You can now watch my review of Sinners with Richard Hanania.

Some topics covered:

* The vampires pitch equality to the black juke joint owners; whether the vampires represent colorblind liberalism or something else

* Parallels to Get Out (2017), where polite liberal language serves as a mask for sinister motives

* All the cultural tropes/stereotypes. Chinese characters with the monkey king, Native Americans with supernatural magic tracking skills, Irish jig dancing villains, black women using hoodoo magic

* We note the total absence of sympathetic white characters. And the complexity of the Irish immigrant character Remmick

* Whether the film merits the buzz around it

* Was Chicago in 1932 as racist as the Jim Crow south?

* The Asian married couple who operate two convenience stores in Mississippi. Both husband and wife speak with Southern American accents; I question whether such a couple could actually have existed in the 1930s

* Suspension of disbelief — “oh you’ll accept that vampires exist but not a Chinese American couple in 1932 with flawless Mississippian accents”

* When sophisticated audience members are given permission to be enthusiastic about depictions of traditional masculinity and frontier justice

* Thoughts on the history of black families in America

* The frequent references in Sinners to men performing cunnilingus on women

* Whether the film portrays gender relations of the era as accurately as it does race relations

* How modern films often portray male sexuality in a very curated way

* How the turning point of the Sinners comes when the Asian woman invites the vampires into the juke joint; consistent with a long tradition where female characters act as gateways between the ordinary and supernatural worlds (more on this point here). I also wonder whether the decision to have the Asian woman invite the vampires in has any symbolic meaning

* The actor playing Hogwood (the KKK Grand Dragon) has Spanish roots; we discuss whether this would actually be possible and exchange thoughts on anti-Catholic sentiment of the era

* A “highbrow reaction video” where instead of reacting to clips, we read and react to written reviews of the film

* As we live react to written reviews of the film, we complain about banner ads on media websites and note that Substack has a cleaner user interface

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The Hidden Politics of "Sinners"

Rob Henderson's Office Hours (private feed for [email protected])

The Hidden Politics of "Sinners"