Narrative can help shape the world by shaping the perspective of those who inhabit it. It can expose the truth of matters or obscure it. Narrative can empower people, but it can also defeat them. It can give them knowledge or supply them with misinformation. It can bring to light topics, themes, and stories and highlight their importance, or it can bury them, make light of them, and ultimately dismiss them.

The role narrative — and by extension storytelling — plays in our society is greatly shaped by who controls it. It can be powerful or deadly, depending on who dominates it. That’s why, when looking at storytelling and culture, it can’t be dismissed as a “side thing” of the working-class movement, but an essential element that deserves study, analysis, and engagement.

When it comes to narrative and storytelling, there are many stories and arts that help enrich the diverse tapestry that is history. A history that we do well to be knowledgeable about at times to draw inspiration from, and at other times not to repeat the same travesties.

Sinners, and progressive cinema

Sinners, by Ryan Coogler, is a movie that, although in the fiction/fantasy realm, allows us to explore real-world happenings, both past and present. To explore themes relevant to today, and also learn about often overlooked bits of history that can influence our understanding of the current struggles faced.

It does this in one of the best genres possible to do it in: horror.

Horror is a genre that has, since the early days of film, been at the forefront of exploring topics often deemed taboo in some instances, and unsettling in others — particularly for the wealthy elite. As film began to dominate the entertainment realm, it, of course, drew the attention of the wealthy, who saw not a new element of artistic expression but a new avenue for profit. And with that attention came the suppression of the more expressive forms of film that began in the early 1900s.

The Hays Code, a set of self-imposed, mandatory film industry rules governing the so-called moral content of U.S. films to avoid government censorship from 1934 to 1968, attempted to clamp down on much of that expression. Horror allowed a bit more wiggle room because it could be more symbolic in its themes, thus flying under the radar of censorship while still expressing views on certain topics. Not just in the U.S., but around the world.

Films like Nosferatu (1922) explored themes of xenophobia, sexuality, and government mismanagement. It is seen as the quintessential vampire film to watch, and rightly so. Because even over 100 years later, much of what is dealt with in the film is relevant to today.

Sinners continues that tradition.

The best kind of vampire films understand that there are worse things in society than blood-sucking monsters with fangs.

The best kind of vampire films understand that there are worse things in society than blood-sucking monsters with fangs. When movies in this genre lean into this legacy with bold, imaginative storytelling, the result is often compelling original stories that lure us in with terror and keep us captivated by the very human condition at the heart of it all.

Ryan Coogler’s film achieves such a feat. The film combines horror, history, blues music, and Black American folklore for a thrilling journey into darkness, of both the supernatural and everyday varieties.

To quickly summarize the film: Though they accumulated it under mysterious circumstances, the brothers put together enough cash to purchase a sawmill from a racist landowner. Their plan: Start a juke joint for the local Black community, but opening night at the club is when the terror begins. Leading an attack by a pack of bloodsuckers is an Irish vampire named Remmick, who’s set on turning the three against each other. He explicitly sets his sights on Sammie because of the power his music unleashes.

There are themes that stand out not only for those who are film lovers, but for those looking at Marxism — a focus on the struggle between the working class and the owning class — interested in history, politics, and culture.

Blues music, multi-cultural America, and Soviet cinematic influence

A major aspect worth discussing is the role of music, obviously and particularly African American Blues music, in the film. Sinners opens with the “Smoke Stack” twins returning from Chicago to the Mississippi Delta. One twin named Smoke and one named Stack — our first clue that the film will become a great ode to the Delta Blues.

For his lead characters, director Ryan Coogler took inspiration from the song “Smokestack Lightning,” made famous by iconic blues singer, piano player, and harmonica player Howlin’ Wolf. Howlin’ Wolf himself was born in Mississippi into a sharecropping family and — like many Blues singers in the South — used music as a way to escape the oppressive conditions of the proto-slavery system of sharecropping.

Coogler found that in the Blues, there is no such thing as “ownership.” It’s all shared and inspired by each other, passed down through generations.

