SINNERS (2025): THE SACRED & PROFANE

4-Part Series by Rev. Dr. Philippe SHOCK Matthews

This analysis offers a detailed philosophical and cultural examination of Ryan Coogler’s film through the lenses of metaphysical inquiry and Africana phenomenology.

Part 1: Music as Metaphysical Technology & The Politics of Spiritual Sovereignty This section examines how the film positions blues music not merely as entertainment but as a spiritual technology that connects the physical and spiritual worlds. I analyze the opening scenes, the church-music conflict, the introduction of the twins (Stack and Smoke), Annie’s rootwork practices, and the establishment of Club Juke as sacred space. The analysis draws on scholars like Charles Long, Judith Weisenfeld, and Sylvia Wynter to understand how the film portrays music as a form of spiritual resistance against colonial Christianity.

Part 2: Vampirism as Cultural Appropriation & The Politics of Consumption This part focuses on the film’s central metaphor: vampirism as an allegory for cultural appropriation and white supremacy. I examine the arrival of Remic and his companions, the turning of Stack and other characters, and the revelation of the vampires’ connection to the KKK. The analysis employs concepts from thinkers like Bell Hooks, Christina Sharpe, and Achille Mbembe to explore how the supernatural elements function as philosophical devices for examining racial politics and predatory consumption of Black cultural forms.

Part 3: Ancestral Memory & The Politics of Liberation This section analyzes the film’s climactic confrontations and resolutions, including the water battle scene, Smoke’s sacrifice, and the “ancestor walk” sequence where Smoke transitions to the ancestral realm. I examine how the film presents liberation not simply as physical survival but as spiritual connection across generations. Drawing on scholars like Robert Farris Thompson, John Mbiti, and James Cone, I explore how the film portrays freedom through ancestral wisdom rather than immortality.

Part 4: Musical Legacy & The Politics of Memory The final part examines the film’s epilogue, focusing on the aged Sammy’s final performance and the reappearance of Mary. I analyze how the film positions musical performance as both historical testimony and future-oriented practice. Using concepts from Hannah Arendt, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Édouard Glissant, I explore the film’s vision of cultural memory as a form of resistance against both colonial Christianity and vampiric immortality.

Part 1: Music as Metaphysical Technology & The Politics of Spiritual Sovereignty

In Ryan Coogler’s “Sinners” (2025), the blues transcends mere musical expression to become a profound metaphysical technology—a medium through which the veil between worlds is not merely pierced but deliberately traversed. This first part of our analysis explores how the film’s opening scenes establish music as a spiritual battleground, examining the tensions between colonial Christianity and indigenous African spirituality, and how these tensions manifest in the personal journeys of our protagonists.

The Opening Invocation: Establishing the Cosmic Stakes

“Sinners” begins with a cosmological framing that immediately signals its metaphysical concerns. The film opens with narration about people born with gifts that can “pierce the veil between life and death, conjuring spirits from the past and the future.” This spiritual technology is named across cultures: “filly” in Ireland, “fire keepers” among the Choctaw, and “kriyats” in West Africa. This cross-cultural acknowledgment is significant—the film is not simply about African American blues traditions but about a universal human capacity to transcend boundaries between the living and spiritual realms.

The film’s first frames establish what philosopher Charles H. Long calls “orientation”—the primordial relationship to ultimate reality that precedes religious doctrines. By positioning music as a technology of transcendence recognized across cultures, Coogler universalizes what might otherwise be seen as a culturally specific phenomenon. This move is politically significant: it reclaims what colonial Christianity often demonized as “devil’s music” and reframes it as part of humanity’s shared spiritual heritage.

The Church Scene: Colonial Religion vs. Indigenous Spirituality

When young Sammy is shown playing guitar while his preacher father demands he “drop the guitar in the name of God,” we witness the central tension that will drive the film: the conflict between colonial Christianity and indigenous African spiritual practices. The preacher father embodies what womanist theologian Delores Williams identifies as “theological surrogacy”—the way Black church leaders sometimes unwittingly enforce the very theologies that were used to justify their own oppression.

