Sinners is the Greatest Period Piece of 2025

Consider my life changed

As consistent readers might know, I’m not great at planning my show and Substack ahead of time. I usually do it on Sunday for a Monday release. I saw Sinners on Wednesday and I’m writing this Thursday because I was so amazed by what I saw I just had to put it in writing as soon as possible. I love historical fiction in all its forms. Growing up, I loved American Girl dolls and their accompanying books. They hold up as accurate historical fiction that doesn’t sugarcoat the tragedies of American history. The Dear America series is similarly good. I didn’t read all of them, but there was something appealing about hearing the stories of girls throughout history. I especially liked the ones that took place in the midwest for some reason. I knew about Black history of course, but really just the bare minimum. I had a decent hold on the progression of slavery and its abolition and then the Civil Rights Movement, but the space in between was a bit fuzzy. In part, I wonder if this is because mainstream media overlooks Reconstruction and Jim Crow. Sharecropping is not discussed in depth. Neither are chain gangs or prison labor. Reading Roots in high school was my first major introduction to what life in the South looked like during this period. Sinners is not like period pieces that have come before it. Taking place over the course of 24 hours in 1932 in the Mississippi Delta, Sinners delves into the meaning of community and finding joy in times of social conflict. In thinking about it further, Sinners is a beautiful portrayal of a period often overlooked in American history. While a lot of the historical moments are somewhat obvious, I need to get it out of my system and dissect it in full. This episode is really more for me than it is for you, but don’t worry it’ll be one of the more interesting ones. Make sure to tune in for my live show on Tuesday at 11am PST on KSDT. Also this is your formal warning, the rest of this post will have a lot of spoilers. If you even think you MIGHT see this movie anytime soon DO NOT READ THIS! You’ll want to go into it knowing nothing.

The movie opens with a scene that’ll come back at the end, but follows with main character Sammie picking cotton in an otherwise empty field. It is made clear that this is the Mississippi Delta, which is sometimes called “The Most Southern Place on Earth” and known as the birthplace of the blues. This is all especially important throughout the movie, but before we get into that, I want to go over sharecropping. The abolition of slavery in 1865 is common knowledge. As I mentioned earlier, the basics of the Civil War are covered in (nearly) every American school. After the Emancipation however, the southern economy was destroyed. With the banning of slavery in the Thirteenth Amendment, access to (free) labor was slim. There was a promise for land to be redistributed, but that did not happen. Sharecropping arose as a solution to both enslavers and the formerly enslaved. Many people left the South after the war, but that was not an option for many. After Andrew Johnson cancelled Field Order No. 15, which promised the redistribution of land, plantation owners who now had reaffirmed rights to their land would harass the formerly enslaved to work for them. Land ownership was near impossible. There were few options for the newly freed besides returning to work for the same men who enslave them. Sharecropping gave individuals land to work, a home, and supplies in exchange for half of the harvest. By no means did these individuals own this land. It was always made very clear that sharecroppers were always in debt to their landlords. Sharecroppers also faced difficulty in selling their crops. Contracts were tricky and often prohibited drinking, talking in the fields, and formally renting land. Sharecropping did not die out in full until the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1968 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.¹ In Sinners, we see the effects of sharecropping in full force. Sammie’s home is a small shack that he shares with his parents and siblings with bales of cotton piled up on the porch. We are first introduced to Cornbread as he works in the fields along with his pregnant wife. There are many shots of the main characters driving through long stretches of dirt road surrounded by cotton. The smokestack twins, who dress in sharp suits complete with hats and holstered guns stand out among most of their friends. Many characters, like Cornbread, wear faded and patched clothes. This is an indication of the unfulfilled promises of sharecropping.