Interestingly, Coogler himself pointed out that through his research, he found other artists who Howlin’ Wolf was inspired by for the title of his song “Smokestack Lightning.” Coogler took inspiration from Howlin’ Wolf, Howlin’ Wolf took from Charlie Patton, who took inspiration from another. Coogler found that in the Blues, there is no such thing as “ownership.” It’s all shared and inspired by each other, passed down through generations.

This idea of generational connection is central throughout the film — particularly in one of its most memorable scenes, which Coogler calls the “surreal montage scene.” Just as he describes in a surreal break from the “real” events of the film, a performer at a juke joint named Sammie begins singing the blues. As the camera pans, we are taken throughout time as traditional African dancers move to the beats of drums, as hip hop heads in the 90s breakdance, as traditional Chinese dancers in dress move about the screen, and 70s rock stars strum their guitars. Coogler here emphasizes the foundational aspects of not only Blues in American music but also gives homage to the forms of dance and music that came before it.

The enslaved Africans who kept with them their traditional songs and styles, whose memory has survived through the progression and development of American culture, are seen as living on, not just in spiritual memory, but in the present practice.

If you don’t know, now you know, this country’s most beloved rock stars all say their biggest inspirations were Blues musicians. The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, and Led Zeppelin all were inspired directly by Blues musicians like Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, and BB King. Coogler also includes other cultures throughout the film, particularly Chinese American and Native American cultures, and represents them as foundational to the broader American cultural fabric.

The director highlights the significance of a multi-cultural America and makes clear that American culture does not exist without Black people, Native Americans, Chinese Americans, and so on.

Without us, without our work and creativity, this country would not be the country that produces and exports the most music globally, generating tens of millions of dollars in profit every year.

Coogler’s use of montage is one that is unique but recognizable. Most of us recognize montage as those scenes in movies where the character is changing their outfit a bunch of times, with perhaps an 80s rock song playing in the background. But montage as a film technique is really defined simply as the editing of different selections of film together to form a continuous message.

Contrary to traditional editing — which seeks to create a logical progression of film images seamlessly sliced together — montage seeks to create meaning through juxtaposition. The juxtaposition in Coogler’s surreal montage scene is evident visually by seeing characters who are out of place in their dress and movement, like the DJ spinning records in a 1930s juke joint, but also emotionally, where the dance, joy, and freedom within the juke joint contrast with the oppressive forces that surround it.

Montage film editing was developed by Soviet filmmakers like Sergei Eisenstein, where they intentionally select shots and composition to influence the thoughts of film watchers.

Montage film editing was developed by Soviet filmmakers like Sergei Eisenstein, where they intentionally select shots and composition to influence the thoughts of film watchers. The techniques of Soviet film montage were first used to stir up revolutionary emotion in audiences, and while this technique is not always used for revolutionary purposes today, it is widely practiced in a variety of films, advertisements, and movie trailers.

Coogler’s use of montage certainly stirred up many emotions in viewers who seemed to connect with this particular scene for its message about the enduring power of music through time and our inability to separate ourselves from our pasts and futures in the present.

History, oppression, and the Black working-class experience

Sinners is a story steeped in real history, interweaving the Black American experience of the early 1900s.

The time period in Sinners is key. One, for the fact that we don’t often get stories in this era centered on Black people in mainstream media. At times, it can feel like Hollywood films only acknowledge or bring about Black characters during slavery, the 1950s-1960s Civil Rights movement, and some more modern tales today (usually focused on romance or interpersonal drama). But the era of Sinners (the 1930s) is rich in history, offering a clearer perspective on the plight of Black working people in the United States during a tumultuous time in the nation’s history.

Smoke and Stack are war veterans in a period marked by unique racial complexities.

While it’s said there were many Black men who eagerly enlisted in the military when Uncle Sam issued the call during the First World War, many others faced an onslaught of discriminatory conscription practices.

For example, predominantly white draft boards targeted Black men for war at higher rates than whites. And while comprising just 10% of the entire United States population, Black people supplied 13% of the inductees in WWI.

By 1932, the Great Depression was in full swing. This historic economic collapse affected working people of all ethnicities, yet it was an extremely challenging period for Black Americans, as they faced high unemployment, discrimination, and increased racial violence all at the same time.

