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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.
(1) Re: the overrunning of the vampire population if everyone killed is turned, yes you are absolutely correct and this has been a problem that vampire fiction has had to deal with (hence why they take the scene from the novel of Dracula about Dracula forcing Mina to drink his blood as "yeah but just dying of vampire bite doesn't turn you, you need to drink vampire blood too" which directly contradicts the folklore and the novel).
(2) "Remmick is a pre-Christian Irishman (They steal his fathers lands and forcibly convert him apparently)" That doesn't exactly work with the history of how Ireland became Christian, unless Remmick is talking about when the Normans invaded - but Ireland was already Christian by then and after a bit of pillaging and dispossessing the Normans settled down to assimilate into the native society, hence "more Irish than the Irish themselves"; it fits better with a later historical period, say the Tudor era or later, especially the 17th century when land was taken and efforts to anglicise the Irish were very pronounced. A bit of a mixed bag there, unless Coogler is trying to indicate that all along there were pagan Irish surviving down the centuries but that's not really so.
Anyway, expecting high levels of historical accuracy from a vampire movie is missing the mark! But damn it, the clips I've seen are making me interested in this movie - the scene where Remmick is reciting the "Our Father" along with Sammie is a reverse or perverse baptism scene (they're both standing in the river, they both pray, and then Remmick keeps pushing Sammie's head under the water then pulling him back up as he tries to 'convert' Sammie to joining him and becoming a vampire and what is his statement of faith about universal belonging).
I don't want to be thinking thinky-thoughts about a dumb vampire movie!
Yeah the implication seems to be 5th century or earlier. He doesn't specify who it was who stole his fathers lands or make any claim about how widespread it was, so could be a Christianized vs non-Christianized neighbor dispute for all we know. I think if he were just pre-Norman or Tudor it wouldn't quite fit the way he talks about it because it's the Christian bit he is stuck on specifically. But as you say who knows how much research effort was put forth.
Yeah, the 5th century context is a little muddled. It's hard to know exactly how peaceful versus imposed the Christianisation of Ireland was, but it was pretty much peaceful and was heavily "local guys converted then converted their neighbours" and less "outsiders came in and imposed their foreign alien faith on the natives". Take St Patrick - he came to Ireland as a captive taken in a slave raid and eventually comes to identify with the Irish (see the Letter to Coroticus):
Then there is the 11th century anecdote from Gerald of Wales, the Anglo-Norman apologist for the Norman invasion of Ireland:
Now, it could be plausible that Remmick is complaining about "in the 5th century the king gave a parcel of land to the local monastery when he converted to Christianity and that was land my father occupied" but that is as far as you could stretch it - the land would have been the king's in the first place. There really weren't Christian conquerors marching around taking land off the locals the way this scene seems to be trying to evoke.
EDIT: Well, not unless you count miraculous cloaks as "marching around taking land off the locals":
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