I’m reading a book about the ontology of African-American slavery by Saidiya V Hartman and am reminded of the movie “Sinners” (and the review by my good friend of said movie).

Saidiya’s thesis makes me think that she should have gotten some kind of writing credit on the movie!

She suggests that “not only were the rights and privileges of whites undergirded by the subjection of blacks but, moreover, enjoyment in turn defined the meaning of subjugation.”

That “enjoyment” was the slaveowning class’s fascination with seeing blacks publicly exhibited (e.g. in auctions) and publicly performing (e.g. in song while working).

This all fits in remarkably with the movie’s central conceit: of vamipirism and entertainment; of subjection by a group of white Americans fascinated with a culture which did not belong to them.

Someday we might find out if this is a coincidence, or if one of the writers had deliberately drawn deeply on Hartman’s work (Scenes of Subjection, 1997).