Abolitionist Sanctuary
Join Founder and Executive Director of Abolitionist Sanctuary, Rev. Nikia S. Robert, Ph.D., in a podcast about Black women/mothers, religion, and mass punishment. Connect with us to be apart of a faith-based abolitionist movement!
Abolitionist Sanctuary
S3: E1 Sinners
What does one night of freedom look like when you're trapped in systems designed to extract your labor, silence your voice, and deny your humanity? In Ryan Coogler's masterful film "Sinners," this question unfolds through the story of Sammy, a young guitarist who seeks artistic expression outside the church walls in 1930s Mississippi. But freedom comes with costs, raising profound theological questions that still resonate today.
This riveting episode of Abolitionist Sanctuary features three brilliant scholars examining how "Sinners" disrupts traditional narratives about sin, salvation, and spirituality. Dr. Funayo E. Wood (Harvard PhD and Ifa Orisha priestess), Dr. Deanna Reed-Hamelin (religious studies scholar specializing in horror), and Dr. Candice Laughinghouse (theologian and musician) bring their unique perspectives to this Juneteenth special that celebrates Abolitionist Sanctuary's fourth anniversary.
Show Highlights:
• Horror as a genre serves as the perfect medium for expressing Black religious experience and the quest for meaning
• The vampire trope symbolizes how oppressive systems extract life and culture from vulnerable communities
• African spiritual traditions like Hoodoo are portrayed as sources of protection and wisdom rather than being demonized
• Black women function as spiritual anchors, with their conjuring practices offering community protection
• Racial capitalism manifests through symbolic elements like wooden nickels that expose the fraudulent currencies of economic exploitation
• The dichotomy between sacred church music and profane juke joint music represents artificial boundaries that restrict freedom
• Questions of theodicy arise when prayers and protective practices work for some but fail to save innocent lives
• Freedom may be fleeting or limited, but artistic expression and spiritual practice offer glimpses of liberation
Keep your eyes on Abolitionist Sanctuary for more critical conversations at the intersections of religion, abolition, and Black motherhood. Visit abolitionistsanctuary.org to become a member and join our mailing list.
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Welcome to the Abolitionist Sanctuary podcast. I am your host, reverend Dr Nakia Smith-Robert. This is the podcast where we consider critical conversations and call to actions at the intersections of religion, abolition and Black motherhood. As the founder of Abolitionist Sanctuary, our mission is to train Black-serving churches, educational institutions and civic organizations to unite against the moral crisis of mass incarceration and the criminalization of impoverished Black motherhood. Thank you to our audio and visual audience for joining us on YouTube, facebook and Instagram and all other streaming platforms. Please share this podcast and invite others to listen and watch with you.
Speaker 1:I'm so excited for our episode. This is the premiere of season three. We are back with a bang with exciting guests, and I am elated to welcome our three guests. So allow me time for introductions, but we have Ia Dr Funayo E Wood, who is a scholar practitioner of Africana religions, specializing in the Ifa Orisha tradition. She is the founding director of the African and Diasporic Religious Studies Association, chief priestess and also chief priestess and so. Dr Woods holds a PhD in African and African-American studies and the study of religion from Harvard University, and her work has been published in academic and popular venues, including the Journal of Africana Studies and the Review of Religious Research, affectionately known as your favorite scholar priestess.
Speaker 1:Dr Wood is a dedicated public scholar who lectures frequently religious studies. With a PhD in religion in the African-American religion concentration from Rice University. She embarked on her academic pursuits by obtaining a BA in religious studies from Alma College in Alma, michigan. Furthering her education, dr Deanna earned a Master of Divinity and a Master of Theology from Union Presbyterian Seminary in Richmond, virginia. She also expanded her expertise by earning a Master of Arts in American Studies, accompanied by a graduate certificate in Women, gender and Sexuality Studies from Lehigh University in Bethlehem, pennsylvania. Studies from Lehigh University in Bethlehem, pennsylvania. She earned a Master of Arts in Religion from Rice University. Dr Deanna's dedication and scholarly achievements have been recognized through her appointment as the 2022-23 Forum for Theological Education Doctoral Fellow. Additionally, dr Deanna was honored with a 2022 Honorary Dissertation Fellowship from the Louisville Institute.
Speaker 1:We also have Dr Candice Laughinghouse. Dr Candice Laughinghouse is an Assistant Professor of Theology at Gammon Theological Seminary and the director of music, uniquely blending her dual passions for theology and music. Her scholarship spans theological ethics, interfaith traditions, indigenous cosmology, eco-womanism and animal rights. For over a decade, she has integrated her expertise in both fields, embodying a rare combination of trained theologian and accomplished musician. What sets Dr Laughinghouse apart, especially relevant to this panel's discussion of the film Sinners, is her lived experiences as both a theologian and a musician with the Pentecostal Church Kojic. Her family's rich musical heritage includes collaborations with iconic artists such as the Hawkins family, pastor Andre Crouch, the Clark sisters, bishop Rance, allen, al Green, tony Tony Tone, frankly, beverly and Mayaze Eric Benet, and many others. Through her research and practice, dr Laughinghouse supports congregations and offers spiritual formation to musicians across diverse genres, fostering healing, resilience and connection through the sacred power of music. Welcome to our guests.
Speaker 1:I am excited to have you guys on our fourth anniversary of Abolitionist Sanctuary In 2021, juneteenth. We founded Abolitionist Sanctuary. Our logo is a Black presenting woman with an, our anniversary and also the relaunch of season three of our podcast. So I've already spoken enough. I would love to hear from you guys. Please tell us your pronouns, how you are presenting visually in this space, what are you wearing, what makes up your physical space, etc. And who are your people? Okay, and then finally, how are you celebrating Juneteenth? So we'll start with Iyafunayo and then Dr Diana and Dr Candice.
Speaker 2:Deanna and Dr Candice. Oh, blessed greetings. I am certainly honored to be here. Greetings to my fellow panelists and Dr Nakia. It's an honor. I will share the fun fact that Dr Nakia and I have known each other since we were children, and so it is always really beautiful to be able to do our adult work in the world together, particularly to be here together on Juneteenth.
Speaker 2:I am decked out in white as usual. White cloth holds sacredness within the Orisha tradition, and particularly the Divinity Obatala, to whom I'm dedicated, and it represents unblemished character, clarity and calmness and peace, and so I always aim to bring those characteristics into any space that I inhabit. Also got my juju rocking my elephant, my high John the Conqueror, and I'm here in my home office and shrine room. So I pray that all of the beautiful energy of the ancestors and the divinity shines through to everyone who is listening. As far as my people them, I am descended from Virginia and South Carolina, richmond, gullah Geechee, you know I'm African-American through and through, a Hoodoo practitioner, in addition to being an Orisha priestess, also descended from the Catawba people of South Carolina, and so I'm just grateful for all of those beautiful lineages and looking forward to a wonderful conversation tonight.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much, sis Harlem represent.
Speaker 2:Yes, so in the building. Oh, and I'll say too that I've been celebrating Juneteenth really by. I just cleaned the shrine room top to bottom, mopped and swept and, you know, lit candles and did all the beautiful things to honor the ancestors. So grateful.
Speaker 1:Ashe Dr Deanna.
Speaker 3:Hi, so I echo those sentiments. Thank you so much for having me. This is a wonderful opportunity. I'm super excited for the conversation. My pronouns are she, her, hers, and currently I am wearing black. I'm usually in some form of black. I think that is the monster in me that loves to wear black, and not like an emo, negative sense of it, but I think of it as celebratory because I am pro-black, everything, even down to my clothes.
Speaker 3:I'm also wearing my rose quartz ankh just to ground me and keep me present, as always, and right now I'm in a transitionary space. I am in Newark, even though I am currently located in Tucson. I'm staying with family, so I'm in my father's office space and so it is blurred because there's a lot of things going on. But we show up wherever we can and when we can, and this Juneteenth was a bit slow for me. I just kind of sat with the spirits and I watched horror films and I watched Sinners one more time, just for memory's sake and to honor that space.
Speaker 1:Thank you, dr. Candice.
Speaker 4:Hello everyone. My pronouns are she, her, hers, and you said who are our people, even though my people, as far as like where I was born and raised, is in Oakland, california. Even my grandmother was born in Oakland. There's not many you know being born there, although my family beyond that did transition there from Mississippi, oklahoma and as far back we had a relative to the family genealogy on my mother's father's side from Albemarle, south Carolina. In fact, they ended up naming my oldest daughter after the furthest living relative that we could find her. Both her parents were from the motherland, but she was renamed Ariana and that's how I chose that name.