Lynchings by the white supremacist domestic terrorist group the Ku Klux Klan were on the rise. Black people were often the first to be laid off from their jobs, suffering from an unemployment rate two to three times that of their white counterparts.

These challenges factored into what became known as the Great Migration, the period when large numbers of Black people migrated from the South to urban areas in the North and West, seeking better economic opportunities.

And on top of that, far too often sanitized mainstream history would have us believe, the North was a racially enlightened region immune to inequality and discrimination. While racism may not have always been as overt as in the South, Black people faced discrimination there as well.

This is the world the twins and Sammie find themselves in. It’s clear that Stack and Smoke have turned to their less-than-lawful lives due to the cards society has dealt them.

They come up with their plan (of ripping off the mob in Chicago and then going back to their hometown to start a business) because they recognize the power imbalance in society. They served their country in war and came back to a country that was thankless for it, and at times downright cruel.

There is an understanding by the brothers that playing by society’s rules for Black people — a society embedded with white supremacy and greed through exploitation of the oppressed — won’t get them far in life.

This grey area when it comes to morality is a prevalent theme in the movie — it’s called Sinners, after all.

Spirituality, liberation theology, and white Christian nationalism

Then there is the role religion plays. Through Sammie and his struggle to appease his preacher father, Christianity’s role in the Black community is explored.

His father is a local preacher who disapproves of Sammie’s desire to play the blues. His father wants him to follow in his footsteps and become a pastor, preaching the Christian gospel. As Sammie spends the day with his cousins — the twins — he is introduced to concepts that challenge his father’s teachings.

A particularly poignant moment occurs when Sammie is talking to pianist Delta Sim, who asserts to Sammie that while Christianity was pushed on Black people when they came to America, blues music originates in Black people’s souls. It’s what they brought here with them that no one can take away. The power that music has on culture, in some cases being a form of resistance, is prevalent throughout the film as both heroes and villains alike express themselves through it.

Through the character of Annie, another aspect of Black spirituality is explored. Annie is a Hoodoo practitioner. Hoodoo is a Black American spiritual tradition that uses conjure (magical ritual) and rootwork (a healing system developed by Black people in the American South). Developed from various African diaspora religions and culminating within the framework of Black American culture, it focuses on listening to and interacting with the Black ancestors for guidance.

This aspect of Black spirituality isn’t often highlighted in mainstream entertainment. When it comes to displays of the spirituality of Black Americans on screen, it often occurs within the rigid confines of Christianity (usually Baptist) or a caricatured version of voodoo (for some reason, even though voodoo is primarily associated with Haiti).

That’s not to say that Coogler vilifies Christianity (Hoodoo actually has some Christian traditions within it), but he challenges the box that Black Americans are often put in when it comes to the topic.

The Black church, particularly during the Civil Rights movement, played a critical role in being a place to organize. Even today, there are Christian faith leaders who carry on the tradition of the liberation gospel, like the Poor People’s Campaign of the past and present.

But we are also in a time when white Christian nationalism (and draconic notions of Christianity) are attempting to dominate American society.

But we are also in a time when white Christian nationalism (and draconic notions of Christianity) are attempting to dominate American society. Through oppressive notions on women’s rights, LGBTQ, and the like. And while this has ramped up in recent years, it is something (even during the Sinners era) that has also been used by those in power to silence and control the population.

Sinners does well in showing there’s nuance to the matter, and that Black American spirituality can’t be placed in a simple box.

Intersectional struggle and symbolic vampirism under capitalism

The main villain in the story is an Irish vampire leader named Remmick.

Remmick also serves as the “other” in white supremacist society. He even mentions as much to the twins and Sammie. That his origins aren’t so different from their own.

Sinners connects the very comparable struggle of the people of Ireland to that of Black Americans. The oppression of the Irish people carried out by the British Empire spanned centuries, involving political, economic, and social persecution that deeply impacted them, bringing about widespread poverty, famine, and emigration.

Even in the United States, early on, Irish migrants new to the U.S. were targeted as not being “pure” white.

