Hollywood films, like all capitalist culture, have two main purposes. First to reinforce ideas that uphold capitalism, but also to provide escape from the oppression and psychological alienation created by capitalism. Despite the sometimes progressive messages films profess, workers must not rely on the cesspool that is Hollywood to provide messages of true liberation. Sinners—directed by Ryan Coogler who also directed Marvel's Black Panther—is no exception.
Sinners is set in 1932 Mississippi, a time when Jim Crow and the Great Depression devastated the South, where Black workers labored in conditions of neo-slavery enforced by Ku Klux Klan (KKK) violence. Those who migrated to northern U.S. cities found that, as Smoke puts it, “Chicago ain’t s%*t but Mississippi with tall buildings instead of plantations.” South and North were conjoined by both economics and culture, for example the Delta Blues, which was created by Black sharecroppers in Mississippi vocalizing their frustrations about their economic conditions.
The plot centers around Smoke and Stack, twins and World War I veterans turned criminals, who return to Mississippi after a stint in Chicago. With the money from robbing Chicago gangsters, they purchase a sawmill and convert it into a jook joint where Black workers can dance and forget for the moment their hard life as sharecroppers. In setting up the roadside club, the twins recruit a few friends and relatives, including their cousin, Sammie, an aspiring blues musician. The music and sexually uninhibited partying at the jook joint draw the attention of Remmick, an Irish vampire who seeks to absorb Sammie’s talents and create a vampire utopia on earth, free from racial division. A night of booze and Blues turns into a night of bloodlust.
No freedom under capitalism
The movie portrays the jook joint as a safe space where Black workers can be free from racist oppression, express themselves through Black culture, and reject the influence of colonialism. This message will resonate with antiracist viewers. Additionally, antisexist viewers are drawn to the women who are complex and layered, not just mere props to advance the actions of the male leads. The film also gestures toward a class analysis of racism, as the head of the KKK turns out to be the richest property owner in town. Despite these presumably progressive elements, contradictions are rife in the film.
Freedom is represented by two paths. One is a nationalist and individualist path. The twins believe that a Black-owned business and wealth will grant them power and respect. Sammie dreams of escaping to Chicago from the plantation and his deeply religious father, who views Blues music as sinful. The other way, presented by Remmick, can be interpreted as communal and collectivist. Despite being the villain, Remmick provides the sharpest criticism of racism when he says, “The world has already left you for dead. They won’t let you build; won’t let you fellowship.
We will do just that. Together. Forever.” By contrasting “they” with “we,” Remmick shows his understanding of the ruling class’s use of racism to divide workers and prevent Black workers from escaping servitude. But his attempt to turn the jook joint patrons into vampires shows the impossibility—the toxicity—of multiracial unity. This makes the film implicitly anti-communist; those who urge working-class multiracial unity are the real bloodsuckers: the real “sinners.”
History repeats itself
While Sinners takes place in the U.S. nearly 100 years ago, it is powerfully relevant today. Fascism is accelerating as the U.S. empire fights to keep its spot as a world superpower. The workers in the U.S. are reckoning with the aftermath of the failures of a U.S. liberal democracy, which has led to the current gutter racist Trump administration, which openly seeks to repress dissent and erase the existence of marginalized workers. Workers worldwide are living in horrendous conditions, being targeted with brutal racist attacks and forced migration due to imperialist wars, deportations, and climate disasters caused by capitalist exploitation of the earth. These are increasingly desperate times. The need for multiracial unity throughout the international working class is as urgent now as ever.
Ryan Coogler at least attempts to address and tackle these issues. Seemingly responding to the criticisms of Black Panther’s promotion of Black capitalism, he highlights the link between religion and colonial oppression in both Mississippi and British-dominated Ireland. By suggesting connections among the Blues, Irish folk music, and hoodoo, he acknowledges that these movements were created by the working class as a form of resistance and empowerment. However, capitalist popular culture will always find a way to co-opt and defang these forms of resistance.
No matter how appealing its diverse cast of characters may be, representation will never take the place of true revolution. Sinners appeals to the palpable rage of antiracists but it ignores that capitalism is the real vampire. As Marx wrote, “Capital is dead labor which, vampire-like, lives only by sucking living labour, and lives the more, the more labour it sucks.” The arts have long been used as a form of resistance. Workers can still utilize art as a weapon. But more importantly, to gain true freedom, workers must build a mass communist movement and drive a stake right through the heart of the bosses!
