Sympathy for the Devil

The transcendental role of music within Sinners

Music is often referred to as the universal language of humankind. Unlike (say) English, Mandarin or Swahili, music transcends cultural, historical and linguistic boundaries. The universality of music is notable in three ways, and each part plays a role in Ryan Coogler’s genre fluid Sinners.

Firstly, the language of music is a transcultural feature of human experience. All cultures have learnt to ‘speak’ the language of melody, harmony, rhythm, and dynamics in distinct ways, and music has remained an integral part of human experience since the dawn of civilisation. Secondly, musically structured systems of communication can transport similar thoughts and feelings across different cultures, periods and languages. It thereby becomes possible to understand the experiences being communicated regardless of cultural and/or linguistic boundaries.

Finally, music is capable of transporting the culturally situated and historically bounded: it can move us beyond the limitations of language and lived experiences. As Romain Rolland might say, it can conjure feelings without “perceptible limits”, “a feeling of something limitless and unbounded", an “indissoluble bond” connected to - or in communion with - a higher state or realm. A seemingly earthbound art form can somehow make us feel a part of the natural universe in magical or supernatural ways.

Although music might be a universal language, it is nonetheless important to stress its particularity. As sociologists observe, musical forms are inherent and function as a social cohesive, identity marker, cultural force and social capital. Experiences of music are immanent and reflect their historical context or social conditions. The language of music is therefore culturally specific or determined and arises within the context of its occurrence (given social relations, practices and bounds).

The paradox is that it is music’s cultural specificity or immanence that gives it its expansive lexicon and capacity for transcendence. The universal language of humankind, then, simultaneously occurs as a cultural repository - it preserves and transmits a particular culture’s knowledge, narratives, values, and behaviours across potentially porous boundaries.

If we were to (say) compare Sebastian Bach’s St. Matthew Passion and Nina Simone’s Sinnerman we would therefore encounter different mediations on the nature of sin and suffering. These very different repositories arose within particular historical contexts, and the relationship between sinner and salvation could be (re)contextualised and understood accordingly.

Sinners makes these themes explicit from the outset. The film’s opening monologue - voiced by hoodoo practitioner Annie (Wunmi Mosaku) against striking black and white images - talks about the universality and transcendence of music.

There are legends of people born with the gift of making music so true, it can pierce the veil between life and death. Conjuring spirits from the past and the future. In ancient Ireland, they were called Fili. In Choctaw land, they call them fire keepers. And in West Africa, they’re called griots. This gift can bring healing to their communities, but it also attracts evil.

Somewhat perversely, the movie - like this article - also takes its time in getting to the bloody point. It will take an hour before Sinners provides audiences with a transcendent experience. By this stage, they could be forgiven for forgetting what the seemingly straightforward film was originally talking about or invariably headed towards: music’s ability to reach across various divides (cultural, historical, spatial and spiritual).

Prior to launching into the film’s turning point, the root doctor’s voice intervenes again to remind us of music’s ability to summon spirits across generations and cultures. Annie’s strategic ministration suddenly becomes the cinematic equivalent of a needle drop or breakdown.

The extraordinary scene is spearheaded with a brief interlude by old town piano player Delta Slim (Delroy Lindo). The revered musician’s comments are directed towards aspiring ‘bad blues man’ Sammie Moore (Miles Caton), and their conversation appears to take place on another plane during a barn burning performance. Delta’s comments speaks to a related theme : music’s capacity to exult or uplift the human spirit onto the celestial plane. The possibility of transcendence, the musician makes clear, is grounded in particular historical experiences or situations.

Delta : Blues wasn’t forced on us like that religion. We brought this with us from home. It’s magic what we do. It’s sacred…and big.

Annie: There are legends of people born with the gift of making music so true, it can pierce the veil between life and death. Conjuring spirits from the past and the future.

Delta: With this here ritual, we heal our people and we be free.

Sinners was building up, of course, to this ecstatic ‘release’ for an entire hour. We don’t mean to imply that the film trapped audiences in a digression or aside. We needed to take the long day's journey into night to help contextualise the therapeutic value of ‘the blues’, and the film inaugurates its slow burn journey through various interactions and situations during Jim Crow-era Mississippi in 1932. It is reductive, however, to primarily see Sinners through the lens of racism. The film is simultaneously about race relations - relationships within and between racial groups - and problematises experiences of race per se.

Trying to distinguish between race and racism is obviously fraught with difficulties - to some extent, it is attempting to make a distinction without a difference. Nonetheless, a distinction between intergroup and intragroup racial dynamics needs to be urged - particularly since Sinners views race relations through the tangled knots of acculturation and appropriation.

