‘Sinners’ will make you see vampires, Hailee Steinfeld, Trump in a new way

This image released by Warner Bros Pictures shows Hailee Steinfeld in a scene from “Sinners.” (Warner Bros. Pictures via AP)

Let’s take a break from politics to consider how despite Trump’s rage against DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) efforts, the idea is not dead.

Not when you see it expressed in the work of an authentic American artist like film director Ryan Coogler.

In his film “Sinners,” Coogler has provided us with a metaphor that doesn’t suck.

It’s a DEI vampire film.

I remember scenes from Coogler’s “Fruitvale Station,” even more so than from his more commercial work like “Black Panther.” But I never saw this coming.

If you haven’t yet seen “Sinners,” then head to the movie house, or an I-MAX preferably. “Sinners” is a winner. One of the best films I’ve seen in a long, long time. The title may be a turn off to the good in all of us, though it does entice curiosity. Sinners? How bad? Just a peek?  But then you realize the movie is just a historic film about Mississippi life in the 1930s.

It’s a time when two twin brothers (played by Michael B. Jordan) can come back home from Chicago and start their own community juke joint. But then trouble arrives when the vampires show up.

I must admit the word vampires for me was at first kind of a turnoff. Vampires like “Twilight”?

No, those are white millennial vampires. These are DEI vampires. With Coogler’s touch you do not get some garden variety vampire movie.

You get a glimpse of life in Mississippi, post-Klan, trying to make amends with the rest of America.

You get Hailee Steinfeld, the part-Filipina actress, born Hailee Puring Steinfeld, whose maternal grandfather was Ricardo Domasin, half-Filipino from Bohol, and half African American.

She’s perfect as  the multi-racial love interest.

You get Mississippi Native Americans trying to make things right with a strange man from Ireland with a blood fetish.

You get the history of Chinese Asian Americans who fled California and headed to the Mississippi Delta region to start grocery stores and shops. My good friend, the late Sam Chu-Lin, a former fellow San Francisco television news reporter, grew up in Mississippi and used to tell me about being “Sammy Lin” on the radio there.

Ironically, Sammy is also the name of the sharecropper guitar savant who sings the blues and is a main character who connects with the two entrepreneurial juke joint twins (played by Michael B. Jordan).

Turns out vampires are the perfect metaphor for the Klan, who suck the life out of sharecroppers forced to live under repressed conditions as if possessed. Or spiritually enslaved? They turn you into them, turn you against others. I just never thought about vampires in that way before. But it makes perfect sense. It’s hard to fight back. You have to eat your garlic and get ready to drive a stake into the heart of a bloodsucking racist.

“Sinners” will make you think about the Deep South and the African American experience in a new way.

It may even help you think about the second Trump term in a new way.

I went to the movies but did not escape tariff talk

The day I saw “Sinners” was the day President Donald Trump announced his idea to put 100 percent tariff on films not made in the USA.

Did he mean the foreign films I spent my college years in art houses watching?  We hardly have many of them coming to the US anymore. Or did Trump mean Asian films, like the Oscar winner “Parasite”?

Or by “foreign,” did he also mean American films with post-production in Asia like many films, especially for animation?

As per usual, the details were lacking. And then as the credits rolled in “Sinners,” there were also mentions of Canada and Australia.

Does that mean a Warner Brothers film like “Sinners” would be subject to 100 percent tariffs?

This is the kind of blurt out by Donald Trump that sends industries into shock these days.

Trump’s already put the country on edge with his overall approach on tariffs, which is based on nothing real except his own perception that the US is being “ripped off” by cheap imports.

Trade imbalances are more complicated than simply taking exports and subtracting the imports. But that’s the overriding  belief developed by the real estate con man, who routinely ripped off his vendors, making them sue him to get paid. That’s Trump’s business style. And it rules his belief on trade and spending. And his rhetoric. First a blurt out as trial balloon. Then an executive order, bypassing Congress and real scrutiny, until everyone sues demanding to see the real details.

Chaos results until order can be restored. If it really ever can be.

And what about all those deals he said he’d get done. 90 deals in 90 days? To date there’s none.

On Tuesday, he had Mark Carney, the PM of Canada visit in the Oval Office, and Trump was unusually flattering as if Carney were Putin. He didn’t call Carney governor, or mention Canada as the 51st state as hard as he did with Justin Trudeau.

But Carney was strong, stern and polite in stating Canada was not for sale. In the day’s key meeting, Carney made Trump look weak.

Alcatraz, the Constitution and more

This past week alone, Trump has also floated the idea of Alcatraz being reopened as a prison.

Maybe Trump wants to gentrify Alcatraz, like he wants to do Gaza, and put up a mini-Trump tower suitable to incarcerate a convicted felon president like himself.

We were already rocked last weekend when Trump, the man who has taken the oath of office twice, had a telling answer to an innocent question.

Would he defend the Constitution?

It was in reference to whether he’d listen to the Supreme Court, which upheld the limits of executive power in the Constitution. SCOTUS told the administration to facilitate the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the man Trump deported to an El Salvador prison by mistake.

Would Trump obey the SCOTUS ruling and uphold the Constitution?

Trump’s answer? “I don’t know.”

Not to be biblical but he said that phrase at least three times in his interview with NBC’s Kristen Welker.

That’s enough to let you know he’s not fit to be president.

But he’s the guy we’re stuck with beyond the first 100 days.

Trump is the leader sucking the life out of our country, the economy, and his own GOP.

It makes me think of “Sinners.”

Emil Guillermo is an award-winning journalist, news analyst and stage monologuist. He writes for the Inquirer.net’s US Channel. He has written a weekly “Amok” column on Asian American issues since 1995. Find him on YouTube, patreon and substack.