Sex in Sinners: A Vampiric Hawk Tuah
Spit on that fang!
Dear Fan,
Thank you for being here.
As a longtime vampire fan, it’s important to me to check out any new media that portrays my favourite monsters. It was with this attitude of a member of the gothic fangirl community just trying to keep up with the culture that I went to see Sinners. I figured it looked interesting and would probably be a pretty good bloodbath funtime, but, like everyone else I’ve talked to, I was blown away by how wonderful it was. This isn’t just another formulaic vampire story, this is a stunning new take steeped in traditional gothic tropes and a tapestry of myth from the American South. And it’s sexy as hell.
Normal people who don’t spend their time doing scholarly research on vampire lore may think that the sexy vampire trope is a relatively new one, begun by the likes of Stephanie Meyer or at least Anne Rice, but the fact is that vampires have been sexy for much longer than that. The concept of the vampire romance can be traced back to a story called “The Vampyre,” written by John William Polidori in 1819. Polidori was poet Lord Byron’s personal physician, friend, and, according to some rumours, lover. Polidori based his vampire character on Byron, who was and is widely considered to be the biggest fuckboy of the Romantic poetry scene, so, naturally, a character based on him would be sexy. Polidori’s vampire goes around seducing women before killing them, while in older mythology the vampires just went straight for the kill and skipped the seduction part. This is the first time that vampires and sex went hand in hand, at least in popular culture.
After that, in 1872, Sheridan Le Fanu’s novella “Carmilla” continued the tradition with a narrative all about a lady vampire who preys on a lonely teenage girl by forming a suspiciously close friendship with her, then climbing into her bed at night and feeding on her. “Carmilla” is a fascinating story that is clearly concerned with female sexual desire and lesbian sex, which it condemns outwardly but also depicts as pretty darn fun. Next, we of course have Dracula, written by Bram Stoker and published in 1897. Dracula is chock-full of taboo sexual imagery, from Lucy Westenra fantasizing about a world where a woman could marry three men if she wanted, to not-so-subtle images of Dracula’s fangs penetrating supple women’s bodies, to extremely homoerotic descriptions of basically every man in the book, to a scene where three vampiresses, who are described as “voluptuous” about a million times, have their way with Jonathan Harker.
All three of these foundational vampire stories heavily feature transgressive sex and desire, a theme that has become inextricably linked with the figure of the vampire. Fast forward to today, and we now have a longstanding tradition of the sexy vampire story, as seen in things like Interview with the Vampire, Twilight, and True Blood (which is based on a series of erotica novels). Many contemporary vampire movies contain a lot of sex without actually being remotely sexy (I’m looking at you, Nosferatu), but Sinners manages to beautifully capture the sexiness of a traditional vampire story and present it in a way that feels relevant to modern audiences.
***spoilers ahead***
First of all, before we even get to the sex, Sinners is a movie about the power of the sensual. I could (and might) write several posts specifically about the blues in Sinners, but for the purposes of this piece, I’ll just point out that blues music is portrayed as a multi-sensory experience that is so transcendent it can conjure spirits from the past and future for one big dance party that makes the devil himself jealous. The blues is clearly something the characters hear, but it’s also something they feel in their body as they dance rhythmically, and viewers can almost taste and smell the juke joint, with its heady clouds of cigar smoke billowing and rivers of illegal booze flowing.
The character of Annie (Wunmi Mosaku) is very connected to the sensual and the spiritual, and the first sex scene of the movie is with her and Smoke (Michael B. Jordan), her estranged husband. We get invested in their relationship first, learning their significant and tragic history, seeing them argue and reconnect. This all takes place in Annie’s home, where she practices hoodoo. Because of this, there are a lot of items around that evoke the senses: the hot flames of prayer candles, the potent scent of dried herbs and tinctures used for rituals. When they start to get romantic, Annie says “your body remembers me,” pointing to the impact her touch has on Smoke. While this may not be the sex scene in the movie that’s getting the most attention (don’t worry, I’m getting to that one), it may be the most appealing simply because of the self-assured, lived-in nature of the dynamic between the two characters and the sensory experience of their connection.
Where older vampire stories often include sexual transgression in the form of queerness or premarital sex, Sinners presents a different taboo: kinky sex. Even though the sex scene between Stack (Michael B. Jordan) and vampire Mary (Hailee Steinfeld) is brief, it is one of the best portrayals of kink I’ve seen on the big screen. As the two start getting hot and heavy in the back room of the juke joint, Mary starts drooling. Like, a lot. Stack looks a little concerned and points it out to Mary, who seems embarrassed for a moment, then smiles coquettishly and says “you want some?” Stack looks at her, licks his lips, and nods enthusiastically as she gently pins him and proceeds to spit directly in his mouth.
If you forget about the imminent blood sucking for a moment, this scene plays out as two mature adults who are extremely attracted to each other sharing a pleasurable, intimate moment that just happens to include an amount of saliva that would make the hawk tuah girl blush. Steinfeld and Jordan both deliver incredible performances here – in just a few gestures and expressions you can see the couple’s shared history, affection, and playful dynamic. It’s sweet, it’s hot, and it’s transgressive in a way that fits perfectly with the tradition of the vampire myth. This scene is a bit funny, a bit gross, a bit frustrating because we know she’s a vampire about to kill his ass, but ultimately it’s really sexy, whether you’re into the spit thing or not (but based on what I’ve seen around the internet this week, most of you freaks are definitely into it).
Sinners also plays with transgression in a really interesting way throughout the film’s treatment of cunnilingus, in that it normalizes the act completely. Now, I’m not saying going down on a woman is transgressive, it absolutely is not. But talking about it this much is transgressive. Portraying it as equally pleasurable to the giver as the receiver is transgressive. Showing it in a movie as anything more than a 15-second foreplay act that any woman should thank her lucky stars for (I’m looking at you, 50 Shades of Gray) is transgressive. This movie brushes that all aside, with characters mentioning the practice as casually and frequently as most people talk about the weather or penis-centred sex. It’s not just one or two characters either, everyone in Sinners is down with going down.
We get one sex scene that portrays cunnilingus, between young blues guitarist Sammie (Miles Caton) and married singer Pearline (Jayme Lawson). The mere fact that it’s Sammie who gets the oral scene is significant because this is his coming-of-age story, and typically the sex scenes in such stories are primarily focused on the male protagonist getting his dick wet, but here Sammie is really only interested in getting his lips wet. When he makes his intentions clear, Pearline’s knee-jerk response is to tell him to stop because she hasn’t washed up, a very quick and effective line that shows the way women of the time (and still, to an extent) were indoctrinated to believe that their bodies were intrinsically dirty and shameful. Sammie reassures her, saying “I just want to taste you,” and then he does. Presumably for a pretty long time, too, because multiple people have time to come to the door and listen to what’s going on in that room. For Sammie and Pearline, this isn’t foreplay, it’s the main event.
This film continually combines aspects of sex that could easily be portrayed as shameful or weird (kink, the decentering of penetrative sex) with genuinely romantic scenes shared by mature, complex characters who we’re rooting for. What Sinners does so beautifully is it flips the genre’s typical portrayal of sexual transgression by normalizing it, making this a vampire story that truly celebrates sex instead of stigmatizing it.
Plus, you know, there’s two Michael B. Jordans, and what could be sexier than that?
Voluptuously,
Rose
I never even noticed the type of sexual desire portrayed in this film, and how it’s different from any other film. Amazing piece!