At about the half-hour point in ‘Sinners,’ Stack (Michael B. Jordan), Delta Slim (Delroy Lindo), and Sammie (Miles Caton) drive by a chain gang of Black men on the way to the juke joint. They sing as they work, which beckons Delta to proclaim, “Hold your head!” After that, he recounts a story about when he and his partner Rice played for an all-white cohort of patrons. When Rice had ambitions to start a church with his hard-earned cash, Slim mentions his partner being falsely accused of sexual violence and then lynched right at the train station. When he arrives at the end of the heaviness of that story, Silm immediately breaks into song. Melody is his medicine, strength, and testimony. It has been for Black people across generations to heal the terrible things the soul wants to speak about.
Sammie stares at him, and it’s that moment when he starts to understand the bridge between music, spirituality, and his place within it all while playing the guitar. Three generations of Black men within that car join in to form one voice because they share a commonality of experiences that Black people often do. It’s a mix of joy, jubilation, sadness, loss, and anger. It’s also catching the “holy ghost” and allowing the spirit to take control of your body while a sermon is given on an early Sunday morning. While the church is looked at as the place to give praise and ask for forgiveness for our transgressions, the juke joint served its own purpose in exercising the demons of racism and slavery.
Ryan Coogler utilizes music and religion to demonstrate the multifaceted nature of Black magic and why it remains coveted by outside forces. There are just some things that cannot be duplicated without the people who hold the experiences and culture that create them. To that effect, people who don’t understand the complexity of Black magic put their own measurements of success on it (as seen in the “Sinners” box office earnings discourse or rebrand it under the guise of togetherness.
Sammie’s character is a conduit to showcase the evolution of worship into Blues music and the importance of preserving the integrity of Black art. His character ends up being the maguffin because there’s this train of thought that distills Black magic (whether it be music, writing, etc) to a formula. If you duplicate the “equation” based upon the folly of appearance, the source can then be extracted. Coogler himself does this in a subtle way when the vampires are trying to gain access to the juke joint. The trio sings Geeshie Wiley’s 1930s song “Pick Poor Robin Clean” in a folk music style, thus making an overture to the cultural appropriation that has plagued Black art until this very day.
It’s not a coincidence that the first scenes of ‘Sinners’ show a bloodied and beaten Sammie returning to his father’s church. He’s tightly holding onto the remaining piece of his guitar while glimpses of the carnage flash on screen. The very next scene is Sammie picking cotton, humming a song with his feet firmly planted in the soil. There’s a purity inside him that undergoes a complete transformation once we reach the end of “Sinners.”It’s a combination of trauma and loss, but also an evolution of how faith responds to oppression, whether it’s natural or supernatural.
(L to r) PETER DREIMANIS as Bert, JACK O’CONNELL as Remmick, HAILEE STEINFELD as Mary, and LOLA KIRKE as Joan in Warner Bros. Pictures’ “SINNERS,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release.
Throughout the film, people attempt not only to influence the music that exists within Sammie, but also how he expresses spirituality. When Sammie talks to Stack after he’s done singing “I Lied To You,” Stack warns him against becoming a traveling musician. His father, Jedidiah (Saul Williams), believes he’s courting the devil by singing blues music. While that ultimately became true, Sammie doesn’t necessarily abandon the rituals and ideals passed down to him. For protection against Remmick, Sammie recites The Lord’s Prayer. (Remmick even recites it with him.) Instead, he follows his path of freedom while acknowledging the customs instilled in him. This is reminiscent of the relationship between Smoke (Michael B. Jordan) and Annie (Wunmi Mosaku). He may not understand her hoodoo practices, but he still wears the necklace and listens to her intuition when Cornbread (Omar Benson Miller) is turned into a vampire. In the spirit of Sister Rosetta Tharpe, who infused gospel music into the genre of rock, Coogler is demonstrating that there are multiple ways to experience “church” and that one can be a vessel for it in their creative expression. If we don’t limit how we speak to something greater than us, then that will ultimately set us free. Even the constructs of religion that were provided to the world fall under the construct of whiteness. As Delta Slim says, “Blues weren’t forced on us like that religion. We brought this with us from home.” The wraparound shot beautifully depicts generations of Black and Chinese musicians and dancers conjured from Sammie’s music. Even in a place full of gambling, hedonism, and “drunkards,” you can experience the benefits of church.
(L to r) MICHAEL B. JORDAN as Smoke, WUNMI MOSAKU as Annie, HAILEE STEINFELD as Mary, MICHAEL B. JORDAN as Stack, MILES CATON as Sammie and OMAR BENSON MILLER as Cornbread in Warner Bros. Pictures’ “SINNERS,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release.
Remmick’s character and the way Coogle uses vampires and their lore are ingenious because their intentions are revealed through the shared struggle and uniformity that can also be methods of oppression. In the same wraparound shot, Remmick, Joan, and Bert see a burning pile of ash. It’s never about the people who create the song; it’s just about obtaining the music itself for your gain. Remmick craves a method of connection to his Irish heritage—a lineage that has experienced its own generational hardships and trauma. But with being a vampire, he can’t feel the full breadth of ecstasy everybody else does in the juke joint. The only thing he can offer is the possibility of a life free from prejudice, where everybody is the same. There’s the trap that “Sinners” warns against. No gain is worth giving your purpose over to those who don’t understand it.
RELATED PIECES
‘Sinners’ Is Ryan Coogler’s Sprawling, Intelligent, and Dynamically Complicated Symphony
As a vampire (or a culture vulture), you would feed on others like Cornbread eventually, draining them of their purpose and dancing to the tune of another. Remmick sings “Rocky Road To Dublin,” with a collection of vampires of all colors singing along and doing the Irish jig. But that’s not their song or story. The danger of assimilation that isn’t acknowledged is that, while difficulties might be similar, Remmick’s skin affords him a grace that people like Smoke, Stack, Jessie, and Slim can’t access. He’s able to seek shelter in the home of Joan and Bert despite having been burned alive by the sun and being on the run from Indigenous Americans. Even the most well-intentioned allies, such as Grace (Li Jun Li) and Mary (Hailee Steinfeld), succumb to bad faith actors because they lack an understanding of how shallow and false promises of togetherness truly are from their perspective. If you look at vampirism in the context of being a pseudo-religion, Remmick actively uses it as a method of filtering. He becomes the man who he speaks of that recited The Lord’s Prayer while burning down his village.
In a world where no physical place is safe, Black artistry and its connection to faith endure. The release of “Sinners” comes at a turbulent time. The achievements of Black Americans are being erased outright, and diversity, equity, and inclusion are being treated as a scourge on society. But even as the tools of oppression evolve, the messages, storytelling, and the testimonies continue to stay one step ahead of those who crave to illicit the same energies.
