Yes, I Love How Good Sinners Is, But Can We Just Talk About The Representation For A Minute?

I've already talked about how Sinners is now one of my favorite movies of all time. And I'm sure I'm not alone, as the movie was all anybody could talk about for a while.

Plus, now that it's coming to MAX, people will likely still be talking about it due to its new feature for the Black deaf community. But, that's the thing about Sinners, right? For “a vampire movie,” it sure does have its heart set on as much representation as possible. What I mean is, Ryan Coogler's masterpiece really does include several underrepresented communities.

Which is yet another thing that I love about this movie, outside of it just being a magnificently told story in general. So, please allow me to be yet another voice that sings the praises for this masterful film. I assure you that I won't be the last when it comes to 2025.

I Love How The Choctaw People Are Certified Vampire Hunters

Do you want to know when I really fell in love with this movie? It’s when a man falls out of the sky, and starts staggering toward a house while his body is literally smoking. It was such a disorienting image, and it pulled me even deeper into this strange world that Ryan Coogler was cooking up.

But then, the Choctaw vampire hunters arrived on the scene, and I was like, aww, hell yeah. Because it’s just so cool that Indigenous people who know the area more than anybody else would be the ones who are aware that vampires are real, and they’re hunting them down.

And the thing is, the white couple (who are members of the KKK) that unwittingly invite the vampire into their home sees him as less of a threat than the Choctaw people who genuinely want to help the family.

As somebody who loves when we get to see characters from Indigenous communities represented in film, it makes my heart glad that the coolest characters in the movie are the Choctaw People, who actually would have been living in Mississippi during this time period.

So, kudos to the people behind this movie for specifically picking the Choctaw People to be the Indigenous vampire hunters. Score one for authenticity.

The Chinese Couple Live In Both White And Black Worlds

Another thing that’s really cool about Sinners is that it taught me so much about American history. For example, I remember watching this movie with my wife, and there was a scene where Smoke and Stack are trying to recruit people to come work for their juke joint, and they pass from the Black side to what appears to be the white side in this Jim Crow era south.

And, that’s the thing. The Chinese couple, Bo Chow and Grace Chow, played by Thomas Pang a.k.a. Yao, and Li Jun Li, respectively, seem to live in both white and Black worlds.

We see that white people frequent their store, but that the Chinese couple also supply food for the Black Moore twins, and this is something I actually learned occurred in real life… the selling of food to both Black and white people in the South, not the Sinners storyline, mind you.

This is yet another thing that I love about the movie. The shopkeepers didn’t have to be a Chinese couple with a child. But they are, and the movie is all the better for it.

I love seeing Bo and Grace interacting with the Black patrons, and how even though they come from different backgrounds, they still all exist in a world where they’re marginalized. In fact, most of the white characters in this film don’t come out looking very progressive – which makes sense given the time period – but there is one who surprisingly does, and I’ll talk about him next.

This Film Even Has Irish Representation

My colleague, Ryan LaBee, wrote a fascinating article about why vampires had to be the monsters in Sinners, and one of his conclusions was that vampires represent becoming what you end up hating. And yes, I can clearly see what he means. But, one thing I took from this film was that its Irish leader, Remmick (played by Jack O’Connell) sure did seem all-inclusive.

Because unlike the KKK-infused community that will sell a building to Black people one day, and then shoot them up the next, Remmick will accept anyone and everyone into his vampire community. His first victims are the white couple that let him into their home, but that was mostly because he was on the run from vampire hunters.

He later takes several of the Black patrons who came out to party, and then Mary (Hailee Steinfeld) herself, who brings her beau into the fold soon afterward. Bo also gets turned into a vampire, and it all culminates in another one of the greatest moments in the movie, that being the Irish dancing, “Rocky Road to Dublin” scene.

Similar to the Chinese couple in the film, adding an Irish vampire, and making him distinctly Irish, ADDS rather than detracts from the movie. It’s like this film is a stew that has all of these great ingredients, and each flavor tastes unique in its own way, but together, it’s the best stew you’ve ever tasted.

That’s diversity in a nutshell (or rather, in a stew metaphor) for me, which again, makes Sinners such a satisfying experience.

I Also Love The Biracial Relationship That’s Presented In This Film

I mentioned earlier how most of the white characters in this film aren’t all that progressive besides the Irish vampire, but there’s of course another character, and that’s Stack’s ex-girlfriend, Mary. The thing is, Mary is what is considered “white-passing,” in that she’s biracial, but most would never know that she’s of mixed race.

And, as somebody who is in an interracial marriage with interracial children, this aspect of the film hit especially hard for me. Because deep down, Mary understands why Stack, who is clearly Black, has chosen to stay away from her (It’s for her own protection). But, at the same time, she resents him for thinking that she needs his protection. This is something I think about myself when my own interracial children grow up and start dating. Will race be an issue for them? Will they struggle to form relationships since they are both Black and Filipino?

I don’t know, but I like that this is a legitimate subplot in the film. Michael B. Jordan (who has been in every single Ryan Coogler movie) plays two roles. One of the characters has an estranged Black wife, and the other has a former mixed girlfriend, and I like that they all get along and work together.

In fact, Mary is openly accepted by the Black community, and it’s almost like they are welcoming her back home when she comes to the juke joint.

And, as we see in the ending to the film, Mary is still with Stack, even sixty years after the events of that fateful night. This means that they lived to see a country go from one that mostly prohibited interracial couples, to a country that eventually accepted them. All of this representation in a single movie!

Plus, The Southern Black Experience Is On Full Display

Lastly, I’m Black, but I’m a Northern Black person. One time, my wife and I went to Busch Gardens in Virginia, and I was seriously freaking out when I saw Confederate flags all over the place, because I am simply not used to that.

But, Sinners goes there, when it comes to the unfortunate history many Black people had to go through in the South concerning segregation. In fact, there’s one “heartbreaking” scene in the movie that legitimately made my wife cry, since it involved a Black person being wrongfully murdered.

And, even this portrayal of the Southern Black experience felt like a form of representation to me.

Because this is a big country, and I often feel like Southern Black people exist in a different world from me sometimes. This expands to music as well, since as a New Jersian so close to New York, I look to rappers like Nas, KRS-One, and the Wu-tang Clan as being the pinnacle of hip-hop, whereas other Black people in the country might look to rappers like Scarface, 2Pac, Kendrick, or J. Cole as being the best rappers this country has to offer.

What I’m saying is, it’s all regional, and watching a film centered in the south really felt like a love letter to the Black people in that area.

But, what do you think? Were you also a fan of the film’s representation? I’d love to hear your thoughts.