The real threat to the film’s African Americans is neither the Ku Klux Klan or bloodsucking vampires, but the lure of a post-racial society via forced assimilation and integration. The Ku Klux Klan might want all the black characters dead but white vampire Remmick (Jack O'Connell) wants them to join the ranks of the undead so they can all live off their vital essence. Sinners’ spectre is cultural diversity, equity and inclusion along socially delineated lines.

Specifically, where the dilution and/or appropriation of identity occurs

to such an extent that the assimilating group becomes socially indistinguishable from members of the dominant clan (racial assimilation) or when members of a majority group adopt cultural elements of a minority group in an exploitative, disrespectful, or stereotypical way (cultural appropriation).

The film’s title thereby takes on various shades of meaning, and oversees complex racial dynamics and relations. Sinners attempts to expiate America’s original sins of slavery and genocide through music. The transatlantic slave trade is, of course, the source of the African diaspora in a country founded upon the erasure of another race. The only reason any of these black people are in America is because their ancestors were taken by force and forced to work the land taken away from others.

Audience’s bear witness, amongst other things, to the descendants of freed slaves engaging in sharecropping, or slavery by another name. Specifically, where blacks continued to work fields owned by whites in exchange for a small share of the crops. Freed black people remained shackled to the land without being paid for their labour, and could only reap a portion of what they sowed. It goes without saying that sharecropping was an exploitative system: it rarely covered living expenses and forced workers into debt slavery and dependency on plantation scrip (credit that could only be spent in company stores with inflated prices).

We also get a glimpse of the role Christianity has played in enslaving black people and estranging them from their roots. The black preacher (Saul Williams) - and his congregation’s - original sin is that they have all become complicit in their own abjection and/or negation in slaveholding churches. Instead of holding onto their previous identities and rituals, these suffering servants had somehow found solace and liberation in a ministry of subjugation . Christianity was invoked to justify black enslavement and racial discrimination via the promise of spiritual release and salvation. Their black skin had become a stamp of iniquity : the churchgoers clothed in white are therefore participating in a moral cleansing ritual that will allegedly bring these self confessed sinners closer to God’s salvation.

Viewers can also testify to the two Klan members surprise on discovering that Native Americans are pursuing a white fugitive onto ‘their’ land. Good Samaritans Bert and Joan (Peter Dreimanis and Lola Kirke) take it for granted that the indigenous peoples of the United States have been wiped off the face of the earth or forcibly removed from their ancestral lands and relocated far away. It’s no coincidence that the two ‘turned’ Klan members will form the nucleus of Remmick’s ‘fellowship’ in the guise of a folk band.

Racial segregation is primarily mapped out in a visit to the main town. Chinese shopkeepers Grace and Bo (Li Jun Li and Yao) run two stores across the road from each other in Clarksdale, Mississippi - one for whites and another for blacks. Given their race, the married Asian couple clearly know which side of the culture divide they belong on, and have closer ties to the black community.

Anti-miscegenation laws - the prohibition against sinful interracial marriages and sexual relationships - is expressed through the bi-racial Mary (Hailee Steinfeld). Although Mary passes for white, she doesn’t appear to know her place and remains caught between worlds. She is still outraged at been abandoned by her ex-lover Stack (Michael B. Jordan) in a bid to protect both of them from harm. She seeks entry into a designated safe space for blacks so as to rekindle an old flame. It is her relationship with Cornbread (Omar Miller) - the juke joint’s bouncer and a childhood friend - that enables Mary to cross the threshold keeping the vampires outside.

The film’s biggest sinners, however, are the two violent gangsters who have returned to Mississippi to establish a den of sin (a place for black people to congregate so as to engage in illicit activities like drinking, gambling, adultery, lewd dancing, etc). Prior to the arrival of Remmick, the Smokestack Twins (Michael B. Jordan playing characters presumably named after Howling Wolf’s propulsive one chord vamp Smokestack Lightning) are the real vampires - they are more than happy to exploit their own community’s suffering for material gain and/or social standing in a racially segregated era.

Sinners makes no bones about these two culture vultures - they are preying on the abilities, hopes, fears and desires of their own kind with ill gotten gains (money stolen from other gangsters). They also have few qualms about using violence on members of their own community if anyone directly challenges - or refuses to capitulate to - an economic power structure modelled on master/slave relations.

The twin’s gospels appear to be similarly two fold: better the devil you know (racial segregation) and racial capitalism (the process of deriving social and economic value from the racial identity of another person ). The twins are spreading the word about a juke joint to capitalise on feelings of black displacement, persecution and yearning. They were the first to notice that their cousin Sammie was gifted, and are hoping to profit off his (and other people’s) labor. Racial dynamics play into their own plans in that the success of their venture depends upon a social division of labor and an unequal share in any money harvested off poor people ripe for the picking.

