Irish Vampires on the Rocky Road to Dublin
Why Sinners is Ryan Coogler's best film yet
This spring, I finally made it to Ireland. I’ve tried not to overly romanticise any people, nation or land, but I think I’ve done it slightly anyway. Maybe it’s something about the ecomythology I’ve learned about in recent years, or the historic sense of solidarity some black communities have felt towards Irish communities. Perhaps it's my love of Kneecap.
Anyway, I spent some time in a small village in County Mayo with loved ones. I felt myself unfurling the second we got there, especially on long walks down the coast, listening to great tits and cuckoos lighting up the sky with song. The tides ebb and flow multiple times throughout the day, and the weather shifts through phases at an impressive speed, reminding me that everything is beautiful and nothing is permanent.
But before we reached the west coast, I had time to kill in Dublin. Sleepy and tender, I took myself on a date to the cinema to watch Sinners - the new Ryan Coogler film. I knew little about it beyond posters of a buff-looking Michael B. Jordan in a vest holding a gun. What I wasn’t expecting was to be sobbing alone into my popcorn, thinking about all those who came before me and those who will come after.
*SPOILER ALERT FOR SINNERS* (skip to the end for my recommendations, and bookmark this and get yourself to the cinema.)
Set in Mississippi in the 1930s, Sinners tells the story of Sammie ‘Preacher Boy’, who has been given the gift of music that can conjure up the past, present and future. But with this power comes dark forces. After his twin cousins, Smoke and Stack, come home from Chicago to run a Juke Joint, it soon becomes clear there is evil at work in town, and the supernatural forces are after more than just blood. At its core, Sinners is a vampire horror cleverly cloaking a tale about the history of American music, the black experience and what it means to survive.
Perhaps it's because I was in Ireland, or more likely because I haven’t seen this depicted in modern cinema before - but I was instantly taken in by two characters, Annie, a love interest and hoodoo practitioner and Remick, the vampire. Played by Jack O’Connell, Remmick is hellbent on turning everyone in town into vampires, but more significantly, he is drawn to Sammie and the blues. If you’re looking through a modern lens, the easy reading of his character, and the other white vampires, is that they are evil blood suckers, leaching off the music and talent of black people.
Vampirism can be seen as a metaphor for white supremacy being like a black hole - sucking up and destroying everything in its path. Maybe it’s a metaphor for how white entertainers have mocked black musicians and artists through minstrelsy, while simultaneously stealing, repackaging and diluting black music for themselves. In my first Substack essay, I wrote about jazz and the blues and the concept of “the reality of the sweating brow”, where white Americans were more interested in the exertion and physical performance of black musicians than the music being played itself - a cultural voyeurism.
The simplest answer is that the vampires are racist; they are the villains, even Sammie’s preacher father warns him about the power of the blues and letting the demons in. But since when has Ryan Coogler given us an easy reading? Much like Killmonger in Black Panther, Remmick isn’t a villain at all, an antagonist, maybe, an adversary, yes.
To understand Remmick, you have to look through his eyes - an Irishman born in the 12th century who has lived into the 20th century. He was alive centuries before the English playwright Thomas Middleton first used “white people” as a term in his play in 1613. He was born before Irish people were even considered white. Remmick was born before Carl Linnaeus, the father of taxonomy and scientific racism, created racial sub-categories for humans. He lived long before the United States of America was even founded. He was never the enemy, really.
In an interview on the WTF podcast, Ryan Coogler talked about his affinity for Irish music and culture. “I think it’s not known how much crossover there is between African American culture and Irish culture and how much that stuff’s loved in our community,” he says. Remmick uses music to connect to a culture and life that was stripped from him. He is stuck in a land that is not his own, still mourning for his ancestors and home. Remick sings a rousing rendition of “The Rocky Road to Dublin”, a classic Irish folk song, and then begins Irish dancing. One leading theory notes that the Irish dance form itself, with arms down by the sides, is a symbol of defiance and resistance against English rule.
Remmick is a man who has witnessed first-hand the colonisation of Ireland by the English. He has then moved to America and again had to bear witness to the unjust mistreatment of his people at the hands of the ruling class. He has seen for generations how black people, indigenous people, Asian people (who are the groups portrayed in Sinners), and I’m sure many more, have also been mistreated. He knows how religion has been used as a weapon of oppression and subservience.
In his mind, turning the whole town into vampires will save the black community from a life of suffering under the weight of white supremacy - it’s why he warns our heroes about the KKK who are on their way to the Juke Join in the morning. Remmick wants to create a new world, connected to ancestors through music and culture, where they are safe and free. Similarly to Killmonger, his character represents a classic case of wrong tactics but a righteous objective. Obviously, non-consensual killing and turning everyone into nightwalking blood suckers isn’t great. And while contextualising his background is important, he would still be viewed as a white man in 1930s America, and he does use his invitation into whiteness to his benefit.
And what about the Choctaw Native Americans at the start of the film, who we see chasing Remmick into the home of two KKK members, surely that is proof he is evil and racist? If we dig a little deeper, most likely, Remmick was trying to recruit the Choctaw because he respects them. In the real world, there has been a long-standing relationship between the Choctaw Nation and the Irish, who’ve had a shared understanding of oppression and colonisation. The Choctaw Nation even reached out in solidarity and sent money to Ireland during the Great Hunger, even while still in the fresh aftermath of the brutal ethnic cleansing of the Trail of Tears.
I don’t even think Ryan Coogler is trying to tell a moralising tale with Sinners. Firstly, he’s telling his story all on his terms (one where there's no random CIA agent as the hero in a film about an unpenetrable African nation). Sinners isn’t a film that wants us to be a United Colors of Benetton advert singing “we are the world”, nor do I think Coogler is trying to say black people = good, white people = bad. Both takes are far too painfully simplistic. He’s laying down the cards and letting you choose what to pick up.
Marginalised groups who have faced similar oppressions throughout history have become so far removed from each other, pitted against each other, some even becoming oppressors themselves, that I understand why it’s a challenge to see the wood for the trees with our modern lens. Sinners asks you to try, to dig a little deeper.
I know it’s meant to be a horror, but I saw Sinners as nothing short of a love story.
WHAT I’M WATCHING: Birds! I’ve taken up birdwatching, it was only a matter of time really. As fast as TV and Film, I’m torturing myself by watching The Last of Us season 2. By episode 2, I was ready to call American ofcom.
WHAT I’M READING: Bad Sex: Sexuality, Gender and Affect in Contemporary TV by my good friend Billy Holzberg and Jacqueline Gibbs and Aura Lehtonen.
WHAT I’M DOING: I baked bread yesterday, somehow it seemed more reasonable than going to the shops. I do not enjoy baking, but you know what, thank you BBC Goodfood - it’s delicious.