Remmick wants to be connected with his Irish culture and ancestors. He is plotting an attack on Sammie and the twins’ gathering. He believes he will be able to connect with ancestors by turning Sammie — the blues singer who awakens the spirits of the past in the montage scene — into a vampire.

The film explores the historical significance of colonization, capitalism, and racism through both narrative and symbolic lenses.

Symbolically, many have connected the issue of cultural appropriation to the vampire Remmick, who, having lost his own Irish culture through English colonization, seeks to exploit others to have some connection to his past. The film explores the historical significance of colonization, capitalism, and racism through both narrative and symbolic lenses. Where the vampires represent an evil, corruptive force that drains life and steals souls, and at the same time, characters are beholden to oppressive systems that make it even harder to survive the vampiristic attacks.

This connects to the idea of assimilation. After failing to invade the juke joint, Remmick and his gang attempt to convince the partygoers to leave their lives behind and join them. Remmick presents some good arguments for why these humans, who are struggling and oppressed, should become vampires. He says, “No matter how many guns or how much money you got. They gon’ take it from you when they want.” Remmick’s pitch is that instead of living under a racist, oppressive system where you will be killed, join the vampires, and you can become the killer.

Remmick’s gang of vampires is multiracial and united in their goals, but they have all lost their human identities and any hope of a normal future. To become a vampire, you must lose the most foundational part of yourself — your humanity.

It’s made clear in the film that Coogler’s choice of Remmick’s background is deliberate and just as important when it comes to his interactions with the other characters. Like the twins, Remmick recognizes the power imbalance in society and the rampant oppression. He chooses the route of violence and domination, thus mimicking his oppressors in response to his own (valid) anger for the hand society dealt him.

Assimilation is represented not only through the vampires but also internally within the human characters. Smoke and Stack are aspiring to be Black business owners who steal and kill for the sake of building a wealthy future.

At the beginning of the film, their only goal is to make money. When confronted with customers who only have “wooden nickels” — the plantation money they receive from their sharecropping jobs — Stack is willing to leave behind the sharecroppers for people with “real” money, while Smoke emphasizes the need to build a connection with the community in order to gain long-lasting business.

As a result of chasing money and not sticking to their community, Stack and Mary are both eventually turned into vampires, further emphasizing the dangers of capitalist assimilation.

While Smoke is influenced by his girlfriend, Annie, who is connected spiritually to her community and to her own humanity, Stack and his girlfriend, Mary, who is white-passing, make plans to try to get white customers (who, unbeknownst to them, are vampires) to spend their “real” money at the juke joint. As a result of chasing money and not sticking to their community, Stack and Mary are both eventually turned into vampires, further emphasizing the dangers of capitalist assimilation.

This is not even to get into the details of Mary’s character, who is fully assimilated into white society, away from her Black family and community.

She mentions that she didn’t want to “be white” and wanted to live a life alongside Stack. Yet Stack admits he previously rejected her because he wanted her to have a better life in white society. While assimilating does provide particular benefits and positions of power, whether it be money or status, what Coogler makes clear is that no money or status is worth your life or the lives of those around you.

Further, on vampirism, it is said that when one becomes a vampire, they are cut off from their ancestors. One twin embraces becoming a vampire, choosing a path of domination and violence in response to feeling powerless in this world. The other chose death — or rather resistance — seeing becoming a vampire as giving up elements of themselves they would rather not part with, even if it leaves them vulnerable.

The film doesn’t seem to make a clear judgment one way or the other, but one could see vampirism as representing the choice of how one functions under capitalism. For some, it can be easy to lean into the greed, the individualistic nature of capitalism, the violence. Seeing it as a means of survival. While others choose to lean into community, resilience, and ultimately a true moral high ground of love and connection.

Black American culture and the class struggle

Ultimately, Sinners gives us much to analyze and explore, particularly in connection to our current society. Even more specifically, to highlight Black American culture.

Black American culture is unique and a key part of American history. Black Americans, as a group, have such a rich culture because they are a unique group shaped by the inception and change within the United States. Inception and the change that they have played key roles in influencing.

The film zeroes in on an aspect of that (while acknowledging its influences) and establishes that Black American culture is unique and layered in its own right. When it comes to the fight against racism, exploitation, and capitalist greed, it is necessary to understand the past and present of one of the main groups of this class struggle — Black Americans.