The violent gangsters are selling their own kind a bill of goods: a feeling of black ‘freedom’ or ‘community’ to people caught in the trap of racial poverty and subject to the threat of their own violence.

Historically speaking, juke joints were safe spaces for black people to come together to feel free or experience emotional release. They segregated themselves from whites in order to socialise, drink, dance, gamble and fornicate without white supervision or intervention. As Kte'pi observes

Whether the sex, drinking, gambling music or the violence that could erupt between drunken patrons was the focus, juke joints have historically provided a transgressive, liminal space where African Americans were freed from the norms that, in the Jim Crow racial segregation era of the South, strictly bound their behaviour.

And then, of course, there is Sammie , the son of a preacher who occupies a liminal space between the sacred and the profane. Sammie - aka Preacher Boy - is committing the sin of lying to his father about playing with fire and has few misgivings about sleeping with a married singer (Jayme Lawson). Despite the risk of burning in hell, he feels that blues is the dialogue that speaks the truth and so purports to be answering a higher calling too.

Sammie’s conjuring sequence elevates an initially pedestrian and grounded film. Up until that point, Sinners urgency comes from neither the moral outrage or constant threat of racial injustice. Sinners ‘let’s throw a party before nightfall’ plot is what propels the film forward or gives it its initial dramatic stakes. Nonetheless, the conjuring sequence consolidates the feeling that kindred ‘spirits’ have come together because they all share a connection and/or sense of belonging that transcends the observable universe or any given historical space and time.

The spirits of different performers and dancers are thereby observed to mingle and merge into one (another) on a shared plane of existence. Whatever their cultural differences, they are unknowingly communing with each other through a language that speaks to - and through - each of them. We observe them moving together across physical and temporal realms, and similarly participate in a sacred experience: the feeling of totally merging with something bigger and of glimpsing other worlds or existences.

As transcendent as Sinners pivotal sequence is, it nonetheless falls short in notable ways. The song supposedly ‘piercing the veil’ is not up to the task of providing a transcendental experience and feels like mere pastiche of a blues song. The feelings the song draws on superficially imitate the profound expressions of the human condition. When heard in isolation (taken out of context), ‘I Lied To You’ sounds like karaoke blues. The song is an overproduced/overwrought original composition that fails to convince as an instance of authentic blues capable of plumbing the depths or summoning spirits across realms. Despite the considerable talent involved, the sequence is almost entirely reliant on the language of cinema to convey the context transcending nature of music.

Equally telling: the conjuring doesn’t reach far enough into the future and feels cut off from (say) the firebrand preaching of the rap music it acknowledges or the afro techno music that similarly taps into the ancestral and/or sacrosanct. Sinners thereby encourages a false dichotomy between ‘preaching the gospel’ and ‘music as bully pulpit’, and sidesteps the way nightclubs have become the new religious congregation and DJ's the new gods. The sequence still manages to elevate the human spirit, of course, but it falls victim to racial segregation in that it separates us from black music’s own lineage or historical trajectories.

Cinematically speaking, the musical sequence is still unforgettable and justifiably revered : it has the desired effect of transporting modern audiences across space and time too. It is easy to see why a similarly awestruck Remmick might find himself drawn to the spiritually ‘alight building’ like a moth to a flame. The Irish vampire sees in Sammie the possibility of reconnecting to his own cultural heritage and/or identity. The undead human being wants to commune with the spirits of his ancestors so as to feel more present or alive again. He longs for a spiritual feeling of connection and belonging via a sense of unity with others across space and time.

Significantly, the white vampire tries to gain entry into the juke joint as a fellow musician, and attempts to establish a rapport with its black patrons through folk music. The colour of his folk band’s skin, however, prohibits entry on the grounds of racial privilege: being white poses a threat to the black people inside insofar as a self-selected safe space must still defer to the rules outside.

The folk band’s impromptu performance of Geeshie Wiley's 1927 Pick Poor Robin Clean plays an important thematic role here. Although their soulless (or colourblind) version of her country blues song breaks the dramatic tension, their appropriation of it conveys racial ambivalence. On the one hand, it shows that these white folks have an affinity for music and that it is possible to experience kinship through the blues. Significantly, some of the people blocking their entry to the juke joint find themselves moved by the jaunty performance despite themselves. Their tone death version of Wiley’s song, however, is completely inappropriate.

