahhh good luck with that”

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The portrayal of white people who have been violently separated from their own culture stealing the power of black culture and music to try to get reconnected was SO literal and somehow not at ALL heavy-handed or trite. Fkn remarkable.

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it really frustrates me to think about how people are inevitably going to take Remmick’s one (1) singular statement about how much he resents the way the Irish were colonized and forcibly converted to Christianity and use it as fuel for “actually he had a point” and “he was right actually” and “he’s not really the villain here” posts, when the whole point is that Remmick is, through the vampiric hive mind he’s creating, forcibly assimilating people into yet another manipulative and parasitical system. he doesn't value the cultures of the people he assimilates—notice how all the vampires he turns dance to his culture's music using his culture's dances, and how he only uses the languages or knowledge other vampires have to offer when he needs to manipulate someone. Remmick is extremely transparent about the way he sees the people he turns as resources to exploit.

he’s perpetuating a cycle that he claims to hate and resent, and I think the movie is pretty damn clear about the fact that he doesn’t see anybody as valuable or useful to him except as prey and as pawns—otherwise he would just, you know, focus solely on people who actually consent to being turned. but he looked sad in that one scene and he’s an apparently attractive white cis man so people are gonna bend over backwards justifying all the harm he did.

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saw a theory that the SmokeStack twins were posing as one man in Chicago, which helped them get away with stealing from both sides. i'm poised to believe that because visually their clothing was very clearly of the two mobs. smoke was full irish— tweed, bowler hat. while stack had the full mafia look. yk italian leather shoes, fedora etc etc . like the details!!

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Joy Sullivan, from “These Days People Are Really Selling Me On California”, Instructions for Traveling West

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The playing around with gendered narratives we see in Faramir and Eowyn's relationship fascinates me. I've already dwelled on how they almost swap roles in the virtues they possess, the plot points of their stories, and the dramatic climaxes of their arcs, but Tolkien really goes one step further with writing Faramir in a manner that is usually reserved for women, by turning him into "the love interest" after he meets Eowyn.

Before meeting Eowyn, one of Faramir's driving conflicts and dynamics is that with his father. It's a complex and difficult relationship based on love and antipathy, and it ends in the most devastating manner. Some significance is given to how Faramir will respond to the death of his father, as Gandalf gives instructions for him to be told soon his father is dead, but to wait a while before telling him how.

We never see Faramir's reaction to either piece of news. This crucial development is forgotten, without even a line expressing how he found out, or what he felt when he did.

After meeting Eowyn, Faramir character, his arc, his interiority, develops around her.

We see him try to get through to her, to make a connection with her, he fears the world ending because he doesn't want to lose her after finding her, he rejoices in the world being saved by kissing her brow. It all hinges on her. His happiness is complete when she gives him her love. His love was always on offer, the choice for them to be together hinged on her.

In contrast, Eowyn's pre-battle conflicts and dynamics carry on after meeting Faramir. Her despair, her feelings for Aragorn, her mourning Theoden, her need to find a cause for hope and a reason to keep on living now the war is done and death in battle is beyond her. Her friendship with Merry, her loyalty to Rohan; she has Faramir wait for her to return, because first she has duties to do in her home country. Faramir is a new thread in her narrative, and a significant one, but all the earlier threads in her narrative carry through, whereas it feels a bit like some of Faramir's narrative threads were snipped once Eowyn had entered the frame.

Now, we do know that factually Faramir was rebuilding Gondor, and that he became Steward and Prince of Ithilien afterwards, but we don't follow his thoughts and feelings and his struggles as he takes on this new role. As a person, as an individual, he has multiple purposes and priorities. He is still Faramir, who still loves his country and has dreams for how it will grow after the war. He doesn't lose his personhood. But as a character, his story is about Eowyn, and whether or not he gets her. It began with him meeting Eowyn. It followed him reaching out to Eowyn. It ended in Eowyn saying yes.

When Faramir takes a moment to talk about his future, when we get a personal, emotional look at how Faramir views his role and his ambitions, he makes it all about her. He will marry Eowyn, if she wills it. They will go to Ithilien and plant a garden there, if she wills it. And if they do, everything will be wonderful, if she is there.

Contrast to Eowyn talking about her future with Faramir, it's also all about her. How her mindset has changed, how her priorities have shifted, how she no longer wishes to die but wishes to heal, how she has finally found hope at last. The most Faramir gets in this speech is a coy little reference as to how Eowyn no longer wishes to be queen.

Their troth plighting centres Eowyn as well. Eomer justifies holding it at Theoden's funeral because of how much Theoden loved her. He says that the Steward asked for her hand and she granted it, "full willing". The troth plighting scene ends in a reconciliation between Aragorn and Eowyn. Faramir stays in Rohan for a while to be with Eowyn, and the last we see of Eowyn, it's in a scene focussing on her warriors at arms bond with Merry.

Eowyn and Faramir's stories, after the Battle of Pelennor, becomes Eowyn and Faramir's story. It's about them falling in love and coming together. However, in this story, it's not the bloke who is the Hero, and the woman who is the Love Interest. Here, Eowyn is the Hero, with multiple narrative threads and dynamics that need to be resolved, and Faramir is the Love Interest, whose narrative is entirely wrapped in whether or not he gets the girl.

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“We no longer have political movement. While thousands of us may come together for a rally or march, we are bound together on such occasions by a single shared interest. Any effort to convert such interests into collective goals is usually undermined by the fragmented individualism of our concerns. Laudable goals - fighting climate change, opposing war, advocating public healthcare or penalizing bankers - are united by nothing more than the expression of emotion. In our political as in our economic lives, we have become consumers: choosing from a broad gamut of competing objectives, we find it hard to imagine ways or reasons to combine these into a coherent whole. We must do better than this.” ― Tony Judt, Ill Fares the Land