Hollywood and control through conformity

Studio bosses and the film production companies they run are often wary of giving big budgets to original films like Sinners. They count on the formulaic scripts of Marvel movies to bring in the big checks. Not so coincidentally,
Coogler directed two Marvel films, Black Panther and its sequel — in addition to the boxing film franchise Creed. With experience in big-budget films, Coogler was able to leverage his previous successes to demand even more. After meeting with several studios, Warner Brothers agreed to take Sinners on with Coogler’s demands, giving him a nearly $100 million budget and a deal that guaranteed him ownership rights to the film after 25 years.

A director having ownership rights of a film has happened before, but usually to directors who are household names and have had to build lifelong careers, like American director Quentin Tarantino. Coogler’s deal is a major win for not only Black filmmakers and younger filmmakers, but all filmmakers who will likely benefit from the new precedents being set regarding who’s allowed to demand more.

This has been to the dismay of major studios, which seek to maximize their profits for themselves. Not only do they demand to take the money from the fruits of creative workers’ labor, but they also infringe on the creative decisions that make films so popular in the first place.

Often, production companies will edit scripts and take out important scenes they think are too costly. Famously, in the Oscar-winning beloved American film Forrest Gump, Paramount Pictures executives told director Bob Zemeckis that he would have to cut the part of the film where Forrest Gump runs across the country, saying it would be too expensive to film. Zemeckis and lead actor Tom Hanks agreed to pay for the scene out of their own salaries — with the caveat that they would be repaid if the film was successful — and undoubtedly it was.

As a part of his deal, Coogler also guaranteed himself final cut decisions of the film — which is not something all, even all well-known, directors get to have.

When creatives control creative decisions, rather than film bosses who only seek to save money and generate revenue, the film’s lasting success can be enormous. This is true not only for big-budget, big-box-office smashes like Sinners or Forrest Gump, but also for independent films made on low budgets by a fully creatively empowered team.

These indie films, while not always financially successful, grow audiences over decades, as opposed to the recycled scripts that Hollywood studios pump out — which may generate profit for a short time — but don’t have the enduring impact of film that is made for art’s sake, not profit’s sake.

While artists want to express their creativity and originality, capitalists tend to want to reproduce what has already been successful.

One could argue that this is a part of a larger cultural problem, which tends to capitalize on trends that reproduce generic versions of the same product in 50 different fonts. We see this not only in film, but in music, fashion, and even food. How many restaurants have you been to recently with some version of a hot honey-flavored dish? While it’s not necessarily a bad thing for things to be popular or trending, it’s important to point out that capitalism not only profits from conformity but also ideologically needs some sense of conformity to maintain power over culture and to control people’s way of thinking.

When a filmmaker like Coogler says he wants to create a vampire-musical movie about racism in the South, it goes against conventional standards of not only what has previously generated the most profit, but also what people “should” be interested in.

Capitalists will tell creatives, “Oh, nobody is gonna like this,” but as soon as that thing organically becomes popular, capitalists are the first to try to take advantage of the moment.

Capitalists tend to underestimate and misevaluate the tastes of the masses. They will tell creatives, “Oh, nobody is gonna like this,” but as soon as that thing organically becomes popular, capitalists are the first to try to take advantage of the moment, exploit that originality, and often twist the original version into something less impactful and useful.

It is noticeable how the quality of our products at home has dwindled. Things break too easily, and clothes don’t last as long as they used to. Film and art are generally a part of this general degradation of quality that capitalism has influenced. While the film industry celebrates the uniqueness of individual artists who have achieved success, the film industry, as a part of the general capitalist system, also promotes a culture of conformity that restricts and influences artistic and creative decision-making.

An example of this rejection of conformity in Sinners is the casting choices. Particularly for the role of Annie, played by English-Nigerian actress Wunmi Mosaku.

Many viewers have praised the casting of a dark-skinned woman who is not thin as the love interest opposite Hollywood heartthrob Michael B. Jordan. Audiences, through conventional Hollywood casting, have become accustomed to seeing women who look like Wunmi being cast as mothers, as caretakers, and other stereotypes that go back to the racist Hollywood trope of “the mammy” character.