They appear to misunderstand that the song expresses racial desperation and is about trying to survive the indignities of poverty and starvation. The song is a hymn to black resilience in the face of white adversity and deprivation, and not an ode to enjoyment or culinary pleasure. Wiley’s famous song can also be heard as a racial allegory about white society chewing up and spitting out poor black people.

On the other hand, the unexpectedly comical sequence simultaneously reveals Remmick’s nefarious intentions: complete appropriation, or an all consuming hunger that will feed off their life essence until there will be little left of their individual selves. The song announces that the vampires desperately want to come inside so they can devour the souls dwelling within their flesh and bones.

Sinners incorporation of the ‘vampires must be invited in’ motif is particularly illuminating. Remmick wants to enter a delineated safe space so he can incorporate a black threshold (spiritual barrier protecting those inside) into a moving or open boundary (himself). The required invite to be let in under false pretences, however, is not intended as a constriction or desecration of a sacred boundary line. Remmick intends to expand and consecrate given boundary lines (between the living and the dead, black and white, past and future, etc). From Remmick’s perspective, being granted entry into his growing clan of vampires is akin to taking holy communion: everyone can now share the same memories, feelings and histories through one another.

Nonetheless, forced assimilation is viewed as spiritual death to the black patrons. Remmick will be forcing them to give up something that doesn’t rightfully belong to him or anybody else. Being assimilated without their expressed knowledge or consent will result in losing the very thing they’re all holding onto and sustaining them - a cultural identity that separates them along firm lines of continuity and delineation. To be devoured by this vampire is to be forced into an indiscriminate soul collective, or a blood relationship that goes beyond racial ties and cultural distinctiveness.

Sinners’ conception of vampirism recalls more Star Trek’s Borg Collective than Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Like the Borg, Remmick wants to co-opt other races and cultures through the process of forced assimilation, transforming individual members into a collective consciousness or state that he alone presides over. The vampire’s goal is to similarly appropriate seperate parts into a makeshift or shapeshifting ‘cultural identity’ - picking every encountered race clean so as to adapt to any possible threat or contingency. Remmick’s prime directive might be expansion through conquest but his final destination is closure (completion, totality, perfection, etc). Allegorically speaking, Remmick’s arrival signals the rise of globalisation, or the subsumptive process of increased interconnectedness and cultural hegemony via vampiric capitalism.

It is only fair, however, to give the white devil his due. Remmick is arguably the most interesting - and sympathetic - character in the film. Remmick is not feigning the offer of ‘fellowship and love’: the vampire thinks he is doing everyone a kindness or performing a community service. He clearly empathises with the black communities need for self-worth and determination and already knows (via Bert and Joan’s memories) that their safe haven is a death trap. The disused saw mill was only sold to the Smokestack twins so the Klan could gather as many blacks together for a slaughter. He not only recognises kindred souls sharing a deep bond of unspeakable suffering and longing, but he is giving these black people an opportunity to survive the night for eternity.

The white Irishman similarly feels estranged from his own cultural roots and has (like other Irish) been subject to racial persecution across generations and continents. Specifically, the Irish were not originally considered white in countries defined by racial characteristics and many indentured or penalised Irish people (falsely) saw themselves as part of transatlantic slave trade . Further, Irish immigrants (fleeing British colonisation and a legally formalised caste system) were frequently accused of refusing to assimilate and of being uppity. A false moral equivalence was made between blacks and the Irish until the latter strategically aligned themselves with the racial ideology of their white oppressors. As Art McDonald observes in How the Irish Became White

Irish and Africans Americans had lots in common and lots of contact during this period; they lived side by side and shared work spaces. In the early years of immigration the poor Irish and blacks were thrown together, very much part of the same class competing for the same jobs. In the census of 1850, the term mulatto appears for the first time due primarily to inter-marriage between Irish and African Americans. The Irish were often referred to as "Negroes turned inside out and Negroes as smoked Irish." A famous quip of the time attributed to a black man went something like this: "My master is a great tyrant, he treats me like a common Irishman." Free blacks and Irish were viewed by the Nativists as related, somehow similar, performing the same tasks in society. It was felt that if amalgamation between the races was to happen, it would happen between Irish and blacks. But, ultimately, the Irish made the decision to embrace whiteness, thus becoming part of the system which dominated and oppressed blacks. Although it contradicted their experience back home, it meant freedom here since blackness meant slavery.