Smoke (the other half of the smokestack twins) makes his way into town early into the film. The shop Smoke enters is run by a Chinese family. This is one of if not my favorite details of the movie as a whole. Chinese settlers first came to the Mississippi Delta during Reconstruction. In an America that was clearly defined by White and Black, the Chinese were considered an in between. Nearly all Chinese families in the Delta owned grocery stores, much like the Chows in Sinners. Most of the early immigrants tried their hand at farming but quickly realized it wouldn’t work out. However, they opened stores within the predominantly Black communities they lived in.² White-owned stores would not sell to Black Americans, but Chinese-owned stores would. It was a mutually beneficial situation. Many Chinese store owners allowed their Black patrons to buy on credit with debts repaid after wages were given. Honesty was a major principle in all of the Chinese stores in the Delta.³ They did not take advantage of their customers. Through this, Chinese grocers earned the trust of the Black community in the Delta. In Sinners the Chows are a major part of the community. They are well respected and included in the activities of the community. They provide supplies, in the form of catfish and a sign, to the juke joint opened by the smokestack twins. The Chows are an important callback to the role of minority ethnic groups in the South during Jim Crow. The unique situation of Chinese immigrants in the Delta is a reminder of how community can, and should, surpass racial and sometimes cultural divides.

The first vampire we’re introduced to is Remmick. He’s Irish. He’s been a vampire for centuries, though you’d only catch this if you had a strong knowledge of Christianity in Ireland. When one of the not yet vampires tries using a cross to scare Remmick away, he says that Christians took his father’s land and he isn’t afraid of them. Christianity took root in Ireland in this way beginning at 5 ACE. This would make him over one thousand years old at the time of the film. It’s the little things like this that show the intricacy of the movie. You wouldn’t necessarily recognize this stuff right away, but it’s really cool that it’s historically accurate. Remmick being Irish has another significance as well when it comes to the vampire hunters. The vampire hunters are visibly Native Americans The Choctaw Nation is native to Oklahoma and Mississippi. It makes sense that the vampire hunters would be specifically Choctaw in that sense. I don’t know if the Choctaw actually have higher knowledge of vampires. What was really interesting to me was their conflict with Remmick, who’s Irish. The Choctaw and the Irish have a unique history. Both experienced tragedy at the same time. The Choctaw were facing the Trail of Tears as the Irish suffered the Potato Famine in 1847. Despite their own suffering, the Choctaw people of Oklahoma sent money over to Ireland to help with famine relief. It wasn’t a huge donation, roughly $5,000 in today’s money, but it’s the intention behind it. They didn’t have to do anything, they were facing their own tragedy; and yet they still offered aid. In turn, when the Navajo and Hopi communities were hit especially hard by COVIDm the Irish government, citing the help from the Choctaw Nation, sent a large donation.⁴ In American public schools, we rarely learn about Native American history. We know the Trail of Tears, but not any of the intricacies of it. This is another one of those things you’d never know unless you had a personal interest on the subject. It’s not taught. Sinners doesn’t touch on this relationship in a traditional sense. My theory is that the Choctaw vampire hunters are putting Remmick out of his misery of having lived for 1,000 years, but also that they’re saving the rest of the community, including their own.

The music of Sinners is magical. It’s at the core of the movie. I’m not an expert on the blues. I didn’t really enjoy the blues prior to watching the movie. Now three days post-Sinners, I listen to the score daily. Blues music goes way back to the 1860s. Some might think that blues goes back to slavery but it’s an important distinction that it does not. It was created by freed Black people as their own form of expression. Early songs were often about sharecropping, a theme which would be omnipresent throughout blues created during Jim Crow. The themes in blues music shifted in the 1890s, where singers sung about the rebel who stood up to White supremacy. This came at a time in which Black individuals were tried in public courts and thus entirely by White people. Most plantations had their own justice system, but obviously that was gone by this point. Toward the end of the nineteenth century there is another shift: the boll weevil. A boll weevil is a type of beetle that specifically feeds on cotton. When the boll weevil destroyed the Southern cotton industry, which in part led to the Great Migration, songs began to include the boll weevil as well. Charley Patton, a famous blues artist, has a song called “Mississippi Boweavil Blues”. Around this time, prison labor was in full force. As a result, prison farms were created in which freed men were arrested and used for free labor. It was extremely difficult for a Black man to avoid conviction, and even harder to get out of the system. Many songs depicted life on these prison farms. Blues spread out and thus became more mainstream in the 1940s when many Black Americans moved out of the South. Singers like Muddy Waters made names for themselves by moving to major cities like Chicago with recording opportunities. Blues music became an official industry as musicians not only had their own salaries but could pay band members.⁵ The role of the blues in Sinners is major. With how tied the history of the music is to Black community in the South, notably in the Mississippi Delta (where Charley Patton forged the genre Delta Blues), it comes at no surprise that music is an important factor of the film. Sinners shares a lot of the themes present in blues music of its time. Sharecropping, White supremacy, and Black exploitation are all present. Each of these elements are important to covering the experience of freed Black communities in the South and the music of Sinners is representative of that.