Annie’s character in the film is represented not only as a “desirable” love interest but also as a complex hero who grounds the film’s messages about connection and humanity. Interestingly, the other romantic opposite of Michael B. Jordan’s role as the twins is Hailey Steinfeld, a leading lady in Hollywood who fits conventional beauty standards of whiteness and thinness. It’s through this contrast that audiences were able to notice just how absent leading romantic roles are for certain kinds of women.

These standards and perceptions about Black women still prevail, and while Wunmi is receiving attention and critical acclaim, institutional problems persist.

The New Yorker came under criticism for its illustration depicting Mosaku, which many felt didn’t accurately represent her beauty. People know that even something as simple as an illustration can shape people’s perceptions and expectations. The beauty standards of society, which are not only reflected in Hollywood but also largely shaped by it, where actresses who influence millions are often on strict diets, follow beauty routines, and undergo cosmetic surgery, are important to discuss and be aware of.

And though Hollywood awards shows and major studios hold considerable power over the careers and lives of artists, recognition within the Hollywood industry is not the determining factor in what constitutes a good film and what constitutes a bad film. Audiences and the masses of people across the world will determine what and who represent their feelings about the world.

Hollywood, the labor movement, and the commodification of art

At the time of this writing, Sinners has taken the Hollywood Awards season by storm. The Academy Awards are considered one of the highest honors in the film industry. The Oscars, the little golden statuettes awarded at the Academy Awards, are seen as a reflection of artistic excellence.

Sinners has made history with so many nominations. The recognition that the film is getting is justified and important. Films telling the stories of Black people (that don’t directly depict slavery) getting the kind of recognition that Sinners is getting are few and far between in mainstream media. Particularly films that challenge the status quo and so-called “tried and true” notions of who Black Americans are.

That is something to celebrate.

Yet, with that noted, it is also important to understand the framework within which Sinners exists within the Hollywood ecosystem. And more so, expand that to the capitalist system Hollywood is part of and influenced by.

When the film industry first began, it was something of the Wild West. Film was a new phenomenon, starting to hit the mainstream. With that, as mentioned earlier, came the wealthy bosses who saw the new cultural phenomenon as a means of making lots of money. With that money came a drive for profit and so-called marketability.

This is why the Hays Code came into play, and eventually the Motion Picture Association (MPA) rating system, as a means to categorize what was shown to audiences. Yet films didn’t come out of the ether. They were created and produced by workers. From in front of the camera to behind it, cultural workers helped bring these stories to the big screen. And as profits grew and large movie studios began to dominate Hollywood, so too did workers’ demands for their fair share of the profits and safe working conditions grow.

In response to this, the studio bosses created the Academy Awards as a way to distract these workers from forming unions.

In 1927, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studio executive Louis B. Mayer was doing his damnedest to keep actors from unionizing.

Louis B. Mayer was one of the top bosses at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, which is usually referred to today as MGM Studios. Back in the day, most of the revenue made from the film went back into the studios’ pockets.

It’s documented that Mayer (and most likely his other studio head counterparts) were worried that they’d have to share those profits with newly unionized workers. One had already begun at that time: the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE), which was unionizing studio laborers. Mayer came up with a plan he thought would trick workers into believing unions were unnecessary.

Mayer decided that he would create the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in order to be a go-between or mediator to work out disputes that might come up between the studios and the people within the industry that had yet to form a union.

It also served as a public relations arm to make Hollywood seem more sanitized to so-called middle America (aka censored and “refined”).

The studio boss was later quoted as saying: “I found that the best way to handle [moviemakers] was to hang medals all over them. If I got them cups and awards they’d kill themselves to produce what I wanted. That’s why the Academy Awards was created.”

Instead of giving his employees benefits like a share of film profits, health insurance, and other perks, he created what we now know as the Academy Awards.

It started as a plot by the bosses to appeal to the individualistic vanity of its workers in the hopes that they would abandon their pursuit of collectivity through the unions.