Although Sinners makes its views of forced assimilation very clear, the film remains caught in a performative contradiction. Specifically, a film presupposing the evils of racial segregation nonetheless seeks refuge in a racially segregated ideology. We have already observed the relatively innocuous (and completely justifiable) versions of racial segregation in play throughout the film. Sinners’ racial ideology is initially found at two intersecting places: the juke joint as an exclusive safe space and music as a socially inclusive identity marker. Sinners explores the ways blues music has created an affective identification between black individuals, or self narratives connected to how individuals feel about themselves in relation to their own social group and cultural identities.

Less innocuous (and justifiable), however, is the film’s narrative defence of racial segregation. Given the way certain situations and interactions play out, Sinners also appears to be advocating for the need to keep different races seperate from one another. Specifically, the film’s existential threats (to the black community, juke joint and/or blues music) are curiously displaced onto two female ‘outsiders’ - the bi-racial woman passing for white and the Asian woman bridging (or navigating) the divide between black and white communities. Thematically speaking, letting these two outsiders into a black safe space was to literally invite trouble inside.

The invisible spiritual barrier otherwise protecting everyone inside was breached when racially distinct persons let the vampires (or vampirism) in too. It is worth stressing that Mary and Grace are already assimilated to varying degrees, and code switch according to situation or need. The cultural identity changes - changes in language and behaviour - is a social adaptation: a way of adapting to specific cultural norms or different social contexts. Psychologist Kai Prewitt observes

None of us have just one absolute identity but the salience of our identity — or the identity that we consider most relevant at the moment — depends on the context you’re in.

Code switching is basically a way of changing your… language or behaviour to match what you think would be appropriate or make someone else feel comfortable

Put another way, code-switching is a way to control which version of yourself is visible at any given moment. It can be done as a form of both self-protection and self-sacrifice.

As the term presupposes, all cultural identities are subject to social codes or scripts (accepted rules of conduct, internalised patterns of behaviour). Encoded behaviours are the way anyone might normally present themselves or navigate social interactions and situations. The internalisation of given codes is how we are all socially assimilated and/or integrated in the first place. This ‘enforced assimilation’ is otherwise known as the socialisation process. Code switching within racial contexts, then, indicates a given power differential or survival strategy : it usually involves marginalised people changing their cultural identity to gain acceptance and avoid feeling (or being treated) like outsiders within dominant social groups.

Mary’s ability to code switch gives her the confidence to freely interact with black and white people alike. Consequently, when Smoke realises that the patron’s company crip won’t be enough to cover the juke joint’s expenses, Mary volunteers to go speak to the strangers still hovering around outside. As a bi-racial person, she feels she can speak on the twin’s behalf by acting as their go between. Unlike Smoke, she already know how to speak and act ‘normal’ around white people, and he agrees to let her be the black’s intermediary or spokesperson. Mary is forcibly assimilated when she explores the possibility of letting paying white customers in, and she returns to the juke joint to assimilate Stack in turn. Mary’s attack puts a premature end to the evening, and the rest of the patrons are sent home early. The poor patrons are similarly picked clean and absorbed (off camera) into the gathering storm outside.

Grace is amongst the group of people who remain behind. When her husband Bo is also assimilated off camera, Remmick can now speak Chinese and has acquired knowledge of their daughter Lisa back in town. Remmick uses this new found knowledge to threaten Grace (amongst others): if they don’t let the vampires inside or force Sammie outside, they will go into town and kill everybody else. Grace - terrified for her daughter and worried about black and white town folk alike - defies the black group’s request to wait the rest of the night out. The Asian woman bridging the cultural divide has now been compromised by her inability to stay on side. Suddenly sounding gangsta herself, she invites the vampires in for a final showdown : ‘come on in, you motherfuckers!’

Suffice to say, the black people were justified. If Grace would have waited (only seven more minutes till sunrise!), sunlight would have sent the vampires scurrying away. Mary and Stack are the only vampires not to be incinerated in the resulting massacre, and Sammie is the lone human survivor. He will go on to play the blues (as Buddy Guy) for the rest of his life to racially mixed audiences anyway - who are all similarly seeking emotional release in music appropriated and commodified through the globalisation process.

But don’t be blue - we can end on a more upbeat note if we go back in time. Although Sinners remains a cautionary tale about the sins of cultural appropriation and assimilation, there is another transcendental musical sequence that puts a different spin on things. If Youtube and Tik Tok views are any indication, watching black and white people singing and dancing together is far more persuasive than any concerns about racial delineation or segregation. We are referring, of course, to Remmick’s rendition of Rocky Road to Dublin, a 19th century Irish folk song about racial displacement and discrimination. By this stage, Mary, Stack and Cornbread (amongst other people) have been subsumed into Remmick’s collective consciousness and can feel the rhythm too. Resistance is futile: these racially mixed undead people are all having the time of their lives.