Speaker 4:And then on my dad's side, I actually found out for all you Northeasters, my grandfather was born in Manhattan, so there's a lot of the webs up there from New York, um, where I've been visiting the past uh, couple of months, uh, in New York, new Jersey, uh, and as far as what I'm wearing, um, I've been traveling a lot since beginning of June, so this is about as decent I could do. I mean I, okay, the purple got a little. Woman is purple, uh, a little. This is no thought in putting this, because I just have a lot going on the space I'm in it looks like Vacation Bible School or something around here, because I'm at a church. We have a rehearsal, but I told them. I said you all have to do something a little bit before. So that's where I'm at and I'm really excited to be a part of this.
Speaker 1:Amazing, amazing. My pronouns also are she, hers, and I am wearing red African earrings that has the continent there inscribed, and I also have a red lipstick. I have this big hair. I'm channeling my Beyonce, I believe, and I'm wearing a black Abolitionist Sanctuary t-shirt. You can go to our swag store at abolitionistsanctuaryorg and order yours, and in my backdrop I have my beloved city. It is by significance that we are taping live from Harlem, new York. Harlem is where my people are from, particularly a poor, single Black mother who sometimes bent rules and broke laws to provide for herself and her family against unjust systems.
Speaker 1:Abolitionist sanctuary, and why we are doing the work that we do to shift the narrative, to advocate for poor Black mothers and move away from individual blame to instead interrogate and dismantle the oppressive systems and structures that make survival nearly impossible, because no one should be punished for merely trying to survive. So, thank you so much, and I'm celebrating Juneteenth by having the honor of having the three of you as my guests, so let's hop right in. Ok, shall we? So, in the spirit of Juneteenth, a prominent theme of the film Sinners is freedom, even if only for one night, only for one night. What would one day of freedom look like for you? What does that one day of freedom look like for us? What kind of freedom do we need, dr Foligno, and then Dr Deanna and Dr Candice?
Speaker 2:That's such an important question because we know that, particularly on this day, because we know that, particularly on this day, thinking about freedom and the ways that we continue to get free.
Speaker 2:You know, for me, I am blessed that I have cultivated my life in such a way that I feel free. I feel free when I'm connecting with my people, leading the organizations that I lead and teaching those who I teach, and so there's a big level of freedom in that for me, in connecting with myself as an African descendant, as a child of this land, and I think that for all of us, you know, freedom looks like coming to know ourselves and appreciate ourselves and value ourselves, because I recently said on another broadcast that I was on, that it's really important, as we talk about freedom and liberation, to recognize that a big part of getting there is feeling ourselves worthy of it, understanding why we should not be bound in some of the ways that we've been bound, and so it's really important for me in my work towards freedom, to remind us of our intrinsic and inherent value, and that makes me feel free every day.
Speaker 1:Yes, yes, yes. I love that, dr Deanna.
Speaker 3:So for me, freedom is unpredictability. So a day of freedom would be just being able to lean into the vastness of choice and not be limited or placed in boundaries, right Consenting always, but always mutating and shifting. And so for me, a day of freedom would look like my ADHD brain, where in which everything I want to dabble in I can, without limitation, without fear, without anxiety, but also with self-awareness and in community. I don't want to be alone when I do this. So a day of freedom for me would be choice with the people, with the folk, and so that's how I would lean into that, because that's not given to us very often.
Speaker 1:Thank you. I appreciate that To me, you're bringing in our ancestor, Katie Geneva Cannon, the ways in which Black women are given limited options, right and freedom being the antithesis of that being an abundance of options. Thank you so much, Dr Candice has to begin with my mind.
Speaker 4:Um, because I, I remember I finally saw this. There was a clip circling around um of um y'all been traveling, my brain just left me, oh goodness. Okay, rapper of the revolution cannot be televised. Come on my brain the last poets yeah, so um no, but who's specific?
Speaker 4:anyway, he was. It was an interview and he said willie, meant by the revolution, cannot be televised. The last poets, as we all know, as Black women that I will definitely advocate that these surrounding spaces are toxic, are not free. But my freedom has to start in my mind, and so for me it is coming from a place of moving beyond beliefs. I heard somebody say within the word, belief is the word lie. There's so many different beliefs, but we have to get to be living, and so when I am living and I, that means that involves me manifesting abundance within my mind, knowing that God, the divine source, is not only going to give me opportunities but I have to rest in that, the provisions being provided. That's freedom for me, because I'm free from all of these other ways of thinking that will have me not understanding who I am in God's image. So that's freedom has to start in my mind first.
Speaker 1:That's powerful.
Speaker 4:I think that's what happened with our ancestors, that freedom had to start in their mind. With all that was going on, even while they were being, you know, being tortured and all of those things, the freedom started in their mind. That's what freedom looks like for me.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much. That is powerful that the word believe also has the word lie Right, and that's really, really powerful. So I want our listeners, if you are streaming in on Facebook or Instagram or YouTube, to take this moment, write in the chat what would a one day of freedom look like for you? And I also want you to take a moment to invite your friends and to share this live with your network so that we can have more people listening in and sharing with us. And just a disclaimer as we move forward, we are here to talk about the movie Sinners, which I view, as a religious scholar, as a deeply theological project.
Speaker 1:And we have joined with us leading thinkers within religious studies, and so, before we move any forward, this is your out. There will be spoilers. Okay, we will be talking about the nitty gritty of the movie Sinners by Ryan Coogler. So if you have not seen Sinners, I invite you to catch this when you do on recording. But if you have stay with us for a while and join in on the conversation.
Speaker 1:So in the movie Sinners, sammy's one day of freedom was to spend a day outside of the church, and I think this is remarkable because the Black church is born out of this struggle for freedom. Right that in many ways, when you look at the history of the Black church, it is synonymous with the word freedom, right? What does it mean for Sammy to seek his day of freedom outside of the church? And how has the church contributed, not to our freedom but to our bondage? And what in churches do we need to be freed from? What was the one night of freedom and the why was the one night of freedom in the church? I mean, why was the one night of freedom in the juke joint and not the church?
Speaker 1:So multiple layers there but, essentially, the church here seems to signify the antithesis of freedom for Sammy that instead was suspended at the juke joint. Why is that? What is it about? The church is a source of bondage.
Speaker 4:I'll start with the fact that I saw, because, like you said, the church is a place of freedom During that era. It is a place of freedom as far as expression.
Speaker 4:They had spaces where they could, you know, operate within their musical gifts singing, clapping let's talk about the freedom of clapping outside of the mainline denominations of beats and syncopations and not having to be stuck with the hymns. So that was a place to feel. But for for sammy, the freedom um was also an opportunity for him to extend freedom as far as his artistic craft um, and so what does that mean? That meant for him? Like, like that particular scene where you saw all the different genres of music, even though all those different genres of music, we know, are, you know, rooted within Africanism.
Speaker 4:I know from growing up in a Black Pentecostal setting how, you know, I was told you don't play that other music, although my particular church was also kind of tried it for bringing in the joint instruments like the electric guitar.
Speaker 4:My grandfather played electric guitar and and the Hawaiian guitar, the steel guitar, you know, in many places that was like, not sanctified, should I say. So I understood Sammy's quest and interest to get outside and I think that was more of an artistic expression outside. And I think that was more of an artistic expression and I think once we do that as artists not just musicians but artists period, there are going to be some cuts and bruises when we get out there, but there's a full totality of our gifts that we can then explore. So that freedom for him that I saw was artistic, because we also saw there's some things he didn't let go of from the church, that he knew about, that prayer, that understanding of things. So I think it is important that we just like I mean I understand we're finite creatures, we like to say this or that, but I think that, to your question, the freedom for Sammy was artistic and getting out there and he didn't have to let go of his identity when he was out there, and that's something that I think is important.
Speaker 1:Thank you for that.
Speaker 2:I'd like to jump in and address the question and thank you for that, dr Candace about you know why the church may be seen as a place of bondage right as opposed to a place of freedom, and I think that it's a double-edged sword. I think that, in the same ways that it has represented freedom for us, it has also represented bondage in the sense of being disconnected from our ancestral traditions or at least nominally disconnected, because I always say the Black in the Black church is African right, the call, and Black in the Black church is.
Speaker 2:African right, the call and response, the exuberance of the way we pray, our spirit possession with the.
Speaker 2:Holy Spirit, anointing oils and the hats and all of these things praise, dancing harken back to our African cultures, but we were largely programmed in many ways against them and to believe that anything that was not within those walls of the church was not sanctified, was not holy, was even devilish if we wanted to go to the most extreme.
Speaker 2:And so there is a way that people, including myself right, have felt constrained and judged and like they could only exist within a particular set of parameters being within the walls of the church, whereas in the juke you come as you are, even though the church also says come as you are. But, as we know, often the way you are is not accepted depending on where, which church, you're walking into. The juke is a place where everyone is welcomed, is able to be free, dance, sing in all of the ways, including some of the sanctified ways, right, bringing some of those gospel rhythms into the juke, whereas that wouldn't necessarily be accepted the other way around. And so I think that that's one big reason why, for Sammy, the juke was that place of freedom, the place to play the music he wanted to play without judgment, to call in the ancestors that he wanted to call in without judgment, and to really feel that sense of freedom.