The father’s command—“Drop the guitar, Sammy. In the name of God!”—reveals the colonial religious framing that positions musical expression outside the realm of the divine. Yet the cinematography betrays this framing: Sammy is bathed in golden light as he plays, while his father remains in shadow. The visual language suggests that despite the father’s theological position, Sammy’s connection to music is itself a form of divine communion.

This scene resonates with what religious studies scholar Judith Weisenfeld terms “religio-racial identity” to analyze the intricate ways in which religious and racial categories intersect and mutually constitute one another. This framework moves beyond understanding race and religion as separate or parallel social constructs, instead emphasizing their historical entanglement and the formation of identities through their dynamic interplay. Religio-racial identity considers how religious practices, beliefs, and institutions are racialized, and conversely, how racial identities are shaped by religious affiliations and experiences. This concept is particularly useful in examining communities and historical periods where religious and racial classifications have been central to social organization, power relations, and individual and collective identity formation. It allows for a nuanced understanding of how individuals and groups navigate and negotiate their senses of self within contexts marked by both religious and racial hierarchies and ideologies. Weisenfeld’s work highlights the fluidity and contingency of these categories and the ways in which religio-racial identities can be both imposed and actively constructed and asserted.

The preacher father has internalized a theology that divorces Black expressive culture from legitimate spiritual practice, defining it instead as sinful. This religio-racial construction will be challenged throughout the film, as music becomes the primary means through which characters reconnect with ancestral knowledge and power.

The Twins: Archetypal Embodiments of Spiritual Politics

The introduction of the Smoke Stack twins—Stack and Smoke—establishes them as archetypal figures representing different responses to oppression. Stack, the charismatic, outgoing brother, embodies what philosopher Lewis Gordon calls “bad faith”—a flight from responsibility through charm and deflection. Smoke, the serious, protective brother, represents what Frantz Fanon might call “embodied resistance”—the willingness to engage directly with oppressive forces.

Michael B. Jordan’s dual performance demonstrates what literary critic Henry Louis Gates Jr. termed “signifyin'”—the art of indirect communication through which African Americans have historically navigated hostile environments. The twins’ differing approaches to survival signify complementary strategies within Black communities: Stack uses charm and subterfuge while Smoke relies on direct confrontation when necessary.

Their return to Mississippi to purchase land and establish Club Juke represents what philosopher Sylvia Wynter would call a “counter-poetics”—a deliberate construction of alternative space outside the dominant social order. The twins’ first interaction with Hogwood, the racist landowner, establishes the political stakes of their venture: “If we see you or any one of your clan buddies cross our property line, we gonna kill them right where they stand.” This is not merely a business transaction but a reclamation of space and power.

Annie the Root Worker: Embodied Knowledge vs. Colonial Epistemologies

The character of Annie introduces another dimension of spiritual technology: the practice of rootwork or hoodoo. When Smoke dismisses Annie’s spiritual practices, saying “I ain’t never saw no roots, no demons, no ghosts, no magic—just power, and only money can get at it,” he articulates what feminist philosopher Patricia Hill Collins calls “Eurocentric masculinist knowledge validation”—the privileging of material over spiritual knowledge systems.

Annie’s response—”I work every root my grandmama taught me to keep you and that crazy brother you’re safe every day since you been gone”—represents what Collins terms “alternative epistemologies” or ways of knowing that center lived experience and ancestral knowledge. The scene is shot in warm, intimate lighting, with Annie’s home filled with herbs, flowers, and ritual objects that signify a living tradition rather than a superstition.

This exchange establishes one of the film’s core philosophical questions: What constitutes real power? Is it materialist (money, guns, property) or spiritual (ancestral connection, ritual knowledge, community)? Through Annie’s character, the film suggests that the dichotomy itself is a colonial construct. True power, the film implies, integrates both realms.

Sammy’s Journey: The Burden of Spiritual Gifts

Young Sammy emerges as a central figure whose spiritual gift—his powerful voice and musical ability—marks him as what in West African traditions would be called a “chosen one.” His mother’s admonition—”Don’t put that on your body, Sammy. It’ll dry you out. Don’t put this on while it’s still working”—can be read as a metaphor for the dangers of suppressing spiritual gifts.

