Unless you have been without internet service over the last few weeks, you know that moviegoers are still buzzing and gushing over Ryan Coogler’s genre-bending horror film Sinners. Not only is the film a commercial and critical success, but it’s a movie with enough depth and messaging that it has kept reviewers, content creators and general fans coming through with fresh takes, analyses and discussion prompts, compounding the word-of-mouth momentum it has already enjoyed.
Anyway, Jason Whitlock didn’t like it.
Of course, it’s not terribly surprising that America’s worst sports analyst is also among its worst film critics, and it’s even more unsurprising that he hated a film that was rich in Black folklore and culture. Even less surprising is the fact that Whilock hated Sinners because he found it was really mean to white people, and what’s even less surprising than all of that is that he’s wondering where all the “anti-Black” racism in cinema is.
“‘Sinners’ was the most nakedly racist movie I’ve ever seen,” Whitlock said. “The movie’s entire message is, ‘White people are the devil’. Where’s the anti-black movie? Hollywood only lets the narrative spin one way.”
*heavy negro spiritual sigh*
Whitlock is really so mad at Sinners that he’s out here requesting a remake of D.W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation.
First of all, Sinners takes place in 1930s Mississippi, so even if the film’s core message was “White people are the devil,” which it is not, it wouldn’t exactly be a message that wasn’t rooted in the reality of the time. But, again, if Whitlock saw the movie and ignored every nuance that makes it a cultural phenomenon — the celebration of the blues, juke joint culture, African spirituality, the evolution of Black American music, and the mod to Irish folklore, among other things — just to focus in on the surface-level references to the Klan and the film’s white antagonist, Remmick the Irish vampire, it’s just an indication that he lacks the critical thinking capacity to offer a meaningful critique of anything art-related.
Also, why is Whitlock, the living embodiment of that one Django Unchained meme, so damn dedicated to defending white people? Live Action Uncle Ruckus has let his Simple Simon-a** interpretation of Coogler’s work get him in such a tizzy that he’s actually rebuking “Hollywood” because he believes it “never lets the narrative spin” towards innocent white good guys prevailing over evil, systemically racist Black villains. This man is begging to pro-Klan fan fic to make it to the big screen as if Black film hadn’t been largely confined to a stereotypical box for the overwhelming history of the American film industry, and as if there is any racial demographic that has been catered to by “Holywood” as much as white audiences.
But, again, none of this is surprising coming from Whitlock. In fact, his take on Sinners is reminiscent of his garbage take on Coogler’s Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, the MCU sequel he inexplicably claimed “hates Black men, America and the Patriarchy” just because it featured a cast of leading Black women doing warrior things. Whitlock also claimed, “Racial idolatry is its selling point,” despite the fact that, outside of a couple of anti-colonization references, there really wasn’t anything in the film that could even be misconstrued as “racial idolatry” — unless you were either a raging white supremacist or the pet House slave of a white supremacist (which brings us back to Whitlock.)
Anyway, if you haven’t seen Sinners yet, I’m not sure what you’ve been doing with your life, but go see it. If the massive fanfare that has already exploded behind the film isn’t enough to motivate you to buy a ticket, Whitlock’s illogical hatred for the movie should serve as the perfect advertisement.
The man simply hates all things Black — including himself, probably.
SEE ALSO:
‘Sinners’: Black Horror Scholars Discuss The Blockbuster Film
‘Sinners’ Shines History On Chinese Immigrants Living In Mississippi
Jason Whitlock Predictably Hated ‘Sinners,’ Saying It Promotes Message That ‘White People Are The Devil’
was originally published on
newsone.com
