The Vampires in Sinners are Trumpers
My wife pointed this out to me and I was disappointed when I couldn’t find any commentary flushing out the resemblance. So here it is with spoilers, but without plot summary.
The vampires are led by a charismatic rich old non Christian white man obsessed with the past but really only in it for himself.
Remmick wants Sammie’s musical ability because it would allow him to connect with the spirits of the past. However his claims that he would help his newly turned victims establish an immortal community are all lies.
First, the movie implies Remmick is very old so it’s odd that he hasn’t already established such a community. He may have at one time traveled with his wife and she may or may not have been killed by native Americans. Where are the people he turned in the past (who was helped in Trump’s first term)?
Second, Remmick is partially resistant to sunlight but his newly turned burst into flames on contact. At the end of the movie, Remmick’s vampire victims seem unaware of the danger of the dawn. Remmick only cares about getting Sammie and either doesn’t care that his followers will be destroyed or is actively shielding the information from the hive mind.
The vampires need consent IE votes.
True they only need one vote but let’s not nitpick. Also Remmick has a go to move of using money to trick the desperately poor into inviting him.
Once the vampires are ‘voted’ in they use violence to force joining.
I mean if what you are offering is so great why is it not voluntary. Similarly, when Trump says “just this time, then in four years you won’t have to vote again.”, it means consent is a one time thing and then it’s force.
The vampires are pretty chill without their leader around.
At the end of the movie two surviving vampires, who seem to be in a loving relationship, peacefully visit Sammie.
The vampires cannot grow spiritually.
There are various indications of this:
- Remmick has musical ability but even with immortal life can’t figure out a way to sing like Sammie.
- Annie needs Smoke to kill her. Once part of the cult she will not be able to resist the hungers that drive it.
- Even after over sixty years, vampires Stack and Marie are stuck as the same characters they were at the beginning of the movie. Sammie has seen enough of this world, but Stack and Marie have only changed their clothes to 90’s equivalents.
- Stuck forever in the darkness seems to mean no enlightenment.
Similarly Trumpers are stuck hungering for the world of the past, but lack the ability to learn the skills to recreate it. Plus, they literally reject The Enlightenment of 17th and 18th century.
The vampires are economically disadvantaged.
Nothing to say here that the movie didn’t already explain magnificently.
The vampires are anti-woke.
There are various indications of this:
- When he needs help Remmick knocks on the door of the KKK. He’s obviously a ridiculously suspicious person to let into your house but his appeal to their shared racism wins out.
- Remmick’s victims are first native Americans and then blacks.
- Annie says of the vampires, “Hurts to live here with all this hate.”
- Once part of the hive mind a turned vampire becomes immediately nasty and belligerent with the living even if it reveals him, “Probably your fish sandwich messed up my guts in the first place using old stale grease.” Vampires are not racist by color, but now they other the living.
But where “conversion” of the LGBTQ is only a long standing pipe dream of the far right, vampires can actually turn the living. They say, “I know it sounds crazy, but after we kill y’all, we’re gonna have heaven right here on Earth.” If diversity can be stopped, the immigrants sent home and all non male genders suppressed, then it will be heaven.
The sin in Sinners is diversity itself.
The black Church that the movie begins and ends (ish) with is a foil for the vampire cult. Instead of a white man followed by a cult of brainwashed blacks, it’s a black pastor followed by parishioners dressed all in white.
The “sins” the characters of this movie commit aren’t really crimes at all: taking alcohol from criminal organizations, drinking, adultery, playing music, dancing, and gambling. This is an era that frequently used criminalization to suppress diversity.
If you were an unemployed or homeless black person in this era you could be arrested for vagrancy and turned into a slave. We see this form of slavery when a chain gang is shown in the movie.
If you were a woman getting a real job would be very difficult and you had to submit to your husband. Plus abortion was illegal and in 1932 you had only had the right to vote for 12 years.
And of course 1932 is the year that Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected. On January 6, 1941, FDR’s state of the union included four freedoms:
In the future days, which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms.
The first is freedom of speech and expression–everywhere in the world.
The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way–everywhere in the world.
The third is freedom from want–which, translated into world terms, means economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants-everywhere in the world.
The fourth is freedom from fear–which, translated into world terms, means a world-wide reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor–anywhere in the world.
Delta Slim tells Sammie his life will be happier if he gives up music. Sammie’s father tells him to give up music and not be pursued by demons.
A life of conformity would be easier for Sammie, but giving up his freedom of expression, his freedom to worship The Blues, his freedom from want, his freedom from fear would be the opposite of what Americans chose to fight for in those days.