Assimilation, Connection, and Cunnilingus: How Oral Sex Unlocks the Thematic Messaging of Sinners

This week I'm wrong about the prevalence of men pleasuring women in Ryan Coogler's new vampire movie, plus my friend's new TV show

This man is willing to do what it takes to make sure you’re having a good time

I have spent the last few weeks typing away at a post about Percival Everett’s recent Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, James. Specifically, I’m writing about the linguistic choices Everett makes throughout his (mostly excellent) riff on Huckleberry Finn, many of which I found fascinating and effective and one which I found infuriatingly misleading and counterproductive. I am going to publish that commentary soon.

But I kept getting sidetracked in my thinking about cunning linguistics while over-analyzing Ryan Coogler’s recent movie, Sinners, and its intentional and repeated focus on cunnilingus.

For those who haven’t seen it—first of all, run to your nearest movie theater and see it on a big screen while you can. I generally don’t like watching horror movies (while acknowledging their legitimacy as an artistic genre), but it’s such a fun, challenging, gripping story I got over my discomfort with the infrequent jump scares. I’ve seen it twice and would see it again. It has so much to say about music, about culture, about the intersections of different cultures and art forms in societies defined by dominance, and about America yesterday and today. You won’t regret watching.

***FROM THIS POINT, SPOILERS ABOUND***

Sinners tells the story of Black mobsters-turned-businessmen Smoke and Stack, who return to their native Mississippi to open a blues club for Black patrons. They enlist their cousin Sammie, a brilliant but young and inexperienced guitar player and singer, along with the aging Blues musician Delta Slim, Smoke’s former partner Annie, and Chinese general store owners Bo and Grace Chow to host a triumphant grand opening. Their celebration gets the attention of an Irish vampire, Remmick, who slowly turns more and more of the crowd into part of his hive-mind as he seeks to control Sammie’s musical power.

So much good stuff has been written about Sinners, and I won’t attempt to speak over the more serious and thoughtful commentary. I loved Sheldon Pierce’s examination of the connection between the Blues and religion, Natalie Weiner’s exploration of the musical history the movie plays with, and Adam Serwer’s piece demonstrating how the entire conflict of the movie hinges on the economic injustice created by Jim Crow.

But the smaller, hilarious, still kind of important feature of Sinners I absolutely will think way too hard about? The fact that three characters are specifically highlighted as being aficionados of oral sex, certified lickers, unapologetic munchers—in a fairly compact movie that doesn’t waste a single line of dialogue. That means something, beyond Ryan Coogler just encouraging his fellow straight men to be better to their partners.

Sinners is a movie interested in ecstatic joy and pleasure of all kinds. Food, drink, music, sex, dancing, friendship, love—they’re all embraced as crucial antidotes to despair in a fundamentally cruel and unfair world. Their meaning derives from proximity to tragedy rather than being lessened by it.

Music, specifically, is shown to be a way to transmute pain into joy without lessening or diluting either. That is the fundamental motive of the Blues. Sammie sings about his conflicted relationship with his Father and religion in in “I Lied to You”, the performance around which the entire movie is built—a song that becomes a time-bending celebration of culture and life for the audience of Black sharecroppers living under Jim Crow. Delta Slim uses music (and a lot of alcohol) as a pathway to joy in his life fundamentally altered by violence and despair. Ralph Ellison wrote about Blues music, reflecting on his young adulthood as a young Black man just a few states over from the setting of Sinners: “In those days it was either live with music or die with noise, and we chose rather desperately to live.” Coogler channels that ethos throughout his entire movie.

Coogler also repeatedly connects music to sex, specifically oral sex. Sammie first plays his guitar after Smoke explains the fundamentals of finding and pleasuring the clitoris. Sammie’s encounter with Pearline, where he insists on going down on her, occurs in the aftermath of his performance of “I Lied to You.” Pearline’s performance occurs just after Sammie puts Smoke’s advice to use in that encounter.

And I do think oral sex provides a critical lens to understanding the message about music (and through music, culture) the movie develops.

Sinners features a variety of music—all of which is fantastic—with some songs quietly beautiful, others rollicking, others somewhere in between. The vampires who attack the Juke Joint sing a variety of Irish folk music—specifically, a gorgeous rendition of “Wild Mountain Thyme” and a hyped up rendition of “Rocky Road to Dublin” (which, in no way coincidentally, is a song that explores the forcible assimilation of the Irish by the English). A lesser filmmaker would have distinguished the villains by having these songs be less beautiful or moving or fun than their Blues counterparts, but Coogler loves the Irish music, too, and it shows. The songs are incredible.

But a critical distinction is made between the Blues music played by living, breathing Blues artists and the undead music of Remmick and his hive-mind. The Blues sequences notably focus on the audience rather than the performers. The camera moves away from Sammie and other performers and highlights the variety and scale of the pleasure the songs create in the crowd. There is emphasis on dancing, on the joy listeners feel, on their sweat as they relish the music. The celebratory nature of the scenes is focused not on the performer, but on the collective, even and especially in the “I Lied to You” sequence where the crowd is populated with the past and future carriers of culture channeled by the song. Sammie’s power is in what he does to other people, what he channels through them, what he allows them to access about themselves. He is both central to the scene and outside of it.

In direct contrast, the Irish music focuses intently on the musicians—overwhelmingly Remmick. The songs, even when the vampirically transformed Black audience is involved, revolve around his joy and his body. His hive-mind dances around him in”Rocky Road to Dublin,” clapping and celebrating him, focusing on his joy and experience as he sings and dances. It’s incredible music, but it is music that centers one person and their culture, desires, and motive above everyone else.