Sammy’s dilemma—whether to follow his preacher father’s path or embrace his musical talents—represents what psychologist Na’im Akbar called “the community of self”—the struggle to integrate seemingly contradictory aspects of identity. His journey embodies the challenge facing many young Black Americans: reconciling ancestral traditions with the pressure to conform to Eurocentric religious norms.

When Sammy receives Charlie Patton’s guitar, the film establishes a lineage of spiritual transmission. Charlie Patton, a real historical figure often called the “Father of the Delta Blues,” represents an unbroken chain of knowledge transmission. The guitar becomes what anthropologist Paul Stoller might call a “sensuous object”—a material item that carries spiritual power and ancestral memory.

The Juke Joint: Sacred Space in Profane Territory

The establishment of Club Juke represents the creation of what religious scholar Charles Long calls “orientation in space”—the creation of sacred territory within hostile geography. The abandoned sawmill—a site of exploitation and labor extraction—is transformed into a space of collective joy, creative expression, and spiritual communion.

The scene where the twins prepare for opening night is shot with reverence, the camera lingering on small details: the cleaning of floors, the setting up of the bar, the preparation of food. These actions are not merely practical but ritual—the consecration of space. Stack’s proclamation—”Our own juke joint. Follow us and buy us, just like we always wanted”—speaks to the political significance of Black-owned space during Jim Crow.

The juke joint becomes what philosopher Hortense Spillers might call a “vestibular” space—a threshold between worlds where conventional social hierarchies are temporarily suspended. Inside Club Juke, the politics of Jim Crow become temporarily irrelevant as Black joy and expression take precedence. This spatial politics is crucial to understanding the film’s metaphysics: sacred space can be created anywhere through intentional community practices.

Delta Slim: The Elder Griot as Ancestral Conduit

The introduction of Delta Slim, portrayed by Delroy Lindo, establishes the role of the elder as keeper of communal memory. His story about playing blues for white audiences and witnessing his friend Rice being lynched afterward connects personal trauma to collective history. This scene operates what feminist scholar Gloria Anzaldúa calls “conocimiento”—the transformation of painful knowledge into consciousness-raising narrative.

When Delta Slim explains that white folks “like the blues just fine—they just don’t like the people who make it,” he articulates what cultural theorist Bell Hooks calls “eating the other”—the way white culture has historically consumed Black cultural products while rejecting Black humanity. This dynamic becomes central to the film’s vampire metaphor, as we’ll explore in later sections.

The car ride where Delta Slim shares his traumatic story while simultaneously transmuting that pain into music represents what philosopher John Mbiti calls “living memory”—the way oral traditions keep historical knowledge alive through emotional and embodied transmission rather than written documentation. When Sammy joins in with his guitar, we witness intergenerational knowledge transfer in action.

Conclusion to Part 1: The Foundation of Spiritual Politics

By the time we reach the juke joint’s opening night, “Sinners” has established its fundamental metaphysical framework: music functions as a technology for crossing boundaries between worlds, challenging colonial religious frameworks, reconnecting with ancestral knowledge, and creating sacred space within hostile territory.

The film’s first act positions music not merely as entertainment but as what philosopher Sylvia Wynter would call a “counter-poetics of being”—an alternative way of understanding human existence that challenges dominant Western paradigms. Through music, characters access what poet and philosopher Édouard Glissant calls “relation”—connection across time, space, and different modes of being.

As we move into the second part of our analysis, we will explore how the introduction of supernatural elements—specifically vampirism—serves as a metaphor for cultural appropriation and white supremacy. The film’s horror elements are not merely generic conventions but philosophical tools for examining the parasitic relationship between dominant culture and marginalized communities.

To be continued in Part 2: Vampirism as Cultural Appropriation & The Politics of Consumption, where we will analyze the arrival of Remic and his companions, their transformation into vampires, and how the film uses vampirism as a metaphor for whiteness feeding on Black cultural production while destroying Black bodies.

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