Speaker 1:Yes, I want to stay with that and I'll lead with you on this next question, dr Diana. That, and I'll lead with you on this next question. Dr Diana Iafulayo, you mentioned the church being a site of judgment. Right, and I'm wondering how theological doctrines and teaching perpetuate that sense of judgment and condemnation of people who transgress acceptable boundaries, particularly the doctrine of sin. So, dr Diana, can you lead us in a discussion of how do you define sin and why do you think Ryan Coogler decided to title this film Sinners?
Speaker 3:So defining sin is very difficult, right? And so people can bring up all kinds of theorists and theologians, et cetera. Sin is tied to shame right For me, that's how I define it. Right that there is shame attached and where that shame comes from can lead us to evil and all kinds of other things. I think it's really interesting the way in which Ryan Coogler helps us to think through who is sinning, what sin is and where sin shows up.
Speaker 3:At what time and place does sin show up? Is it when Sammy decides that he's going to the juke joint? Is it when he's in the juke joint? Is it when he's having a moment with Perlene? When is Delta Slim sinning? Or are there conditions being placed upon us and as we navigate them, when people can't put us in boxes, there lies the definition of sin showing up, and so I think that that's what's really interesting about that. And just even going back to the question before, right, sammy says that he has the blues and he has holy water too, and so at what point do we say that these are canceling each other out at some point, right? So if there's sin in the juke joint, if you got holy water, you good, right, you're protected in a particular kind of way.
Speaker 3:There is a sin for wanting to be away from it all, even for a moment. We forget that in order for him to do the day away, he has to labor in the fields before the sun is up for an entire week, while his father is standing at the pulpit in fresh clothes, without tatters, right, without patterns, without patches. Right. There is a way in which there is a labor economy attached even to the church space, right? And when someone wants to buck against that and come out of that, that becomes sinful. When we talk about that, we can say the music is sinful. But but remember, father stole the guitar and had the guitar in the church because he wants him to do the same thing that remick wants him to do, right, which is to conjure the ancestors to cause a moment to bring down that spirit, right?
Speaker 3:So if that's the case, where is the sin? When does it show up? If it's not in the physical material of the guitar, if it's not in the person that's playing it, if it's in the music, then it's when you reject these systems of oppression that try to put you in a box, and so we need to push on that more so than saying, hey, let's look for these individual sins. I don't like when people say, oh well, this person represented wrath and this person represented lust, right, that's not enough. It's so arbitrary. It's just categories and we are made as a people to escape them always. So you know, I'm rambling, but I think that's where I'm kind of thinking through what centers is and where we want to actually place it. Is it people that are trying to survive these categories or those who get to create them?
Speaker 4:Can I add that I think I love what you just said, especially about this labor economy. As a musician in the church dealing with some things right now, where you are of value as long as you give what they want, but then when you somehow begin to advocate for yourself, you are left out, and so these are spaces where I have come to learn. After leaving a Pentecostal church and now even within mainline churches, I have learned like, look, guess what? It is reciprocal. I used to think it was more or less like you know, which is what a lot of people have taught, even from back. When we're watching the movie in the 30s Because I'm thinking to myself too about the 30s Like my grandmother was just born, Treasure God of Christ was, you know, 20-something years old, about 20 years old.
Speaker 4:So you had so many people, you know, with that mindset, because one of the scripture passages that's constantly used to create this labor economy and also to create this binary is, you know, be be in this world, but not of the world. I could just hear that that would be like if it was a sermon. That would be what someone would put under this, because it's constantly push. You are not of them and it's like you are better than god, instead of god is loving god of everyone, and instead of understanding people's stories where they are. You know, with the piano player. You know mean he was excited about that beer, but I mean the system that he was in. I mean that's why people make these decisions and there's something that we could learn a lot from that as Christians, I would say and understanding God's role, or our role in understanding God's placement for all of us.
Speaker 2:You know, one thing I really appreciated in terms of and thank you both for your comments, in terms of the marketing for the film, was the statement we are all sinners, right, and so when we think about, you know, from an African spiritual perspective, with Ifa, there's a saying that good people are as rare as a spare eye. Right, purely good people. And since none of us have a spare eye at home, that means that all of us have the capacity to fall short of what we know to be right right.
Speaker 2:And so I don't classify sin in terms of specific actions that may have been listed, in terms of transgression, but really in terms of going against what we know to be right, what we know to be correct, what we know to be just, and we all have moments of falling into that.
Speaker 2:And so I, you know, I think that looking at the actions that we're doing, you doing, we can all engage in sinful actions at times. That doesn't change our ontology to being sinners per se, right, even though that is something that has often been pushed on to certain of us. And so I think that there's a playfulness in recognizing that we all have places where we fall short. We all have places where we shine, even those who fall short 90% of the time. Like they say, a broken clock is right twice a day. So there's some redeeming quality, even in those who we might ontologize as sinners. And so I really appreciated the interplay and I think that, in terms of who the sinners were, it was everybody right, everybody had a part to play, and so I thought that was really thought-provoking the way that all of that was couched.
Speaker 1:Thank you, you guys are really bringing up some interesting and important theme. Throughout the film, as we talk about sin, we talk about the bondage of the church, that you also are touching upon the role of racial capitalism. Right and the Amber Lowe was an invited guest on the show but due to scheduling conflict, was unable to be here. But she wrote a review on the film Sinners and in this article that's published on reading religion she says just as color and sound operate symbolically, so too does language itself, particularly in the film's evocative use of names to signal its deeper critique of racial capitalism. The names of the twins, when read together as smoke stack, invoke the racialized machinery of modern industrialism. This onomastic gesture is not incidental. It encodes within the character's identities a critique of how Blackness and other racialized identities have historically been tethered to systems of extraction. Environmental degradation and social exclusion in the name of economic development. Mental degradation and social exclusion in the name of economic development. Through this symbolic naming, kugler reveals how industrial and economic infrastructures have always spoken the language of racial capitalism.
Speaker 1:The vampires and the Klansmen speak the same tongue money. When Smoke declares money is power, the film critiques that very premise. Sharecroppers are paid in plantation script and wooden nickels, false currencies and expose the spiritual and material bankruptcy of the economic order. Only when Smoke kills Hogwood does he begin to reject money's false promise. Right, and so this role of capitalism within the church is poignant, and I think it's important that you guys are touching on that as well. Are there any responses to that excerpt before I move forward?
Speaker 4:Yeah, I would say that because in a part of that the capitalism is what A part of this Western economic imperialism that is the huge umbrella right, and this with money, I would say is hard. I think that comes into play too when they have the money, what they believe they have access to. I was watching a documentary.
Speaker 4:you know the crazy man that built the titan ship, uh, the submersible the ocean gate yes, he very much said what I understand colonists have always done, and even in this and we saw it with the vampires he said this to his employees who quit or were fired because they challenged him.
Speaker 4:He said access means ownership, and so when you take upon, like you said, this capitalist understanding, you've now given them access and they will feel like they own and notice, with the vampires, they didn't come in unless you gave them access. And so it's these multiple layers that we have to have, these, and I appreciate you for doing this, having this, this, this discussion, because once they have access to us through the money, through the award shows, through the award shows, through the fame, through, you know, our black upward social mobility as much as folks couldn't stand Franklin Frazier's Black Rouge Roussi, he was on to something. And I think even for us all of us are privileged here, right, with these PhDs behind our name. I don't care how much student loans are behind us, there's still a privilege to that. And so I appreciate this conversation because it helps me to constantly reflect and say how am I giving into this, even though I'm critiquing it and I think that's important, right, and so we're complicit in these structures.
Speaker 3:Right, we live in a economy of capitalism, late stage capitalism that's killing us all. We don't own anything. All of this is well known, right, but the vampires, and therefore Annie and therefore sometimes Smoke, right, show us how to move within the system differently. Right, the vampires have money, they have gold, they have old money, but he's constantly saying, specifically Remick, that it means absolutely nothing. He's there for something other and I know we love to take consumption through the vampire, but he's not thinking through money.
Speaker 3:Right, smoke is thinking through money, but he's also negotiating. He's telling that little Black girl hey, that's not enough, you got to ask for more, you got to require more in this system, that's going to take everything from you. We get in and say I don't need no other money because I'm not leaving here, this is where I'm home and this is how I'm going to work this community. So I don't want your blood money because this money will get me free, even if it's not money empowered to you. So we keep seeing the way in which, even in that capitalistic structures, right, folks are still moving differently, and so I know we want to condemn that vampire, but vampires are also doing something much, much different as well, that we got to pay attention to as well as we're thinking through these economies.