There’s no doubt that music carries both meaning and feeling. Sinners created physical embodiments of both. In my favorite scene from the movie, Sammie plays his guitar and sings at the juke joint set up by Smoke and Stack. For reference, a juke joint is a type of blues club, usually in the country, where people would drink, gamble, and listen to the blues. They were especially popular in the Mississippi Delta. They were for people to relax after long days of work.⁶ Anyway, as Sammie is playing this song, he also starts to conjure spirits from the past and future. I can’t find the scene online, because the movie is so recent, so the following is going to be from memory (and the IMDb trivia section). The first person to show is a 1970s style electric guitarist. Then we see a DJ, breakdancers, and an African drummer just to name a few. There’s also dancers, including those from Africa’s past and America’s future. There’s also a Chinese opera dancer dressed as Sun Wukong, which resulted from a suggestion made by Yao, the actor playing Bo Chow. Saying this scene is powerful doesn’t really do it justice. It shows how music is always connected to history. This is what I’ve been saying this whole time: pop culture is history! This description doesn’t do it justice, you have to see the movie to get the full picture.

Sinners is an undeniably great movie. Sure, there’s some small things if you really want to nitpick, but overall it’s a masterpiece. It’s a vampire movie, but it’s also really historically relevant. I talked to a bunch of different people after seeing this movie and only one immediately remembered what sharecropping was. I think that’s indicative of how much is missing in American history education. As I mentioned earlier, Jim Crow is often skipped over. There’s enough time to spend weeks on Constitutional history but not even a day on sharecropping. I’m always disappointed when I realize a historical concept I know a lot about isn’t actually taught to everyone. I recognize that it would be weird if my biology major friends really knew a lot about the different types of ships used for international trade in the eighteenth century, but sharecropping and the blues are different. They’re pretty foundational to modern American history. Sinners is fiction, but the themes are real and reflective of actual happenings in American history. I hope in some way people are inspired to learn more about the history behind the film after watching it. I always rip apart period pieces because they always have inaccuracies, but I really didn’t have to do that with Sinners. On top of that, which already makes the movie a win for me, Sinners was truly beautiful. If you’ve made it to the bottom of this post without having seen the movie, go buy a ticket. I promise you it’s worth it.

1. “I Lied to You” by Miles Caton

2. “Hole Up ‘Til Sunrise” by Ludwig Göransson

3. “Grand Closin’ (feat. Eric Gales)” by Ludwig Göransson

4. “Mississippi Bo Weavil Blues” by Charley Patton

5. “(I’m Your) Hoochie Coochie Man” by Muddy Waters

6. “When the Levee Breaks” by Kansas Joe McCoy & Memphis Minnie

7. “Hound Dog” by Big Mama Thornton

8. “How Blue Can You Get?” by B. B. King

9. “Evil (Is Going On)” by Howlin’ Wolf

10. “Baby, What You Want Me To Do” by Jimmy Reed

1. https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/harvest-sharecropping-slavery-rerouted/

2. https://www.npr.org/2017/03/18/519017287/the-legacy-of-the-mississippi-delta-chinese

3. https://usdandelion.com/archives/6485

4. https://www.choctawnation.com/about/history/irish-connection/

5. https://www.aaihs.org/the-historical-roots-of-blues-music/

6. https://www.spin.com/2021/02/the-last-remaining-juke-joints-in-america/