Now, of course, this didn’t work. As we see today, there are plenty of unions throughout the industry, such as IATSE, SAG-Aftra, The Writers Guilds, The Directors Guilds, The Animation Guilds, and so on.

Yet the battle between the greed of the bosses and the welfare of the culture workers is ever raging.

There have been multiple strikes. This has had Hollywood’s bosses respond with restrictions, budget cuts, and the like. Putting the industry in a rough spot as the millionaire studio heads and execs endure, while the cultural workers fear they may not be able to afford to continue to do the work they love, of telling stories and making art.

The entertainment industry has undergone several upheavals in recent years, including the global COVID-19 pandemic, two significant labor strikes, a decrease in production both globally and in Los Angeles, and the looming threat of AI to creatives’ jobs. Even now, the threat of AI (artificial intelligence) and studio bosses attempting to use the technology unethically to replace or cut the work of writers, animators, editors, and, in some cases, even actors looms large over the industry.

Add to that the politically motivated consolidation of power among the studio bosses, creating media monopolies that threaten workers’ ability to bargain. This is evident at the time of this writing, with the potential merger of the Paramount-Skydance studio with Warner Bros. Studios. A merger that many unions condemn, knowing that such a monopoly will not bode well for workers, as the power to get stories to the public is consolidated in the hands of the few.

It is also an industry that is not immune to the trappings of racism, sexism, and white supremacist ideology, as the representation of groups other than white and/or white males is still lacking.

This is the framework in which Sinners finds itself. Hollywood is not some fantasyland (or La-La Land, as the term goes) filled with glitz and glamor. It is an industry that has workers and bosses. One that is affected by the class struggle. And one that is not immune to capitalism’s ills.

Within this industry, stories of resistance and perseverance have emerged. Ones that champion and showcase the stories of the marginalized. It has also been a space where capitalist propaganda, red-baiting, and blacklisting have been allowed to be carried out at one time or another.

Fun fact: The United States CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) purchased the rights to George Orwell’s book Animal Farm (a story that uses farm animals to represent a workers’ revolution), had the animated film produced — and altered the ending to be anti-communist.

In the book, the farm animals look at both the human farmers and the newly tyrannical pigs and wonder if both sides have faults. The CIA removed the human farmers, so that the focus of condemnation would be on the pig characters, who were seen as representatives of a communist led government. They took a story that was originally Orwell’s condemnation of authoritarianism and turned it into an anti-communist one instead.

This is just one of many examples that illustrate the Hollywood ecosystem and how it can shape narratives based on who is in charge of allowing those stories to be told.

With the current White House regime of Donald Trump, his FCC (The Federal Communications Commission) chairman, and the various media moguls wanting favor with the regime (such as the heads of Paramount-Skydance CBS), we are in a time when the right wing sees the power of storytelling and is attempting to dominate it.

Also, there has been a push to refer to film, TV, writing, and other forms of cultural expression as “content” to downplay what is actually involved in those artistic expressions (filmmakers, writers, laborers). This push to change to a more commodifying rhetoric around artistic expression can be likened to what Marx explained as “commodity fetishism,” where capitalism obscures the human labor behind products. Making goods (in this case, films, TV, etc.) appear to have value independently of the work that created them, thus hiding the exploitation.

Storytelling and the people’s movement

Mainstream media and Hollywood are another frontier in the battle of ideas.

We can celebrate the recognition of Sinners in Hollywood while also recognizing the struggles for working people within the industry and outside of it when it comes to producing stories, but also the stories that get to be told to the public.

Audiences should be encouraged to make their own judgements about what films are worth the hype. We should be empowered to engage critically with films, not just go with whatever institutions or popular messaging say is good — after all, these institutions have their own agendas. If we as audiences put more emphasis on filmmaking that doesn’t always have to abide by conventional standards and norms, we may have more films that confront capitalist conformity and the hegemony of the ruling class.

Politics isn’t just what happens on Capitol Hill. That’s why it’s important to know what’s going on with the workers in this industry and also with the stories that make it on the big (and small) screens.

The opinions of the author do not necessarily reflect the positions of the CPUSA.

Images: Sinners by Warner Brothers Picture. Public domain.