Speaker 1:But the vampire is also offering his gold. He's trying to bait the people with the money, with the gold right. And so in that way, I think the vampire is participating in capitalism as we are familiar with it, right as an oppressed people. But this racial capitalism is really important because it's a system that connects oppressive structures, such as prisons, such as slavery, with the same technologies and logics of the church. So when we think about the church as a site of bondage, it's not just this theological doctrine, but it's co-opting of these social structures, particularly capitalism that is exploiting and extracting labor right and assigning these hierarchical roles to who is worthy and who is not. So I think that this racial capitalism is really important piece. Before I move forward, dr Fulayo, do you want to chime in?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'll just briefly say I mean, I agree with all that you've said, and I think it comes through even in the comment that Dr Candace made, starting off, and that you just made in terms of those intersections between extracted labor being labeled as devotion, right, being labeled as goodness, being labeled as blessedness, ultimately, in order still to be extractive has said we are all complicit in these systems. We have been born into them and we are making our way, the best way that we can. But we also know that you know, like Jay-Z said, no matter how much you got, you still right, no matter how many piles of gold you have. And so there's a place.
Speaker 2:I think that in the ultimate reckoning in the film, smoke comes to realize that like, oh, we had this money, we were able to purchase this place, we were able to do these things, as I'm sure our ancestors who were in Rosewood and other places that were destroyed came to recognize that, oh, no matter how much capital we have in a system of racialized, racial capitalism which is the important part, as you said, when there is a racial caste system, no amount of money will move you up through that caste. And so now we have to have these alternative spaces and these alternative ways of negotiating it, of which the church has been a part right, and of which our African spiritual systems have as well been a part. And so you know being able to, when we recognize that we are in a system that was never meant to work for us and never will, no matter how much of its rules we play by, we now take these alternative routes, which is what we see a lot of the characters in the film doing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and these systems will never keep us safe either. And I love how it is a Black woman in the film doing yeah, and these systems will never keep us safe either. And I love how it is a Black woman in the film who is demonstrating this alternative economy, this refusal to participate in the racial capitalist system. So, for those of you who are joining us, we are talking about the Ryan Coogler's Film Centers. We have three dynamic guests, and we are also celebrating our fourth anniversary of Abolitionist Sanctuary on Juneteenth, and so I just want to raise my glass for a toast to celebrate four years. Whatever beverage you have, this is what we're doing. So cheers to Abolitionist Sanctuary, cheers to you sis, Congratulations.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much. Thank you, thank you so much. My choice of beverage here is a bourbon, with Angel's Envy, and I'm having me a good time little honey jack over here.
Speaker 4:So you know, brown liquor sister, that would be, that would have been my preference. I'm uh, you know uh woodward's, or you know, honey jack for sure in a coke I know that's right and what we got in your cup, Dr Deanna.
Speaker 3:As the lightweight that I am, I have mango green sweet tea, so that is what we have together today.
Speaker 2:Yes, that sweet tea is ancestral, so we welcome it.
Speaker 1:That's right. So listen y'all. I want us to be comfortable, I want us to kick back like we are at the spades table, we're in the backyard at the cookout, we're girlfriends in the salon. You know doing what we do, talking our talk about this film. So have yourself a good time in these responses, as I ask questions to you individually. So I'm going to start with you, dr Deanna. Can you share with us what is hoodoo and can you give us a quick crash course on how Black people retained and transmitted their diasporic religious identity after being stolen from Africa, forced across the transatlantic in the most inhumane and death-dealing, undignified conditions and deposited into the new world? Why is this historical lens important for the film, which takes place in the past and not the present?
Speaker 3:absolutely, and so if you want to try to define hoodoo there is no simple answer to that. I love things that are not simple answers. It has been characterized as a practice, a healing tradition, a magical system, a religion, sometimes with a theology and a cosmology, sometimes not. It is something that one does, but it is also one way in which that we understand the cause and effects of life and try to create balance in that way. So the best way to define hoodoo is as broadly as possible, and I give credit to the Yvonne Dr, yvonne Shero, who was the hoodoo consultant on the Ryan Coogler film, who I just honor and love and send up all the blessings to her site. Academic hoodoo gives us this larger definition and understanding. Is it a religion? Is it not? It depends on the practitioners. It is a closed system so everybody can do it, no matter how much TikTok tells you you can. You need to find some lineage and some people to do it properly. There are supernatural elements, but there's also a lot of natural elements. But it is an African-American based tradition with roots grounded in and from Africa, from a variety of different systems, and I think that shows who we are as a people, that, even though we were stolen, even though we were seemingly stripped, we retained, we created new. It is syncretic, meaning that we have borrowed and used from a variety of sources and create something new. It is definitely the cipher of it all, where in which we sample, we remix and we come upon something greater. It is all of those things and I think the historical context of the 1932 Mississippi Delta, which is also a syncretic places where lots of cultures, lots of identities, ethnicities come to be and flourish, is indicative of showing where the horror shows up. And I love saying this and we'll get into this later.
Speaker 3:The film was horror before you ever see a vampire. Vampire doesn't even have to show up. And you see horror because of how Black folks have survived in Mississippi throughout the time of enslavement to sharecropping. And I think that is so important because just as Remick the vampire is searching for his people because there is a disconnect, so are Black folks in the South, right and beyond. African American folks are always searching for our people, our ancestors, and hoodoo allows that to happen in a particular kind of way. So that's just a short introduction. I always say read more. There's lots of books. I can mention them, but that's my short crash course and why this historical resonance is so so important for this film.
Speaker 1:My short crash course and why this historical resonance is so, so important for this film. Thank you, and you're touching on the next question, but why is horror as a genre important for this film?
Speaker 3:So my whole argument right now with my work is that horror is the impetus to Black religion. It is the thing that sparks our quest, our search for more life, meaning, for complexity, for nuance, and so, for me, them searching for freedom in a world that said that they were not human and could not ever have access to that is already a horror film. But then we get vampires, then we get some conversation about hates, we get some conversation about death, we get some thrills and those kinds of things. Right, we get the Klan to show up. All of this is what creates the system of horror here. So it is a genre.
Speaker 3:Some people will say it's a Southern Gothic. That is totally fine as well, but this is a horror film. Yes, because of the vampires, specifically because of the hate conversation, because of the supernatural elements, but also because of the experience of African-American people in the Mississippi Delta in the 1930s is also a horrifying experience, and so, therefore, that medium is appropriate. Whenever you see a Southern film or film that is grounded in a particular time period, there will be horror elements always there, whether people choose to acknowledge them or not, and so I am super excited that Ryan decided to Ryan Cooley decided to lean into the horror elements and then expound on them and make them super, super natural. Of course we can see all connections and just all kinds of things attached to it, but without the vampires the vampires never showed up it still would be a horror film it still would be a horror film.
Speaker 1:Well, dr Deanna, I'm glad you're excited that it was a horror film, because your girl, here we don't do horror, we don't do horror and I wasn't going to watch this film, but many people said that I needed to see it. So my fine husband texted me, slid into my text one day and was like you want to go see the film centers and you know, when your man asks you that it hits a little different, it hits a little different. So I was like, um no, not at night, you can do a day, babe.
Speaker 1:You can do a day, babe. So the next morning we watched a matinee and, I can't lie, my eyes were probably closed more often than not, and so I was able to catch the gist of it, but I realized I missed a lot. So for the sake of this discussion, I watched it one more time and I closed my eyes fewer times. So I'm not sure I still saw the whole film, but I took copious notes and I and I think I'm caught up. But and you know to your point about the horrific, you know, growing up in Harlem, new York, I saw a lot of horrific things right, and I lived through a horror that was blood wrenching and death dealing that I don't need to see for entertainment in a movie. So for me it's just like I don't. You know, maybe it's a connection to past trauma. I just I don't like horror. Maybe it was growing up in an evangelical home and you know you don't want to catch them spirits.
Speaker 3:That's where I get the horror from. So the evangelical Pentecostal tradition told me what horror was before I knew what horror was. So I'm totally with you on that one.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but I do appreciate the film and I appreciate your analysis of the importance of horror. Can you share with us how that is connected to your research and an emphasis on religion? What does religion and horror look like within this film, but also its implications for the contemporary political climate.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So my research delves into horror and religion and how they are symbiotically linked, that they are deeply intertwined, deeply intersecting, and that they build and bend on each other. They're always mutating and entangling. And I particularly love and am partial to monsters and monster theory. And I think that we need to have a Black monster theory where in which we do not borrow from white monsters and try to make them Black, but really ground ourselves in understanding of how Blackness changes the conception of these monsters that we hold near and dear to our heart. Just like Remick's Irishness changed how he did vampirism, so does Stack's Blackness change how we understand the vampire.
