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cole sprouse oscar campaign

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"Sinners" Characters and the Seven Deadly Sins

I saw an instagram post that was categorizing the character's in Ryan Coogler's Sinners through the Seven Deadly Sins and it pissed me off so much I opened up my forgotten tumblr. I can't remember exactly what they categorized each character as but it was so one-note and surface level I wanted to punch someone. I've seen the movie multiple times IN THEATERS (free tix thanks to such gainful employment as a ticket tearer) and I thought I could be qualified to throw my hat in the ring. To be clear, I'm not saying they deserved to be punished for this behavior or even that some of these actions are bad, but I was frustrated with the mischaracterizations and simplifications that robbed plenty of characters from their agency withins the story. I shouldn't be taking this this seriously. YES. SPOILERS WARNING DUH.

Wrath - Smoke (agreed with them on this post). Pretty Duh-- he carries with him a quiet anger at a little bit of everything. He is the one who killed their dad, he is angry at the death of his baby, and he is angry that Chicago wasn't more than "Mississippi with skyscraper". But His story gets a uniquely happy ending when he pushes his past his need for anger and vengeance (arguably after he does achieve it in killing the KKK) and joins Annie and their child in the afterlife. That gets me choked up every time (no joke).

Greed - Stack. This isn't a 1:1 translation since he accepted the wooden nickels, but his search for profit (sending Mary out to get money from Remmick) and choice to start a Joint based on stolen goods is pretty profit-minded. Also, his clothes are more extravagant than Smoke's AND his vampire eyes are green. Green? Greed? Checkmate, Atheist.

Lust - Pearline/ Mary. Yes, this boils their characters down to a vague defining trait, but I think it's important that it is one of their defining traits within the movie. They were both married women (I'm alright with cheating, I don't care, I'm an ally) and their desire for the men in their lives/a deeper connection again (Lord knows they may not be sexually/intellectually satisfied in their relationships) is what brought them to the Juke Joint in the first place. Mary's commitment to Stack and the Juke Joint's cause is what has her going back out to Remmick in the movie, and Pearline's desire to be seen outside of "just a wife" and as a performer is what eventually put them in harms way.

Gluttony - Delta Slim. Pretty straight forward, even if it does fall under the church's frequent misconstruing of Alcoholism/Addiction issues with gluttony and sloth. Delta Slim's painful past is what leads him to his reliance on alcohol (a practice historically used by groups in power to prevent underclasses riots, like on plantations, industrial-era factory workers, and of course, the Irish) but it is a reliance nonetheless.

Envy - If I remember correctly, they said that Hailee Steinfeld's character Mary embodied envy the most. This pissed me fully the fuck off. It is expressed very explicitly in the movie that Mary does not envy the "in-group" of Stack/Smoke, Annie, and the rest of the Juke-joint. She does not even view them as an ingroup. She is frustrated when she is viewed as an outsider (and always only from the outside is she considered an outsider. Annie says she is family), but she knows herself to be apart of that family and has never viewed herself otherwise. However, the character that embodies the most clearly applies to Remmick. The reason he obsessed with them is to get back with his family, his people through Sammy's ability to unite through music. You see it in that famous "barn burning" scene and it's almost explicitly called out in flashback. He envied their culture, that they could all celebrate and exist together when he had been away from his people for so long. Sounds pretty envious to me.

Sloth - As the idea of a "culpable lack of physical or spiritual effort" (Brittanica) doesn't really fit onto anyone perfectly (and I'd hate to blanket it onto Cornbread, like so frequently done) so I think it can be best be loosely applied to any of the following: the Chocktaw, Sammy's father, or even Annie (the least offensive of the three, though none of them really are). Any of these could be either spiritually/physically lazy when it came to the conflict. The Choktaw, in an effort to protect themselves (THIS IS NOT MEANT AS A BAD THING, IT IS SELF-PRESERVATION IN AN ERA OF CULTURAL ERASURE) gave a half-assed warning about Remmick before leaving. In the case of Sammy's dad, he had the rigor and knowledge that came from struct study of objective biblical study, but his application that was so pivotally black-and-white towards Sammy and Music leads to not only Sammy's emancipation but also the twin's previous mistreatment and shunning by the church. Annie very loosely applies because (it can be interpreted) that she gave up too easily once given the full grasp of the situation, pertaining to physical laziness once her spiritual "work" was done.

Pride - I almost listed this as Stack, since he was the one convinced they could last as the Joint even with wooden nickles and the mob after them, but that was a gross oversimplification and I thought it made better applied/was worth looking into for Grace Chow. This is a bit of a stretch, but her choice to sacrifice everyone else's lives (at the chance of them surviving them through the night) in exchange for her ability to protect her daughter as well as avenge the death of her husband is an inherently selfish act. This may not necessarily be pride, but it is certainly an action that is largely self-serving (when not protecting her daughter out-right).

On a separate note, I know Sammy isn't listed here but I do acknowledge Sammy as the main character. Goddamn Miles Caton is so damn talented.

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so Lady is a name. and Guy is a name. can you imagine some couple who are just lady and guy

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SINNERS (2025) dir. Ryan Coogler

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something about smoke being rejected since childhood because everyone was certain his father's evil lived on in him. something about annie being the only one to call smoke 'elijah' and how that makes him soften. something about how just before they're truly reunited, annie says 'i dont want any of that smoke on the baby'. something about annie being the one who sets smoke free from his past and his sins and lets him be human instead.

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netflix?????

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My brother and his friend are playing assassins creed odyssey in the family room and unfortunately for them I Know Things About Ancient Greece.

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hey guys I don’t have pronouns anymore I got the she/it beat out of me

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I do the opposite of gatekeeping, I’m not going to shut up until you like this thing as much as I do

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iconic

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Need the bisexual Nokia so bad

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spn is so funny bc you’ll be watching the show and the fallen angel gets sent to heaven conversion therapy and lobotomized repeatedly to stop his feelings for one human being and then when he’s brainwashed and has said human beaten and bloody on his knees and they’re holding hands the human is begging not to live but for the angel to come back to him.

“I need you,” he says, and it gets through to the angel.

then the season gag reel comes out and the actors are fucking around and say “you’re my baby daddy” and “i love you too” and and trying to shove one guy’s face into the other’s crotch.

then the script for the episode makes the rounds and you find out the already devastating “i need you” was originally “i love you”

then you go to a convention and someone asks about chemistry between the characters and they call you a sick freak and put you in gay jail for having impure thoughts about the Very Heterosexual men on tv.

then years later they allegedly pay for research where they allegedly had people rate the gayness of this exact scene to get the public’s opinion on hypothetically making this relationship explicitly gay. Allegedly.

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—Anne Rice, The Tale of the Body Thief