0:00 [Music]
0:03 In the midst of a Hollywood era of
0:06 sequels, remakes, and spin-offs where
0:08 many would deem original filmm to be on
0:11 the brink of death, especially in movie
0:13 theaters, something like Sinners comes
0:16 along to spice up the conversation. As a
0:18 wholly original film, Sinners is
0:20 undoubtedly a success financially and
0:22 critically with the unique ability to
0:24 entertain crowds while also sparking
0:27 thematic conversations in every single
0:30 direction. And after watching countless
0:32 interviews with Sinner's writer director
0:34 Ryan Cougler, I want to discuss the
0:36 historical context, the cultural
0:39 richness, and the many powerful symbols
0:41 throughout this movie like the church
0:44 and the juke joint, the spirituality of
0:47 the blues, and the meaning of Sammy
0:50 never dropping his guitar. And we'll
0:52 discuss this movie in three themes. The
0:56 history of temptation, the transcendence
1:00 of blues, and the virus of exploitation.
1:04 In this sinner's deep dive [Music]
1:12 [Music]
1:16 analysis theme number one, history of
1:19 temptation. Sinners is set in the 1930s
1:22 Mississippi Delta where Jim Crow law was
1:24 in its fullest effect, forcing the black
1:26 communities through the worst of living
1:28 and working conditions. Many black men
1:30 and women working as sharecroers, for
1:33 example, a lifestyle not far at all from
1:36 slavery. Not to mention the existence of
1:40 the Ku Klux Clan more than ever alive
1:44 and well. The Vulcid Act of 1919 banned
1:46 the consumption and sale of alcohol in
1:48 the United States after much support
1:50 from various religious, progressive, and
1:52 political movements with the aim to
1:55 reduce poverty, crime, waste, and
1:58 international propaganda. However, this
2:01 legalization of alcohol ultimately had
2:04 the reverse effect on society, making
2:07 conditions even worse for the black men,
2:09 women, and children. So with this
2:12 socopolitical context the film gives us,
2:14 we get a slightly stronger understanding
2:17 of how much adversity, oppression, and
2:20 trauma our characters are already
2:22 dealing with. And when conditions are
2:25 this challenging with almost literally
2:28 no way out, the environment becomes a
2:30 playground for temptation. A feeling
2:33 just about all of our characters are
2:35 wrestling with. This is largely why the
2:38 film is called Sinners. While among some
2:40 of the greatest forms of evil in the
2:42 world, historical sinners like the KKK
2:44 and even supernatural sinners like the
2:47 vampires, our central characters are
2:50 resisting, embracing or succumbing to
2:54 temptation and sin in one way or
2:56 another. most obviously the smoke stack
2:58 twins after escaping an abusive father
3:00 on a plantation and fighting in World
3:03 War I, working for Alapone in Chicago
3:05 and returning to Mississippi to continue
3:08 a life of crime to Sammy Moore
3:11 challenging the deeply religious beliefs
3:13 of his father by pursuing a frowned upon
3:16 form of music. Delta Slim becoming a
3:18 victim of alcoholism after a traumatic
3:21 set of experiences that spans across
3:23 decades. and Perlene cheating on a
3:26 husband who likely has many of his own
3:29 demons he's dealing with, just to name a
3:31 few. Even Bow and Grace Chow,
3:33 representing the Chinese families of
3:35 1930s Mississippi Delta, a racial group
3:38 at the time seen as cheap, disposable,
3:40 and voiceless by white Americans, many
3:42 of whom were first hired in the cotton
3:45 fields and eventually opened up their
3:47 own grocery stores in the towns
3:49 throughout the Mississippi Delta. But
3:52 fortunately, overall, many of the main
3:54 characters we fall in love with do their
3:57 best to conquer their demons
3:59 psychologically and supernaturally, as
4:02 we see later in the film. A conclusion
4:04 cleverly foreshadowed much earlier in
4:07 the film by the smoke stack twins
4:10 working together to kill a snake before
4:13 it bites them. A classic biblical symbol
4:17 of evil and temptation. So, let's
4:19 discuss the timeless art form that
4:21 allows our characters to overcome these
4:24 spiritual demons in the next section of this
4:32 video. Theme number two, transcendence
4:34 of blues. When we consider everything