Speaker 3:And so, because of this, horror is deeply theological, it's deeply spiritual, it is one of the only moral genres because it's trying to think through these questions about human existence, about the afterlife, about hope, about freedom, in intentional ways. And, yes, it does elicit the emotion of fear and disgust, but so does these conversations. When you're trying to conceptualize what is the human, you're going to have some feelings of unsettling in nature, right. So it's just deeply entwined in that. So that's what I'm kind of thinking through and how our conversations show up, and of course we know that we live in a racist society that takes what is considered Black or African and demonizes it, especially our spiritual traditions, and they show up most often in the horror genre. So what's also really awesome about this horror film, over a lot of the more recent ones, is that it takes African traditions, black traditions, hoodoo ifa, right, and it makes it resonant. It's beautiful, it's sacred, as well as the Black church, right. It's also sacred in its nature, right. But we also have opportunity to question, which is what horror does? It kind of makes us have these blurred lines across those boundaries, and in a time period where, politically first, things are being wiped away and pretending as if they never existed, this says no, we're here and there is a history here.
Speaker 3:And that's what's so beautiful about the film is that there were so many layers that were done with deep research and concern and intentionality so that you can't easily wipe it away. And so when people didn't get it, it wasn't oh, you just didn't get it and that was it. People are doing work. They're trying to figure out what they didn't get. What layer did they miss? How can they figure this out? What's the connection here? I just saw a post that even down to the car that they that Stacks and Smoke were driving was historical in nature, was a Black car company right? So all of these layers, all these historical Easter eggs, show the importance of Black culture, black religion and religiosity and the way in which we conceive of ourselves. How do we create our own beingness, our own ontology? And so for me, that is part and parcel what horror is, and so that's usually what my research tries to engage in.
Speaker 1:Thank, you for that and that was a point that I noted as well that Ryan Coogler is doing something different about these kind of social constructions of who is acceptable, who is not, who is worthy, who is not, who is sinner, who is not, and that you know, when you look at, you know this kind of enlightenment discourse, the African body being bestial, right, being less than human. But in this film it is the oppressor who is the monster, right, who is the vampire. And so the way in which he's doing some type of this radical reordering of kind of this social imagination where the horrific and the bestial are not African bodies but is led by this white, dominant, oppressive group, particularly the Klan and its progeny right. So you know, just hearkening back to that conversation about sin, that you know you're right, dr Deanna that there are vast interpretations of sin Sin as debt, sin as deviation, sin as separation and alienation, sin as punishment. But there's also, you know, this distinction between individual sin, where we seek to blame and punish people who transgress dominant boundaries and norms, but thereification of social sin that we're seeing through racial capitalism and caste, and how he is reordering that, that he is disrupting those cosmologies and turning it upside down, which is kind of a gospel message, right, it's turning it upside down to say the beast is the oppressor, um, um, and so I really appreciate that.
Speaker 1:So thank you so much for your comments. Uh, dr Diana, I'm going to go to EF Lano. Um, dr Laughing house has had a conflict and and had to leave Um. But uh, ef Ulaño, can you share more? I know Dr Diana gave her definition of hoodoo, but can you contribute your understanding of hoodoo as a practitioner and how does this film resonate, if at all, with your religious experience in Christianity, also as a pastor's kid like Sammy, but also our favorite priestess in the Yoruba tradition?
Speaker 2:Absolutely Well, you know, definitely, in addition to everything that Dr Diana said. Typically, you know, when I'm asked about Hoodoo, it is our African-American amalgamation of our African traditions, right? So those of us who came here, who were from all over the continent we did not in the United States, for a number of different reasons, we didn't have traditions remain intact in the same way that, for instance, the Yoruba tradition remained intact in Cuba and Brazil and became Santeria and Candomblé more directly. So Kuru is an amalgamation of traditions that is influenced by various African cultural and spiritual understandings, in a similar way that Obia is in the Caribbean, right. And so, as far as how the film depicted it, you know, as Dr Diana mentioned, and one of the reasons why horror is a conflicted genre for me at times, is that typically, when we see any type of African spirituality being brought in, it is the antagonist, it is the evil, it is the conjuring of the devil, even though in most of our systems there is no devil concept per se. We see the evil that humans do as the devilishness, as the thing to be fought against. We see the sinfulness of our own soul in the sense of going against what we know to be fought against. We see the sinfulness of our own soul in the sense of going against what we know to be right, as the devils, or as we call them in Yoruba, ajawun, or those things that fight against life or fight against productivity, that take us away from being human, take us away from being people of humble and gentle character, which is our first tenet within the Ifa tradition, and so this film did a beautiful job of presenting Hoodoo and African spirituality more broadly as a beacon of light, right as a saving grace, as something that kept us connected to tradition and also to our own protection and our own survival, which is a lot of what we often used these systems for within our experience. Here we did, you know. So right now I'm wearing a Hi John the Conqueror root, and it was common to wear this root as a protective element to help to conquer the beasts in whose belly we found ourselves, as well as to overcome sickness and to overcome different situations that we might have found ourselves in. And I'll echo the shout out to Dr Chirot, who is one of my mentors and whose book Black Magic does a really wonderful job of outlining a lot of the intersections between conjure and hoodoo and the church which, as Dr Diana pointed out, you know, there is a syncretism to, where many who practice hoodoo use Christian elements right, use them in different ways, and so we may use psalms and things as incantations or inscriptions in a different way than they're used in the church.
Speaker 2:In terms of my own experience, I really again appreciated that light being shed shined on the tradition. It also there is still that element, though, of you know, I think, the Hoodoo practitioner being the one who understood this evil that was going on right, and although she is there as a redeemer, there's also this place of where people were looking at her. Well, how do you know all of this? And you know what, what? How do you know how to deal with? This? May be versed in all types of horrific things or magical things throughout the world, which is not necessarily untrue. Right, it's us understanding energy and understanding that these entities and energies exist, and knowing how to deal with them. We know, so we would consider the vampire to be a type of Adjogun or a type of bad spirit or a type of entity that is coming to take away life and to take away our productivity, and so, yes, we do know how to deal with that. You know, actually, but I think that you know there was, there's still for as much as as good as it did, there's still for as much as good as it did, there's still that layer of sort of intertwining African spirituality with a knowledge of evil things more broadly, and so that's an interesting, that was definitely an interesting kind of push and pull and something that always that kind of stirred me up a little bit.
Speaker 2:I'll say, like you, reverend Nakia, I'm not one who is typically into horror, although, interestingly, I have always loved vampires or loved the vampire genre, and I think it's because of the deep existential questions that vampirism brings. Right, if we were offered eternal life, would we take it? If that meant that then we had to take the lives of others, right? Is eternal life a gift or is it a curse, right? So we see that Annie is seeing it absolutely as a curse and says, oh no, like, make sure that you let me release me before I turn, if I get bitten, because being here, stuck in this realm forever, is not a gift at all, it's a curse and it's something that I don't want to engage with. And so you know, and also you know, the last thing I'll say for now is that the figure of the vampire also represents the ways in which the victim becomes a victimizer, so that, in the sense that, in order to become a vampire, one must have been bitten themselves. And so we don't know what Remick's story was, for example, prior to having been turned into a vampire, however long ago that he was.
Speaker 2:But it talks to us, you know. It shows us this place where, when we allow ourselves to be bitten right, if we go more broadly and using the vampirism as an allegory once we allow ourselves or become a part of this system, whether we like it or not, we have to go out and drink that blood. We have to try to turn other people, we have to do these things that, if we were in our right selves, outside of the system, we might not do, but we've already been co-opted into it, and so it's a challenge of how do we not continue to uphold these same systems when we've already been co-opted into them, and so many of us, I know. There's always that struggle, and so, even at the end, when Remick is killed or is released, there's almost this sense of relief. I felt almost like, ok, I don't have to do this anymore. I was doing this because this was the system that I was co-opted into, right, this is what I was turned into, but there's now this place where I'm released from it and no longer have to engage in that, and so it was really deep.
Speaker 2:I think it touched on a lot of different things, a lot of different existential questions, and you know again, specifically with regard to African spirituality and our Black traditions, showed the power of them and how they can cross lines so that our traditions are inclusive of all that we understand energy. It didn't have to be a particular type of entity that we were used to on the continent, right? It spoke to this milieu of cultures and how different spiritual entities come to be in this place and how you know they have come from different sources. Oh, you're muted.
Speaker 1:Girl, you said so much that I mean we could park here and spend significant time. Thank you for that rich analysis. When you talked about your connection to this kind of vampire motif, it took me back to when we were younger, remember you had that.
Speaker 2:Gothic stage. Yes, absolutely Well, funny enough, and so just real quick, there was those of us who grew up in the nineties. There was a show called Vampire, the Masquerade, that used to come on and we were obsessed. Many of my friends were obsessed with that show to the point that there was a clan of us who considered ourselves vampires. And we were obsessed. Many of my friends were obsessed with that show to the point that there was a clan of us who considered ourselves vampires and I was a part of the vampire clan. And then there was a clan who considered themselves werewolves. So I definitely had my goth being a vampire of the fangs the whole nine. I mean I've always loved it and, again, all those existential questions that it brings up.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I remember. So thank you for that connection. It just took me back. I had a flashback to young Iyafulayo.
