136: down to be wrong
THIS WEEK: A little on Etoile, a lot on Sinners
It can be nice, on occasion, to be wrong. I was wrong about The Pitt. And it turns out I was wrong about Etoile, Amy Sherman-Palladino and Dan Palladino’s new show about a talent swap between a New York ballet company and a Parisian one. As a casual ballet lover, Etoile satisfied that part of myself that watched Ballet 422 in high school. Part of my initial wariness about the show was around the casting of Charlotte Gainsbourg, who I largely associate with intense or melancholic roles, not the kind of fast-talking and heartwarming comedy that the Sherman-Palladinos are known for. While Gainsbourg doesn’t exactly go full Lorelai Gilmore, she is surprisingly funny and plays her role as Interim Director of the fictional Parisian ballet company with a pleasing ease. Luke Kirby, who I know mostly from the Gossip Girl reboot is delightfully charming as her New York counterpart and occasional lover, though his shoulders are doing so much acting that I’m surprised he didn’t dislocate them. Visually, the show does feel a little sterile—all the scenes set in Central Park look like green screen. Overall, perfect to gobble over the weekend.
Open Tabs (Spoiler Buffer Zone)
spoilers for Sinners after the jump
Friend of the Report Hannah Ziegler talked to Durga Chew-Bose about Bonjour Tristesse. I loved this detail about how Chew-Bose’s references: “Chew-Bose cites Edward Yang’s A Brighter Summer Day, the films of Lucrecia Martel, and early 2010s blockbuster Moneyball as inspirations. She quips, ‘As a joke to Max, I would be like, ‘I want to have a Moneyball shot in the film,’ but that mainly meant seeing the nape of a man’s neck with a bit of a chain.’”
The girlies are reading the conversation between Lorde x Martine Syms from Document, and picking up copies of Fleur Jaeggy’s Sweet Days of Discipline (Lorde: “Have you read Sweet Days of Discipline, that Fleur Jaeggy book? That’s kind of that buzz as well. I gave it to Dev [Hynes] actually, I wonder if he read it.”) That book didn’t really do anything for me when I read it; austere is the right word for it. Whether it is or isn’t your cup of tea, I’d also recommend Jean Rhys’ Wide Sargasso Sea, a novel that, to borrow Jaeggy’s words, waters the void.
I was also wrong about Sinners—I thought it looked ridiculous when I saw the trailer but found it to be quite satisfying when I went to see it on Tuesday night. Set in 1932, Sinners follows twin brothers, Smoke and Stack (played by Michael B. Jordan), as they return to their Mississippi hometown and attempt to open up a juke joint. What we know about the brothers is that they have returned home following time spent “up North,” in Chicago specifically, and have served in the United States Army during World War I. As twins, as orphans, they’ve been in the trenches together their whole lives, literally and figuratively, further cementing their relationship as two halves of one whole. Even though they ride into town all bravado and pouty lips with their hats placed so, bootlegged liquor and bags full of cash in the trunk, the brothers’ return to Mississippi is less than triumphant. 1932, an escape to Chicago and an escape back to Mississippi. If we trace the years passed, it seems that Smoke and Stack were likely part of “The Great Migration,” the mass movement of Black Americans from the Southern United States to Northern cities like Chicago, Philadelphia, and New York, chasing the promise of freedom that emancipation had failed to deliver on. Of course, despite its promise, the North proved to be as much a place of strife and exploitation and alienation as the South. When Sammie, the twins’ cousin, excitedly asks about their time in Chicago, Smoke shuts him down, discouraging him from idealizing the Northern city as a site of escape. In Who Set You Flowin’? The African American Migration Narrative, Farah Jasmine Griffin attends to how African American migration narratives of the twentieth century treated the conflict and disappointment of migration North. Some authors, like Richard Wright, in light of the difficulties of Northern urban life, advocated for an alienation from the South as the only way to survive, imagining return to be impossible. Other authors encouraged a return to the South, whether literally or spiritually. Griffin notes that for Toni Morrison, for example, the South was “a site of racial redemption and identity” and “also the place where Africa is most present,” as a result of it as a “burial ground, as a place of cultural origins…” To be alienated from the South was to be doubly alienated from yourself. Sinners embraces this perspective, not only in the brothers’ return and newfound/renewed belief that their Southern hometown is the site of their success but also in Smoke’s trust in his partner, Annie’s (played by Wunmi Mosaku), traditional rituals and medicines. In the end, Annie, whose knowledge of haints and vampires helps the group arm themselves, and who sacrifices herself before she can be sacrificed, is the true “hero” of Sinners. Following the movie’s critique of commodification and the troubles of Black capitalism, Annie, who happily takes the worthless plantation currency in exchange for her services, is positioned as the spirit required for survival. She’s the ancestor.1
There’s a lot more I want to think about regarding Sinners, especially because it really intersects with my particular research interests. All its themes and ideas are things I’ve spent some time thinking about. In regards to Sammie and the commodification of Black music that it deals with, reading
’s work is a great entry point. I really appreciated her non-review of the movie. I’d also suggest Simone White’s “Dear Angel of Death,” the essay portion of her poetry collection by the same name.One last thought: When Smoke and Stack are working to open up their juke, they say that it is “for us, by us.” Sinners embraces that credo. Ryan Coogler manages an intimacy, a sense of secrecy, if not privacy, that allows the movie to avoid (for the most part—it’s still a movie that’s making money for a white-dominated industry) the sale of Black culture that it critiques. No matter how big it is, there’s a deep love in Sinners, one that, if you can feel it, makes the movie incredibly special.
Griffin borrows and extends Toni Morrison’s definition of the ancestor, from her essay “Rootedness: The Ancestor in Afro-American Fiction,”: “’[Ancestors] are sort of timeless people whose relationships to the characters are benevolent, instructive, and protective, and they provide a certain kind of wisdom.’…The ancestor is present in ritual, religion, music, food, and performance. His or her legacy is evident in discursive formations like the oral tradition. The ancestor might be a literal ancestor; he or she also has earthly representatives, whom we might call elders.”