4:36 mentioned in the previous theme, the
4:38 trauma, the oppression, the temptation
4:40 that haunts our main characters, we
4:42 begin to understand the purpose that the
4:45 church and the juke joint serve
4:47 symbolically and thematically. And the
4:49 writer director of this film, Ryan
4:51 Cougler, does a beautiful job of
4:53 explaining what the two structures
4:56 symbolize and why he juxtaposes them
4:59 against one another in this film. It was
5:01 always a conflict between church music
5:04 and secular music. You know, like the
5:06 first music to get called the devil's
5:09 music was the Delta Blues music. And it
5:11 was also that dichotomy of the same
5:12 people who would be in that juke joint
5:15 Saturday night. They might go home, wash
5:17 up, sleep for a couple hours, and take
5:19 their ass right back to the church in
5:21 the morning. And Kougler continues by
5:24 describing how the pastors passionately
5:26 condemn the juke joint as a place of
5:29 sin, very much as Sammy's father does in
5:30 the film. But he goes on in this
5:33 interview to explain how both locations
5:35 were necessary remedies for the
5:38 hardships of the black experience in
5:41 1930. It was always a conflict between
5:43 two institutions that basically had the
5:45 same thing going on. And people were
5:47 dealing with so much they were looking
5:50 for a temporary release. You know, maybe
5:53 it's more spiritual on Sunday and maybe
5:56 more carnal Saturday night, but it is a
5:59 necessary part of the human condition.
6:01 And the blues music coming out of Delta,
6:03 it leaned into the shadow. It leaned
6:06 into, like I said, the carnal desires.
6:09 It leaned into the faults and the flaws.
6:11 And as you may notice during the end of
6:13 Cougler's quote, he highlights the
6:14 pivotal role that blues music played in
6:17 those juke joints with its raw stripped
6:19 down guitar and harmonica
6:21 instrumentation with lyrics so
6:23 vulnerably reflecting on personal
6:25 experience. It felt like therapy for the
6:28 listener because it embraced the deepest
6:31 truths. No matter how unverirtuous or
6:34 unholy the words may seem, Kougler
6:35 compares it to the gangster rappers of
6:38 the 80s and 90s who very similarly
6:40 created a whole new world of controversy
6:42 in American art and culture, but were
6:44 successful because they unapologetically
6:47 gave a voice to an experience so many
6:49 were feeling deep inside. The creation
6:51 of the character Sammy Preacher Boy
6:53 Moore was heavily influenced by blues
6:55 musicians specifically coming out of the
6:58 Mississippi Delta like Charlie Patton
7:00 who arguably originated the sound, Tommy
7:02 Johnson and Robert Johnson who publicly
7:04 claimed they sold their soul to the
7:07 devil to play blues and Sunhouse who
7:10 every 5 years would go back and forth
7:12 between drinking at juke joints to
7:15 preaching in churches. The justosition
7:17 historically was always right in front
7:19 of us. And in countless interviews,
7:21 Cougler very proudly states how Delta
7:23 Blues music lives on through the
7:25 generations upon generations of new
7:27 genres that it influenced. Rock and
7:31 roll, R&B, gangster rap, trap, and even
7:34 grunge music, claiming Delta Blues is
7:37 America's biggest artistic contribution
7:40 to the world. And as you can probably
7:42 put together, this is why we get that
7:44 massively symbolic, surreal moment where
7:46 when Sammy starts to play at that juke
7:49 joint, we see countless genres of music
7:52 spanning generations before and
7:55 generations after. The genesis of Delta
7:58 Blue's music, transcending time, space,
8:02 and culture all in one moment. But as we
8:04 hear in the film, the music doesn't only
8:07 awaken the best of the human spirit. It
8:09 also awakens the very worst. And let's
8:22 video. Theme number three, virus of
8:25 exploitation. So as recently mentioned
8:26 and as mentioned in the opening
8:29 monologue of the film, Delta Blues music
8:31 spiritually brings together generations
8:33 of music and culture in the past and
8:36 future. Yet also it attracts a
8:40 particular spiritual form of evil. And
8:41 of course when we look at the film
8:44 literally by its visuals on screen, this
8:47 spiritual form of evil is the vampires.
