The awards won by Sinners are cop-outs — or, at least, that is the sentiment among a number of Black audience members who saw Ryan Coogler’s vampire epic Sinners and deemed it the movie of the year. Even worse than considering these awards cop-outs, Black ire has turned towards Paul Thomas Anderson’s revolutionary dark comedy One Battle After Another, the film that’s been Sinners’ very close competitor.
The Basics
In mid-April, Sinners was released. It focused on a young sharecropper in Mississippi who is swept into performing at his enigmatic cousins’ jukejoint, a night that quickly turns south due to the appearance of an Irish vampire who seeks to take the boy’s musical ability for himself. One Battle After Another (OBAA) came out in late September, centering on a white revolutionary and his biracial daughter living in a growing fascist world similar to our own. They evade a white supremacist who has twisted history with the girl’s mother while trying to survive the immigration raids around them.
To compare them plainly, Sinners is a movie about the Black experience told using an otherworldly antagonist directed, written, and starred in by Black creatives. Whereas OBAA is a movie asking what do you do in a world against you, keep fighting or give up? And while this is an important question to ask in our current environment of fear and distrust brewing among the American people, are we positive this is a movie to be awarded over Sinners?
Going Deeper
Let me put it like this: OBAA comes from a white man and shows us a Black female revolutionary in the form of Perfidia Beverly Hills played by Teyana Taylor. She sexually humiliates a white supremacist while in a relationship with a different white man. This white supremacist begins an obsession with her that culminates in her being coerced into turning on her fellow revolutionaries to save her own skin after their operations are blown up. She doesn’t consider her young daughter or her partner, and she goes into hiding for the rest of the movie.
Perfidia doesn’t experience consequences for her actions outside of guilt. Perfidia doesn’t show up for her daughter after the white supremacist that she engaged with begins to ruin her family’s life. Perfidia doesn’t do anything to help anyone other than herself. But Teyana Taylor winning a Golden Globe for this role is a win for the Black community?
The same Black community that prides itself on just how much of a community it is?
Conversely, Sinners was the penultimate Black flick of the decade from one of the biggest Black directors of the decade. It was a familiar tale despite the fantastical nature of the vampires. A group of Black people came together to have fun for one night. It wasn’t a purposeful protest, but it was one — because the scariest thing to racists is people of color enjoying themselves. It showed Black people taking a stand against vulturistic, white villains and protecting their own, including their young. They did not have to be related to sacrifice themselves for someone else, and there was no double-crossing.
Sinners won two Golden Globes — Best Cinematic and Box Office Achievement and Best Original Score for Ludwig Göransson. The white composer won for the music and the outpour of audience love won their second award. There was no award for Best Screenplay or Best Director, both of those went to Paul Thomas Anderson for OBAA.
Media + Awards
The tone surrounding the two of these movies has been remarkably opposite when it comes to film publications. Variety seemed almost reluctant to praise Sinners in the same way as other movies, going so far as to intentionally focus on the box office numbers not being up to par with expectations despite Sinners having one of the largest openings for a horror movie ever. When Variety posted their article about OBAA, box office numbers weren’t even in the discussion despite it not being profitable and Paul Thomas Anderson’s movies often not breaking even. In the Rolling Stone Magazine release of the top twenty films of the year, Sinners didn’t even make the list. But films like Marty Supreme, that had just been released, made it at nine on the list. In fact, that list was overwhelmingly white with no Black representation in the main characters at all.
There has been a constant snubbery of Sinners and its success. At the Critics’ Choice Awards, host Chelsea Handler even highlighted this treatment with the joke, “White Hollywood was so shook after seeing the box office numbers, Variety ran the headline ‘Do box office numbers really matter?'” Sinners won for its casting, score — both done by white people — and screenplay. Paul Thomas Anderson won for both Best Director and Best Picture. In response to Variety’s odd focus on profitability, Ben Stiller and Patrick Schwarzenegger took to X, formerly Twitter, to critique it. Comparatively, OBAA has not had the same sort of scrutiny, again, despite being unprofitable.
With publications treating Sinners the way they are and the awards season resulting in how it is, the final showdown is on everyone’s minds — the Oscars. Sinners has swept the nominations with a record-breaking sixteen nominations, but it may not be enough. Historically, the Oscars have not been good to Black people. Black winners for categories have been few and far between and there have been scores of critique on the snubs. Most recent and notably, the Best Supporting Actress award going to Jamie Lee Curtis and not Stephanie Hsu following Everything Everywhere All At Once. Or the infamous Moonlight vs. La La Land mix-up.
Why can’t anything just go to Black people or other people of color? Why is it always a controversy or robbery?
As much as it’s tempting to assert that the awards don’t matter, they do. In an increasingly racist political and social climate, awarding Black creatives is important to show that this art is valued. It’s important to show that it’s worth the investment. Time will only tell if the Academy voters think the same.