The third song the vampires sing, “Pick Poor Robin Clean,” isn’t terrible, but is played for comedic effect. Crucially, the song was historically a Blues tune written and performed by Black artists—but after the white vampires play it in a stilted, overly choreographed manner, they are specifically turned away because “this is a Blues joint.” The song is no longer the Blues. They twist the music into something it isn’t to match their own desires—they co-opt rather than appreciate it.

Remmick is playing music fundamentally for himself. Sammie and the other Blues musicians create and play for the joy and transformation of others.

And that is why cunnilingus matters! Oral sex is fundamentally about relishing the pleasure of your partner. There is no direct pleasure, but there is intense and even transcendent joy in feeling your partner’s pleasure, in transforming their body into a site of ecstasy. Just like Sammie plays music in a way to allow others to access their own personal fulfillment, going down on someone unlocks a mutually transcendent experience. The movie is intensely focused on the spiritual significance of that pursuit in all its forms.

Sammie, Smoke, and Bo are all directly, textually stated to be men who enjoy pleasuring their partners. I have to assume Stack was pleasuring Annie in every way possible, too, because there is no way she was settling for less. They are all transformed by “I Lied to You,” and shown to be (while alive) people who can be part of communal joy without dominating its focus. Sammie is the only character we actually see (on the verge of) the act, and we hear the intensity and passion of Pearline’s experience through the door—and he is also the character who most powerfully channels the joy of music. That is not a coincidence.

I want to be precise with my words here—while these men eat out their partners to feel mutually transformative joy, Remmick eats people to assimilate them into his desperate attempts to feel joy. It is appreciation versus appropriation.

Remmick specifically seeks out Sammie because of his ability to channel the power of music, but does not understand that power is unlocked by its outward, rather than inward, focus. The vampires are the horrific embodiment of cultural assimilation—suppressing the uniqueness of others to feel an enhanced sense of self-importance, even in ways that give the illusion of acceptance and equality. The vampires are equal in that they are equally subjected to Remmick’s primacy. Listening to Sammie, the entire crowd in the Juke Joint are communally able to access their own unique, individual experiences and legacy. It’s the difference between rape and mutually enriching sex.

The contrast also unlocks the subtler arguments of the movie—first, that Remmick’s literal whiteness is not his flaw. The movie goes to great lengths to emphasize the Irish culture is just as powerful and rich and textured as any other (the prologue highlights native clans and tribes from Ireland, America, and Africa with the ability to channel the transcendent power of music). Remmick’s subjugation to English colonialism comes to the forefront at the movie’s climax. His flaw is that he endorses and pursues the logic of colonialism—that the dominance and power it provides is his only source of illusory, fleeting happiness. He is blocked from accessing Sammie’s power because he has become fundamentally incapable of experiencing pleasure in unselfish ways.

It also is part of the Chow’s significance. Bo and Grace are Chinese (inspired by the real population of Chinese immigrants who lived in the Mississippi Delta during Jim Crow) and their distinction from the Black population is also emphasized repeatedly by the movie. They can move between white and Black spaces in ways no other character can. The best shot of the movie follows their daughter and then Grace walking between the two sides of the town’s Main Street, as their context suddenly and completely transforms.

The Chow’s are not only welcomed to the Juke Joint, they are transformed by the power of the Blues music. But they are transformed in a different way than the Black dancers and partiers—while others are surrounded by ancient African musicians and modern Black DJ’s and guitarists, the Chow’s dancing and participation in the celebration conjures a traditional Chinese dancer. Through their involvement in communal joy, without demanding they be centered by it, they both have access to the culture of others and enhance and deepen their connection to their own culture. Their pleasure is reciprocal and generative. Their presence proves the movie’s message about culture and pleasure isn’t about isolation, but about connection—appreciation rather than appropriation. I’m reminded again of Ralph Ellison, who wrote not just about the joy of learning the Blues but of learning European classical music and dance: “we were being introduced to one one of the most precious of American freedoms, which is our freedom to broaden our personal culture by absorbing the cultures of others.” Absorbing culture is not dominating it and is not forcing it to become something else. It is about loving it for what it is and allowing it broaden your own experiences of joy. The Black patrons of the Juke Joint, Sammie, Smoke, Stack, and the Chows understand this. Ryan Coogler understands this. Remmick does not.

In short: Sinners is a movie that is fundamentally focused on the importance of giving others pleasure and joy to achieve a moment of truly mutual transcendence. Its focus on men performing oral sex on women is not an amusing quirk of the film—it is part of its central thematic message.

Speaking of Sex, You Should Watch Dying For Sex

These two made me cry

I’m going to brag about my friend for a minute: My former classmate, current friend, and fantastic writer Sasha Stewart was a staff writer on the recent Hulu TV show Dying For Sex.

The show is everything—hilarious, heartbreaking, compelling, heartwarming, gross, and brilliant. Michelle Williams is her usual incredible self as a woman who leaves her husband after a terminal cancer diagnosis to work towards sexual realization. Jenny Slate plays her best friend and caregiver with a nuance that few shows achieve. I had the privilege of watching four episodes with Sasha, who provided insights into the development of specific lines of dialogue and entire character arcs. Much of the pathos, specific humor, and realism of the show is absolutely due to her contributions.

I don’t want to write too much or give anything away so I’ll just say—watch this show as soon as you can, preferably not with your parents, and you will be moved!