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Notes -
I watched Sinners last night.
It’s a flick about 1930’s vampires set in the American bayou. It’s a black flick. It’s about blackness, being black, black music, black stuff. Very black.
I love black cinema. From Life with Eddie Murphy to exploitation like Sweet Sweetback’s to Don’t Be a Menace to Friday I dunno whatever, even Scary Movie maybe. I’ve seen several dozen of them. They’re all ‘ black ‘ and pretty watchable for anyone. Plus anyone with even a hint of social awareness can watch them just fine.
The movie I’d most compare this to (it’s where my mind went for some reason) is Idlewild - basically OutKast (the musical group) in Atlanta in the 30’s … also very black. I love this movie.
The black characters in all these films are … black. They seem like normal people, just black. Rich black. Poor black. Dumb black. Smart black. Teacher black. Funny black.
I was born in Poland so I e always watched (not enough) a bunch of Polish cinema. Same idea. The Polish characters are Polish characters in a myriad of ways and if you’re Polish then you get it, and if you’re not, you can still be entertained and understand.
Well with Sinners - and even before really over the last few years … it just seems like the blackness is performative. It’s not that I don’t believe Michael B Jordan isn’t black, or that the writer or director don’t know about being black, it’s that I think now they’re starting to act as a fictional black narrative.
Being a 1930’s black man is no longer believable on screen. It was believable in Idlewild. Friday is believable - it’s caricature of course, but believable! I believed Dr Dre … I don’t believe Kendrick Lamar. I believed The Wire … I don’t believe (basically any ‘ black ‘ show I’ve tried to get into lately). I haven’t watched the show Atlanta but I’ve heard good things but mostly from white people, and mostly the writer and actor falls into this land of unbelievability as well.
I think there’s this black (black American) malaise that I can’t describe or catch onto over the last decade or so that makes black entertainers over perform their blackness in a subtle way.
I’ve always felt black Americans are Americans, just black. More recently I feel like they’re trying to be in some way more so.
If I were a pessimist I would say this is part of the ‘ we were kings ‘ meme that has been overloaded into the cultural psyche - if I were an optimist, I’d say it’s a culture trying to find itself and strive for a cohesive core to begin to become something other than ‘ black Americans ‘.
I’m usually optimistic in all respects but I have a lot of negativity towards, in respect to this post, black entertainment. Or at black entertainment that attempts to be mainstream.
This is actually funny (and I think a case in point), because there's no reason to think Dr Dre is any more credible about his subject matter than Kendrick. Dr. Dre grew up in a similar environment as Kendrick but he wasn't a gangster. He was just a musical talent. Ice Cube also wasn't a thug. Eazy E was probably the closest to living what he rapped, because he actually was a Crip.
In essence, Dr Dre and co. faked it till they made it: it was the money that brought in people like Suge and his affiliated Bloods.
As for Kendrick himself, at best he's about the same as Dre. Maybe, depending on how deep you dig into his old catalogue or random signs and hints he throws out, he was also affiliated. He's certainly cool with the gangs today, but he is massively famous.
Dre is not any more "real" than Kendrick, he's just not (publicly) woke and endlessly praised for it. But even Kendrick is just the latest in a long line of conscious rappers who've always been contrasted with the other strains of hip hop that are seen as hedonistic, anesthetizing and assimilationist (this tension is essentially why the hip hop community has basically contrasted him with Drake forever). What he says may not be true, but it resonates with people who already believe it to be true. That's why he's popular
A fraught relationship with the American identity isn't new. Artists like Coogler being suspicious about being assimilated or "selling out" isn't new. People pandering isn't new. The final act is pure pandering, but it's no different from the movies Tarantino is parodying when Leo DiCaprio's character roasts a bunch of Nazis in his 60s films.
I would sympathize if this was about playing the "black national anthem" or trying to move the founding date of America to revolve around slavery but what's the actual specific beef here? Was it the voodoo shit ? The Asians as middle-man minority? Characters pontificating on not being free in the 30s?
Because I have to wonder if, like @Skulldrinker, people are just fatigued with certain subject matter given everything that's happened since 2020 (I would also not trust movie reviews from people who sound like they'd wear a Notorious RBG shirt btw). The last thing was notable to me, but only because everyone still complains like that in movies made today. It's not that I don't expect people of the past to make certain noises (though my model for black southerners isn't particularly deep), it's that I hear it too much today when it clearly doesn't apply to not twinge in annoyance.
I'll give my own beef: I don't get Remmick. The movie tries to draw parallels between Remmick/the Irish and African-Americans and their relationship to Christianity but Remmick is implied and explicitly said to be very old, predating racial categories. If he was there during Ireland's original conversion it wasn't exactly like what happened to blacks. Or are we supposed to take him lamenting being forced to learn the Lord's Prayer to be about learning the English version?
If I had to water down my thought to one feeling it’s this: black Americans are faking being black Americans.
I didn’t mean to make it sound like Dr Dre is a gangsta - more that I believe Dr Dre is black and Kendrick Lamar is just Kendrick Lamar.
Sinners isn’t a film about black 1930’s boot legging vampire hunters - it’s about people pretending to be black 1930’s boot legging vampire hunters, and the most unbelievable part is their blackness.
I think I'm grokking your point but let's see: would you say that black American LARPing is basically a more intense and encouraged version of Americans LARPing as Irish come St Paddy's day?
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