Spoiler alert: This is an interpretation of the 2025 movie Sinners which includes descriptions that reveal the plot of the movie. So, if you still haven’t watched the movie, you come back and read this later.
This movie gets described as “musical horror” by many Western reviewers. While it certainly is a musical treat, the idea of calling it horror is a disservice. It is explained best in u/intro_spec’s words:
But Sinners makes the very valid argument that it’s not. It’s more a historical social commentary that happens to have vampires in the second half– it’s not just a vampire movie. To describe it in that way is a huge disservice to the richness of the genres it blends. Hence the one drop comparison. If anything, it’s a masterpiece of horror noir, the overlooked and underloved subgenre where the reality of Black life is the horror.
The critique of racism that Sinners is, must be visible to most viewers, even to those who hold an aesthetic that doesn’t allow them to enjoy it. But it would be useful to point out that there is an element of savarna behaviour which the movie accurately portrays which the savarna ‘progressive liberals’ should not miss out on.
The juke joint is a space for collective liberation that is built by and for the black community. The vampires present themselves as harmless people who could add to the joy. While their true intention is to infiltrate and destroy the space for their own gain. When things move further they’re more open in stating their intentions, and go on to even state that the people inside can find “fellowship and love” only if they join the vampires, and that resistance is futile. They do manage to infiltrate the space, turn people in it against each other, and eventually destroy the space.
When Mozilla used to have women’s gatherings (as part of their old diversity and inclusion efforts), women-only events, one of the comments by men used to be “what’s the harm in letting good men in?” The communities have learnt the hard way that it is always harmful to let members from the dominant group into exclusive spaces. For example, if you go to Bahujan Economists’ “Join Us” section you’ll see this:
Bahujans can sign up for one or both groups—Collaborators and Support Providers. We request non-Bahujans to sign up as a Support Provider only. Thank you! 🙂
Fellowship and Love
A special shout-out to the promise of “fellowship and love” that the vampires keep sending to people in the juke joint. It is what the savarnas entrenched within the system offer those who are finding ways to resist the colonizing/problematic/patriarchal/brahminical gaze and methods of the system — “fellowship and love”. The fellowship is always conditional. It requires those who are marginalized to give up on who they are and join the clan of the oppressive. When you join them, you get to live a comfortable life, “heaven on earth”. Once people turn over to the other side, they get irreversibly lost in the logic of the system. They can’t be spoken sense into. And they’ll keep gaslighting people who are resisting. Only the sunlight of knowledge (or socio-cultural revolution?) can get rid of them.