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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've shared that thought, although I'm not as sure it's new. I haven't watched the movie, but I'll take your word for it that the performance lacks the authenticity of a Friday.
Most black people are interested in protecting an ethnic identity. I'd bet that number approaches 100% when it comes to black entertainers. Cynically, because ethnicity means a target demo to make money from. Less cynically, because they are responding to cultural norms that push them to be black, and actors, often annoyingly, consider themselves representative.
Maintaining a culture that can induct new generations requires understanding and conformity. Time and entropy weakens the ties to founding myths and common understandings. A culture then places more importance on fewer pillars, popular ideas, and easily identifiable signals. There are still many black people alive who can share personal experience that bonds them to the black experience. However, these people are dying. As they die fewer grandparents share the old understanding of Civil Rights, racism, victimhood, etc. Young black people can (and do) try fit their experiences into the broader cultural framework and society, in this case, helps facilitate it. But, since these individuals cannot always credibly sell their stories as the same old stories they can sound little off. Did you know 13 unarmed black men are killed by police each year?
It's not unusual to hear black people tired of being black because blackness imposes on them. The bits that outright blame black culture is a less public grievance, because there's taboos, norms, and bad words to call people who fight this type conformity. The most socially acceptable way to express this sentiment in the mainstream is to primarily fault white people for the cultural pressure or, in entertainment, blame the Jews. Even with a few naysayers, demand for blackness remains staggeringly high. Black people favor more blackness, the studios want more blackness, many white people want more, but the black people selling blackness today lived different lives than the story everyone wants and is familiar with. Those within the culture can choose belief, others that are most inclined can humor it, but for the rest of us this is more difficult. It requires talent to sell us on an update that aligns close enough with our own. Maybe Sinners as a production didn't have much talent, but a show like Donald Glover's Atlanta did.
Black people may have another Tyler Perry to rally behind, but it's also possible we'll notice more performative blackness as relatively unblack, untalented people contort themselves to try and fill that demand. Blackness has already been fully commodified and commercialized, so maybe we can call it post-commodified blackness? Uber commodified? Flanderization also comes to mind, but what is an identity if not some grade of caricature or stereotype?
That said, if you're just now noticing this, then it's more likely something has changed your perspective recently. This is an ongoing, decades long trend, and Friday is a part of it.
I get the strong impression this is not a movie made for black people, it's a movie made for white people who like to think about racism and all the rest of that stuff. Which is fair enough, I think specifically black movies for a black audience would be way different and have much less broad appeal, which means they'd do poorly at the box office (I think Moonlight, for instance, was absolutely a 'black movie made for white liberals').
The vampire element could be fascinating if done well; vampirism as a metaphor for conversion is one of the readings on the topic. Here comes an outside entity totally different to everything you know that takes over your life and changes you completely by force and without your will, and if you are willing that is in fact even worse. Applying that to "white vampires against black descendants of slaves" is going to dig up a lot of interpretation.
But I don't know if they do that, or if the movie can handle that. I haven't seen it, I'm only going by reviews, and it does seem to be a bit too pick'n'mix about the Oppressed Minorities on one side and the - well, the who? The KKK? The vampires? - on the other side. The Chinese couple and Choctaw vampire hunters? That's taking the BIPOC acronym a little too literally.
And why Irish? I don't know enough about this Remmick to know what flavour of Irish he is meant to be (the Scots-Irish of the South, who I presume would be the whites living beside and racist to the black population? Southern Irish as per "the rocky road to Dublin"? Protestant? Catholic? Neither?) Something odd going on there. Why Irish, as against the Anglo-philic culture of the plantation owners? Or is it meant to be a subtle reference to "Gone With the Wind" (the O'Haras and "Tara" being southern Irish by descent) - a sort of 'this is how the glamorous figures in Southern-set movies really are' notion?
My perspective on the Irish part of it is that it is part of this movie's attempt to subvert the typical blacksploitation narrative. The villains are white, but vampirism eliminates the racial divide. The Irish are pop culture's whitest victims, so making the vampires Irish redeems their whiteness. Vampirism is not exclusively evil in the film - Stack and Mary are happy at the end.
But it's Irish through a black American lens - no division of North and South - every Irish person is a rebel obsessed with Dublin, always. An ancient vampire could be so old he pre-dates Christianity but also he gets kicked around by the English no matter what - because he's Irish. What @Tanista said about Americans larping as Irish on Saint Patrick's day is on point - that's the version of Irish in the film.
Feck it, I'm starting to get interested in this dumb movie now. I've seen some clips of scenes on Youtube (the end fight) and the way Remmick is going after Sammie makes me think this is about cultural appropriation and exploitation; taking the products of black culture (songs, stories) and absorbing that into mainstream/white culture. Remmick literally tells Sammie he wants his songs and stories, and it seems that the memories of the thralls become part of Remmick's memories as well, so it really is "black culture being absorbed into white mainstream society and being altered and taken over as belonging there". White culture is vampiric on the culture of the minorities (black, Hispanic, what have you) and depends on 'fresh blood' to rejuvenate and perpetuate itself.
But why an Irish vampire, specifically? I really do want to know now what the hell the director and/or writer was getting at. You can be a victim yourself and still victimise others? He was frightened at a young age by Michael Flatley? Remmick's Southern accent is a commentary on how the Irish assimilated into American society by imitating those around them and becoming racist and prejudiced in their turn? An ancestor of his was beaten by some Mick in a dance-off and now he's getting revenge?
Possibly. Except Remmick makes an offer that if the black people join him willingly, they will be able to get rid of bigotry and racism entirely. He knows the Klan (because he turned a Klan member) are planning to kill the twins the next day anyway and he calls them bigots. So another way at looking at it is that Remmick is offering a pan-American assimilation. Blacks, Irish, Octaroons (like Mary), White Klan members, Chinese, all one big happy bloodsucking murderous musical family, in a way mainstream society will not tolerate. So an assimilation yes, but not into mainstream white society. (Note: Vampires are a little odd here because it seems that everyone they feed on is turned into a vampire, which seems like it should leave any area overrun with vampires in fairly short order, and the Klansmen vampires seem totally fine with the black vampires so parts of the personality seem subsumed, while others remain, vampires are not racist apparently!). Remmick wants Sammie's powers so that he can see his people again, as Sammie can bring forth the spirits of the past and future through music, and because Remmick is a pre-Christian Irishman (They steal his fathers lands and forcibly convert him apparently) his people and culture no longer exist, he can only see them again through Sammie.
Coogler said he made the vampire Irish because they too had suffered oppression which may also lean towards that idea. Now of course Remmick is happy to turn everyone forcibly to get what he wants but he does seem (as do the others he turns) to see it as a gift.
It's a reasonably good movie with great music, so I would say it is worth a watch overall. My wife didn't like the sex scenes though for what that is worth.
I would back up this perspective (I didn't know Coogler said that though, that's cool) and while I found it disjointed and highly variable in quality, I would also recommend it. I think it shies away from easy narratives - there aren't supposed to be clear good guys and bad guys, which is why the protagonist - Smoke/Stack is on both sides. It's over-indulgent and maybe a bit amateurish, but I prefer that to hyper polished formula any day.
I think that's fair. The coda is a little at odds tonally, because vampirism goes from this horrible thing the main characters are willing to die to fight off, to being portrayed as not that bad after all. But Buddy Guy is a great choice for an aged Sammie so it's hard to complain too much.
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