8:50 But of course the vampires aren't just
8:52 these supernatural bad guys. They
8:54 represent something more. And if you ask
8:57 me, the societal evil these vampires and
9:00 their behaviors represent is exploitation.
9:02 exploitation.
9:05 exploitation of culture. When an art
9:07 form is so effortlessly beautiful,
9:11 infectiously influential, and pure in
9:13 originality, it awakens a type of evil
9:16 fueled by greed and hunger for power.
9:18 And the methods those evil people will
9:21 apply to capitalize on the art form are
9:24 shamelessly dishonest, manipulative, and
9:27 of course, exploitative. Talent attracts
9:29 outsiders with the greatest of power and
9:31 the worst of intentions, willing to
9:34 cross cultural boundaries to get a hold
9:36 of it. Cultural boundaries they would
9:38 never have wanted to cross into ever
9:40 before. Just like the vampires in this
9:42 film. To compare it to modern times,
9:44 think of a record label executive
9:46 signing a young and talented black
9:48 artist to a contract with an alluring
9:50 cash advance, but thieving terms and
9:53 conditions. This happens time and time
9:55 again, year after year. And the
9:58 exploitation doesn't stop at music. It
10:01 happens with sports, fine arts,
10:04 education, culture, employment, and so
10:07 on. Whether it's 2025 or it's
10:09 1932. And just like we see with the
10:12 vampires, such manipulation doesn't stop
10:15 at the top of the socioeconomic pyramid.
10:17 When one is exploited, they become
10:18 desperate. And when they become
10:21 desperate, there's a new willingness to
10:23 exploit the next person. And such a
10:26 system sparks a contagious cyclical
10:29 chain of manipulation, selfishness, and
10:31 greed, bringing people closer to one
10:33 another in the most inauthentic,
10:37 dishonest, and unloving way. Just like
10:39 the vampires, the dichotomy of coming
10:42 together to use one another versus
10:44 coming together to support one another
10:46 is symbolized by the war between the
10:49 vampires and the unbitten. And one thing
10:51 I'm personally so glad about is Ryan
10:53 Cougler didn't simplify the connection
10:56 of the vampires to just black versus
10:59 white. This facade of togetherness that
11:01 these vampires put up covers black
11:04 American, Chinese American, white
11:06 American, and even specifically Irish
11:08 American with multiple references to the
11:11 hardship, oppression, and exploitation
11:13 the Irish face with the British. And
11:16 even after the big battle, Smoke
11:18 continues to battle internally with his
11:20 own moral code as he wrestles with his
11:22 own connection with religion,
11:24 spirituality, and even his wife's
11:26 southern African-Amean folklore
11:28 traditions, but eventually very
11:31 poetically accepts an afterlife of peace
11:34 following a final release of deeprooted
11:37 hatred and thirst for vengeance after
11:40 all he's lived with and lost. And on the
11:42 other side, Stack as Smoke's twin
11:45 brother represents the alternate outcome
11:48 for the same person. Surviving as a
11:51 victim of the virus of exploitation,
11:53 accepting the morally compromised
11:56 lifestyle that the system makes so hard
11:58 to escape and living in the space
12:01 between them both. Sammy Moore lives out
12:04 a life in a world of adversity,
12:06 resisting the endless spirits of
12:09 temptation, all the while nurturing an
12:12 art form that would connect the world.
12:16 Thank God Sammy never dropped the guitar.