Speaker 1:But I also like what you're saying about this co-opting that happens with vampire, this victim-victimizer relationship, and it reminds me of how hurt people hurt people, right, and is hurting people ever worth the reward of eternal life or whatever? The telos is? Right, but it also makes me think about how society really fits into this trope of vampires. Right, and that blood is not redeeming. Right, that when it is the blood of Black and Brown people spoiled in the streets of Ferguson, in you know Louisville and you know New York and so forth, that blood hasn't been salvific. Right, which, if we were to play into this trope, that Kugler is setting up, uh, which is why the vampires, that represents the oppressor thrives on blood, right, um, and and and and particularly the blood of vulnerable people. Um, and so how?
Speaker 1:This vampire trope is a social allegory for the blood-seeking, death-seeking systems in society that requires the blood of vulnerable people. Right, for whatever the price is going back to racial capitalism. Right, for whatever the price is to kill innocent, vulnerable people, for that reward is, you know, is a tool of oppression that we see in society, and I think it's brilliant how Ryan Coogler is using this horror genre through the vampire trope, to amplify that, to highlight that. That, to highlight that you said so much. But what I want to bring us back to is the role of women as conjurer.
Speaker 1:Right, you talked about Annie, that she was the first person to be able to identify the evil spirit. Right To say this spirit is not of us, hold up, wait a minute. Right. And the role of women as nurturer, as protector, as provider, as sexual partners right, sources of pleasure that Annie is traversing all of these roles in her, her, and the ways in which she resists these, these dominant tropes, whether it's capitalism, by using her wooden coins. Right, whether it's magic and not subscribing to Sammy's religion, christianity, that Yoruba. What is the role of Black women and mothers as conjurer?
Speaker 2:That is a wonderful question, and you know the importance of women really can't be overstated, no-transcript, and that there's nothing that can be overstated in the power of women. There's a proverb that says meaning that there's no divinity like mother. Mother is our first earth. Mother is our first God. Mother is our first God. Mother is our creator, the sustainer. The things that mother does recreates a microcosm of what the universe does and what mother earth does. And while, of course, you know we don't discount the masculine principle and the way that it has to activate the mother in order for her to be able to do what she does, ultimately the housing of the growing child, the feeding and all of those things come back to her and the conjuring of spiritual energy. And so, within Ifa and within many of our other African traditions, the power of the womb itself is the seed of magic, and so even the fact that we keep a lot of our sacred implements in pots, those pots are meant to represent the womb, the most powerful entity that we have, one of well, I won't say the most powerful, but one of the most important entities that we have called Oddu, which is the place where all possibilities in the universe are born is represented by the womb, and so women's power is absolutely very, very important. Priestesses, I would say, in the diaspora, the vast majority of African spiritual houses are run by women. This is particularly true in Brazil, but certainly in the US. Amongst African Americans practicing Orisha tradition and other traditions, women are often at the head.
Speaker 2:Now, that doesn't mean, of course, that patriarchy has not crept in. It has, as it has since colonial times, and in fact, one of the ways, one of the things that was used to denigrate African social systems and spiritual systems, was the fact that women were so prominent. Right, and Europeans who came in would say, because of their patriarchal system and even the system of Christianity, in which God is seen as categorically male and referred to as he and father and these things, whereas that's not the case in many of our African spiritual systems said you know that you all must be less than and must be degenerate in a sense, if you're allowing women to rule you right, allowing that to happen as though it was something that was a fault. And so one of the things that many Black women who engage in African spirituality find attractive about it is the fact that women are so prominent, both in the human sense as well as in the spiritual sense. So, you know, having grown up in Protestantism, we know that we don't have even the Marian devotion that Catholics have to bring the female into it. There is this father, son, holy Spirit.
Speaker 2:It's debatable. Some people would say that the Holy Spirit is a feminine energy, but for many, all three of those are masculine energies and so it feels as though there's not a place for women within Protestant Christianity. And we also know, of course, that some of the denominations still don't ordain women, you know, or even those that may ordain women. There's, no, there's not an equal amount of respect for women, preachers and things of that nature. And even my mother, as a reverend, has gone through this and, and you know, is consistently working against that and pointing out those places where, you know, you have the services that have multiple preachers and they're all men, right, and things of that nature. And so being involved in African spirituality has really allowed me personally to step into my power as a spiritual leader and also to see myself as sacred as a Black woman, because we have Black woman divinities who are sacred in their Black womanhood, who are sacred in their Black motherhood, and mothering is really a really key energy, and that mothering doesn't only have to happen with biological children, but mothering as a spirit and as an energy.
Speaker 2:And so I think that Annie, you know, in the film, definitely exemplifies that.
Speaker 2:And there's a place, you know, I appreciated you mentioned her as a sexual partner and I really appreciated them bringing her sexuality into it because, honestly, that was a big part of what kept her from being, as we would say, mammified, right. So I think that this trope of motherhood has also been weaponized against us and we have been pigeonholed into this place where we are only thought valuable insofar as we are able to mother everybody. And so that place of her deciding, and even the way that the scene was shown of her being the one like, okay, well, you here, and, matter of fact, I have been one a little bit and let me be the one to instigate it right, and not just as being passively receptive of it, I think that that was also really powerful. And we know that sex as well holds a lot of conjuring energy as we connect with one another, and so I think that was a really beautiful aspect to bring in to keep her from being seen only in this role of mother.
Speaker 1:Yeah, thank you so much. I you know you know we like to talk about sex, so I appreciate you invoking the connectivity of of sex, not just as physical but a spiritual practice as well, and even resistance, in this sense that it is a way to rescue Annie's character from the mammy trope being asexual and undesirable, right? I also like the casting of Annie, that she does not fit into the Hollywood aesthetics of what you think a woman would look like who would attract someone like you know, michael B Jordan, right. So I appreciate the realness of her character aesthetically in the ways in which she embodies Black womanhood and Black motherhood.
Speaker 1:There's a scene in the film where Smoke and this is for I'm opening the conversation up to both Dr Diana and Iafumayo there's a scene in the film where Smoke is talking to Annie and he says he never saw roots, demons, ghosts or magic, just power that money can buy.
Speaker 1:Annie says quote all that war or whatever the else hell you were doing in Chicago. And you are back here in front of me, two arms, two legs, two eyes and a brain that work. How do you know? I didn't pray and work every route. My grandmama taught me to keep you and that crazy brother of yours safe every day since you've been gone. The smoke says, quote so why didn't those roots work on our baby? There's a lot that's going on in this dialogue. It's talking about the religious pluralism of our people, the prayer and the magic that's happening, but it's also invoking grief with Black motherhood and reproductive experiences, as well as the question of theodicy, which I think is another important theological theme, this notion of suffering black nihilism and evil, or why magic and prayers worked for a bootlegged womanizing hustler but not save his innocent baby.
Speaker 2:And so can you speak to the complexities of that dialogue that's happening there and what it means for the question of theodicy that scene because you know so many times it's like the idea that we know our grandmamas have been praying over us and our mamas have been praying over us and all the folks that pray over us. Just because you didn't see it, just because you don't recognize the power of the prayers, just because you weren't witness to exactly what was done, that doesn't mean that it hasn't been working for you. And so that was a really powerful statement for me that she made in terms of you know, don't think just because you didn't, you don't understand the workings of it, that it wasn't working. I think, at the same time, what was so powerful about that whole exchange, especially around the baby, is that, you know, within IFA, we say no one knows the beginning and the end of all things, and so, for as much power as we have, for as much as we are able to pray, conjure and do all of the things that we're able to do, we are not God and we're not fully in control of things. There is still that place where the things that we're praying for, the things that we are working towards and conj prayer is going to be answered right.
Speaker 2:We see that in terms of innocent children, you know being killed in all of these conflicts that we are facing now and, of course, in Harlem, as we've talked about, where we've grown up and the things that we've seen.
Speaker 2:Did everybody who was saved deserve it? Not necessarily, and has every person who was not saved, you know, not innocent, no right. But there are these balances in the universe and things that we can never fully understand, and so the best that we are able to do is put our energy in, you know, do our prayers, do our rituals and incantations, and also know that we're never going to be fully in control of the outcome. And so that really, for me, was a really powerful moment, and I feel like it would have been made even more powerful if Annie responded to him in that way, in saying, look, I'm not God, no matter what I do, I still have to submit to the divine. I think her lack of response for me, I felt like it came across as acquiescence or like, oh, maybe this really didn't work, or maybe, you know, there's a place where I feel like that would have been even made more powerful had she responded, but still it was a powerful exchange.
Speaker 3:You're muted again. Thank you, dr Deanna. Thank you, dr Deanna. I think there is a sacredness in the I don't know. I think there is a ritual moment in the I don't know, and that's what she gave him right. There's some things she knew and knew well, and there were some things she didn't quite know and there were some things she just didn't have that answer to. And it speaks to just what you just said, but it's really interesting. So I actually found it really amazing that she was aware of the spirit but didn't quite know how to work with it, especially when we got to the vampires.
Speaker 3:Right, she had to rest on kind of cultural knowledge and inference in order to figure out what to do, and so it felt very surface in terms of trying to defeat the vampires. They didn't have a real answer, right, and this, I don't know, is sometimes sufficient and sometimes it's not right. It wasn't sufficient for Grace in that moment of what would we do? How will we figure this out? There needs to be an action plan, and sometimes there's a rush for that, and she didn't give him that, and so he has to sit with that grief and sit with the way of him leaving her because of his grief, and all of that was coming in this moment. This moment was packed and it just shows the humanness of us all, right, and how we are still all trying to figure this out and we have these questions and we're wrestling with it. Wrestling with what it means to have death, what it means to have favor and not have favor and protection, and who gets to access the protection and why did it extend, like you said, not just to him, right, because that makes sense, but his brother, but not his baby? Again, all of those things are coming up in this moment and it just shows the powerfulness of also not knowing and not having the answers, especially in the world when everybody's trying to be an expert, everybody's trying to know everything. Sometimes that I don't know, as I said, is a sacred moment of just parsing through and allowing yourself to be an extension of the divine in that way.
Speaker 3:So, yeah, I'm totally fascinated by Annie. I love that there was so much sensuality and eroticism without flesh being shown. We maybe got a little piece of thigh, but nothing else was there and it did not negate from the sexiness of the scene, from the power of the scene, from the erotic charge of the scene, and so a lot of bad takes made me so angry when they were like, oh, that was his aunt, or I thought it was his aunt. I was like how could you? The whole scene changed around Annie? There were flowers, there were smoke, even the strike of the match was tied to the guitar strum. Like every aspect of Annie on screen. Change it from, change it from her being a trope of the magical Negro as well, of someone who just has these answers and who just knows how to get the protagonist to the end. Right. She had background in history and we wanted to know more. We want the larger story of Annie and Smoke because of it, because it was well-intentioned and well thought through.
Speaker 1:Thank you. I realize our time is coming to an end so I want to ask two more questions and then go to a rapid round, so as much as we can respond in mindfulness of the time limitations that we have. But I really appreciate your analysis and, iyafunayo, I'm thinking about in my own research how I'm thinking about Black women as divine, particularly in the Black Lives Matter movement. Melina Abdullah, who is one of the co-founders of the LA chapter, has this annual festival in honor of Breonna Taylor and it's called Black Women Are Divine.
Speaker 1:And so, using you know, experience and people who are practicing as epistemological source for my research, you know I was trying to make meaning of what does it mean for Black women to be divine? And Dr Ebony Marshall-Turman pushed back on me in one of my conference papers at SCE about the dangers of Black women as being all things to all people, for this sense of divinity that doesn't allow for our humanness, it doesn't allow for our vulnerability, for our flesh, for our mistakes and so forth. And so when you said that Annie's non-response was this kind of you know invocation, to say I am not divine, right, but you know, but we can trust the divine who works on our behalf was very helpful for so. So thank you. In my own thinking Um, and and then, when we talk about prayer not working um these kinds of religious tools, right, we saw how there was a scene where both remnant and remnant and uh, I can't remember what it was.
Speaker 1:Sam. No, no, tammy right.
Speaker 2:Saying the Lord's Prayer.
Speaker 1:Saying the Lord's Prayer. I thought it had a null effect. Some people are saying that that wasn't their understanding, but whatever happens, we don't see prayer work in that scene, right? So Kugler is doing something intentional there because it's reoccurring. So my two questions and then wrap it around. So my two questions and then wrap it around. So I want to talk about the end of the movie where Stack, as a dead vampire, says to Smoke, who is fighting to stay alive quote we was never going to be free Running around looking for freedom and you know damn well we weren't going to find it. End quote what does it mean to hold space in our community for the pessimism?
Speaker 3:realism and optimism of whether freedom is ever obtainable. I've been saying this a lot, I think Blackness changes the vampiric right, and so that's a lot of my theory and research. In 1932, even though without consent he is turned right, stack presents a viable option, an option that is not reliant upon community which, remember, they don't want to see their ancestors in the same kind of way that Annie would like to. Annie doesn't say, oh, the vampiric is absolutely a no. What she says is there's a curse there. You can't get access to your ancestors. And she's trying to get to that baby. Right, so there is a different viable option for Annie and Smoke than there ever would be for Stack, and we have to take that into consideration. So it matters that in 1932, in shared cropping land, when there would never be a freedom, where is one's viable option for life, for freedom? But really to get past the symptom of death, right, he has to go through the death moment, where there is his terror and his fear. And once he goes through it he says three things right, she trying to kill me, I'm so scared. Right, and I love you. And after that he then has a new vision, a vision separate from Remick's vision that he's able to hold on to, even though Remick has obtained their memories. He's figured out a plan that includes Annie and Smoke and Mary, and that's what his option was, the closest thing to freedom. And you have to understand, as we've been talking about the extractive labor right and the cost that it is to be Black in this world, there will be a cost, but that cost for him matters Now.
Speaker 3:At the same time, 1992 Undead Stacks, offering this kind of possibility to an 85-year-old Sammy is not as viable as it would have been in the 1932, right. And so Sammy rejects it. He says no, I don't want that, even though that night was the best night for him. He doesn't hope to engage, I want to see something else. And so he has another plan of attack, another option that he's looking for, and so that's what's really important with pessimism. It doesn't foreclose options, right. It just suggests that the viability of them have to shift. And we have to be very clear about these shifting viabilities, right. And so that to me, is really, really important, that if we get past the death moment, right, the undeath or whatever right, is it viable? What do we learn from the vampire? And it's not just about oppressive consumption. Something else is present, especially because Black folks don't do vampires differently, right, and we see this in the large number of Black vampire lit that we have in film and culture that we have. Vampires are done differently through the lens of Blackness, just like pessimism is done differently through the lens of Blackness when it's done correctly. So it's sitting with the viability of these options.
Speaker 3:That might not be for everyone, right? Annie did not think of that as viable for her, and that's fair, and so what it is is making sure that, when she made her choice, everyone did what they could, specifically Smoke, to give her her choice, and I think there was a bit of a fear moment if he would kill her, right, and so spoiler alert, right? So there was that moment of saying, hey, you get your choice to think through your options, and that's what freedom is for me, right? Is that options and that not limiting and not boundering those options. So I think that that's something that keeps coming up in this as well negotiating what those options look like around consent, around barriers, around boundaries, and about what is possible in certain time periods and landscapes, specifically Mississippi Delta, sharecropper 1932, with wood, nickel. Right, it's just going to be. That's what we were never going to get. It was a slaughterhouse, got it.
Speaker 1:Thank you. Thank you, that's powerful EF Lyo. Do you have a response to that?
Speaker 2:Absolutely echo everything that was said, and just I did want to touch just very quickly on what you said about divinity. I think it's important to understand, and one of the things that I find so powerful about the Orisha tradition and African spirituality more broadly is that perfection is not required for divinity. The stories of the Orisha, the stories of these divine beings, does not present them as perfect, and this is one of the reasons why many human beings resonate with them, because there is not this understanding that, in order to be divine, you have to never have done anything wrong. You have to never have had sex. You have to never have, you know, transgressed, have had sex. You have to never have transgressed.
Speaker 2:The divinity comes in how you then move forward from those moments, what you learn from those moments, how you help others through those moments, and so I think that that's important and it's a way to escape some of the pessimism that we may feel when we recognize that we're always going to fall short.
Speaker 2:Right, there's a place where people come to feel like, oh well, if I can't be perfect, then I might as well reject everything that's spiritual, because spirituality in the church says that I have to be this way and if I'm not this way that I can't be accepted into it, and so I might as well just reject it. And within Ifa and other African spiritual traditions there's a place, there's truly that come as you are, and we know that there will always be trouble, there will always be problems, but we will always find solutions to them, and so that's how we kind of deal with the pessimism. We say that it's loss and gain that make the world. That's one of our proverbs. And to know that there's always going to be problems, there will always be situations, but that we have tools to be able to work through them.
Speaker 1:Thank you. And you know, we're living in a time where you know that pessimism is real right. And then the question of is freedom attainable? Is palpable right when we look at the presidency of Donald Trump, when we look at the anti-democratic regime that is highly fascist and deeply authoritarian, that is rooted in oligarchy deeply authoritarian, that is rooted in oligarchy right, when people, you know, mothers and fathers, are having to run at graduations and leave their children because of ICE, who is actively seeking to deport them. Right when you have Palestinian genocide and in the Congo, where there is a war being waged. In Iran, where you have mass incarceration and the rich are getting rich and the poor get poor. Like there's so much Right. You have this, this, this storm of interlocking systems of oppression and tragedy and crisis, and the question is real right that is posed in that scene, you know, were we ever intended to be free, right? And so I sit with that question, particularly on Juneteenth, as we celebrate freedom, right, you know. But I would hope, you know, my, my, my sincerest wish is that there's always hope Right, that there's always hope that, yes, we are designed to be free Right, and that we must continue to do this freedom work, even if we don't obtain it, for the hope that our children and our children's children will Right.
Speaker 1:So the final question in the scene after the credit Sammy. Sammy is visited by Mary and Stack and they hug. Sammy says that once a week he wakes up paralyzed, reliving that night, but before the sun went down he felt like it was the best day of his life. He asked if it was the same for Stack and and he said no doubt about it. It was the last time he saw his brother and the last time he saw the son, just for a few hours, it was free. What does this scene say about the possible reconciliation between good and evil, this hug that happens between the vampire and the undead, right? What is happening there? What is Kugler imagining, perhaps, about this reconciliation or relationship between good and evil? And is this freedom, perhaps the destruction of the dichotomy between good and evil, right?
Speaker 1:What do you think is?
Speaker 2:happening in this scene. Ef, I will just say that for me, I didn't see it as a good versus evil. I didn't see Stack as being evil and Sammy as being good. I saw it as a reunion of brothers Right being good. I saw it as a reunion of brothers right, Of the love that they shared, of who Stack was before he was turned and even who he still continued to be as a vampire.
Speaker 2:It's one of those things. It's like you know, understanding the system that we're in and understanding the choice that he made, Like, yeah, I understand why you did what you did. I understand why you went with it. I'm glad that you were spared right, that you're still here, that there's still some connection to everything that I knew, because everything everyone else that he knew was gone, and so I saw it as that, as a place of like, look, I'm not making the choice you made, but I still got love for you and you have. Also, you're honoring your brother in this agreement that you made to let me be, and so you know I appreciate that too.
Speaker 2:And so there was that place where it just felt like even for Sammy sharing that that day had been the you been the best day of his life before the tragedy happened. And for many of us, right, we have those situations where we are living our best lives before the tragedy happens, right before something happens that takes that moment away from us, and so I think that it really just speaks to the ephemeral nature of life and how we're never able to predict what the next things are that are going to happen. There's always going to be struggle and there's always going to be challenge, and many times the highlight and the highest moments of our life are followed by the lowest moments, and so I think that that scene really just encapsulated all of that and the fact that Sammy was able to find his freedom right and being able to travel and play his music, and that that was freedom for him, and that he was satisfied with that freedom. He didn't feel like he needed to the type of freedom that Stack was offering.
Speaker 1:Thank you, dr Deanna.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I just want to echo that I didn't see it as good and evil either.
Speaker 3:Remember, stack doesn't make the choice to become a vampire. He is victimized in that moment, and so he makes do with what he has and tries to create a vision for himself. But the choice that he does has is to honor the commitment to his brother and to Sammy by not going after him. And it is only when he smells death on Sammy does he come to have a conversation, and once again, consent is allowed. Sammy allows them to come in, and so choice and consent become paramount to their reunion of sorts. So, in essence, that is all the good that we could ever hope to attain in this world, right, and so also, knowing that Stack can't see his reflection, so he can't even see his brother in himself in perpetuity, but yet he has the love of his life, shows that sometimes there are costs to freedom or to what we imagine freedom to be, and sometimes we have to always weigh our costs in light of our grief and our loss. So that was really important for me.
Speaker 1:Wow, I really appreciate the reframing that you guys are offering with this analysis, because everyone I'm talking to shared this question the ways in which Stack is representing vampires where we're seeing as generally as an evil, bad trope and Sammy being church boy, right, representing this good trope, and perhaps that's an oversimplification. But Kugler is doing a lot of dichotomies in this movie, right, there's a lot of symmetries and so I viewed it as this good and evil that embraces at the end, and I was just curious to know what that reconciliation looked like. So thank you for offering that reframing and, as we close, I just want to just touch on a few things that we weren't able to hit upon or elaborate and expound on. But in that motherhood piece, right, isn't it interesting that we see sammy's dad but not his mom? We see her. What tell?
Speaker 3:me, mom. They have an interaction at the very first part of the film. He throws water on her as she's washing on the washboard. Um, the second time that we see her and this is how we know that her, his father, is seen as a bad man. It's because when he comes in bloodied up and bruised up, the only person that recognizes in that moment that he needs help that something has happened is his mother. She stands up and she screams Sammy, and he directs her to sit down. So once again we see the control of these kind of hierarchical figures who say and limit what's possible around caring for those who are wounded, Because instead of saying to his son who is bruised and bloody, hey, are you okay? The first thing we get is he's been touched by sin, right? And we don't even get any other conversations past that.
Speaker 1:Thank you, because clearly my eyes were closed in this part.
Speaker 3:It's okay, it's a really beautiful moment between him and his mom, and then he wakes up. Thank, you.
Speaker 1:That's beautiful. The other piece, when we talked about the co-opting, right, you know, you think about the ascendancy of President Barack Obama, and we heard a lot about this post-racial society, you know. And then, with the second election of Trump, we know that this notion is unequivocally false, right, that we aren't living in a post-racial society, and it didn't take the election of Trump for us to know that right. But you know, it's just interesting to see this co-opting that happens with Remick, when he says, sir, we believe in equality and music. We just came to play, spend money and have a good time. Can't we just want, for one night, all be family? Right, and it's this riff on can we, for all one night, be free? Right. And so you know. And then he plays this song, pick Poor Robin, clean, right, which could be, you know, a lynching song. And so you know.
Speaker 1:And then this kind of messianic role where Rimmick is saying I'm your only way out. You know, the world has left you for dead, this world won't let you fellowship, and I will let you do this forever. And so we have to be careful of the ways in which the ops would seek to lure us to think that they are on our side when we see the co-opting of movement language such as critical race theory or DEI or woke, right, that we have to be very careful. When we see this type of validation from the empire and push back. Right, that these are wolves in sheep clothing, right, and so we have to be very careful of that. And so you know. And then, finally, remick says I want your stories and your songs.
Speaker 1:And, as I conclude, when we think about the role of music and we weren't able to get that piece with Dr Laughing House gone but we see another dichotomy between the sacred and the profane with music, right, the music in the church, the opening film starting with this little light of mine and Sammy holding this guitar that he never lets go, a juke joint music over and against the sacredness of church music. And in order for him to be free, the father saying you have to let go of your guitar, but Sammy never does. And as we conclude, on Juneteenth, I encourage us to not let the enemy steal our song or our stories. And Ryan Coogler is doing just that in the ways in which he is reclaiming the narrative and disrupting dominant storytelling. Right, when, where, where you know, the Klan are the vampires and the African aren't the beasts? Right when African spirituality saves us and maybe Christianity does not, where magic protects us and prayers do not work. Right that Kugler is doing this radical disruption and in doing so it is ensuring that we hold on to our stories and our song and that perhaps we'll have even more one night of freedom, but we'll have freedom futures.
Speaker 1:So thank you so much for your time on our show. I just want to quickly invite you to drop your handles the ways in which people can follow you and support your work. Dr Deanna, would you start?
Speaker 3:Yes, I'm on Instagram at DeannaDNLS1, and you can find me there. Or Blue Sky at Deanna Monique.
Speaker 2:All right. Thank you so much again for having me, dr Nakia, dr Diana, it was wonderful to connect with you and spend time, and I am on all the platforms, so you can find me at Instagram, facebook, et cetera, and you can also connect with me at asheireycom.
Speaker 1:Awesome, and I would be remiss if we got to do this rapid round. So you guys just scream it out at the same time. Okay, I'm going to give you a few words, phrases, and the first thing that come to mind I want you to say it Okay, you ready, all right. Michael B Jordan Twin. What'd you say? What'd you say?
Speaker 2:I said fine.
Speaker 1:Ryan Coogler brilliance visionary but a culture necessary blood
Speaker 2:binding cathartic vampire joy complex. Binding Cathartic Vampire Joy Complex.
Speaker 1:Black women.
Speaker 2:Divine.
Speaker 1:Freedom.
Speaker 2:Joyful.
Speaker 1:Bourbon. Drunk Sips, drunk sips and on the fourth anniversary Abolitionist Sanctuary congratulations.
Speaker 1:So necessary, so very necessary thank you for joining this conversation on the Abolitionist Sanctuary podcast. Please download and share on all platforms. Again, I am your host, reverend Dr Nakia Smith-Robert, founder and executive director of Abolitionist Sanctuary. Find us on YouTube, instagram, facebook and download our social mobile app, bringing Together Abolitionists and People who Love Freedom. Also, enroll in our courses and become certified at abolitionacademycom. Don't forget to become a member and join our mailing list at abolitionistsanctuaryorg. As we conclude this episode, remember that abolition is not only a practice, but it is a way of life, and for me, abolition is my religion. Thank you so much. Bye.
