TRANSCRIPT [00:00:00] I wanna talk about Delta Slim, and I want to talk about my favorite scene in sinners, which is the creation of the blues, the synthesis of the blues, the alchemy of the blues from the blues, and this moment we get. With Delta Slim in the passenger seat, driving through the cotton fields of him retelling this hing, this horrible story of the lynching murder and what's the word?
You know, maybe two awful Words is enough of his best friend and it's just the story sends him, [00:01:00] he's rocking and he's mm.
And we hear the blues be alchemized in this moment. We hear, we see, we know his becoming the blues. We understand both what happens before that moment and what comes after, but the before being. What does your young boy know about the blues? I got socks older than him. Why he, how someone like Delta Slim, who he represents, um, and just who he is as a character could come to say something like that.
Have a right to say something like that. And why? Also he could, that becoming of the blues, that inseparability of the blues, why he goes on to later say, white people like the blues just fine. They just don't like the people singing it and all of these things coming together. [00:02:00] But just this, that moment spoke to my spirit and my own.
Understanding of the importance of Mississippi, Mississippi folks, miss Mississippi, be before civil rights and my own people coming from cotton land on that side of the river and something I'll never forget. Uh, but I, but I'm, as I forget now, but not really, I'm just reaching for it.
It will come, but I'll never forget his name is eluding me. But I'll never forget what he told me, which is, you know, Ja, I like jazz. Just fine with love. You know, the home of jazz coming from New Orleans, Louisiana, but there'd be no [00:03:00] jazz without the Mississippi Blues. And that struck me last year when that was told to me and to have, you know, more intentional connection with lineages I have coming from Mississippi as well as the ones that are coming out of the Louisiana, um, from black and indigenous folks and to see.
Mississippi for myself outside of a window, but outside of a train window and just all that green. None of the other states going up the Atlantic seaboard driving through them, none of them were that same emerald, endless green of of that I remember from that short swath of Mississippi. Yeah. [00:04:00] I just, I, there's, there's just, I feel so much apparently I, and I had so many thoughts, but the words elude me of just, that is my favorite scene in the entire movie.
I don't care how much I talk about the other scene, that is my favorite. And I can't tell you other than it like, it, it sits in the house of my spirit. What happened there. Uh, and I don't know if it happens during that scene. I don't think it does. I think it comes later, but there are vultures in the sky.
Now. I feel like most people, a lot of people notice the vultures that appeared with the Choctaw showing up to Ku Clan clan, KU Klux Klan joint house, right? And they're circling. And then when the Choctaw make their exit and they're like it, do what it do. Wouldn't wanna be you. Best of luck. See you in the afterlife.
Um. And then the Vultures [00:05:00] land. But the first time I remember seeing them actually is much earlier in the film. It's when Stack and Smoke are being introduced. They are in their red and blue. They are standing in front of that, you know, deep, dark, cherry red vehicle in front of the mill waiting and in the top.
Distant left, like barely visible, visible in the ways birds that way high up are visible are two that I counted vultures. That's the first time I remember seeing them. I think I remember seeing them flying in one of the peripherals of that 70 millimeter whatever, whatever film, um, in driving through the cotton field around, uh, around stack.
Of course the house. And then of course circling the juke joint, though I never remember seeing them land. I have a new [00:06:00] appreciation for those birds now, not just for my interest in them as in vultures in general, um, in the motif, uh, of, of them in the movie, but also because I'm pretty sure. I didn't look into it, but I'm pretty sure those aren't real birds.
Right? Those are edited in and they're, but I never felt that way during the movie. How crazy is it? Like that's, those are the opening scenes of the movie, like the first 10 minutes and you're not distracting me with, you know, what animation CGI hand dry. I don't know how they inserted it into the film, um, what that form of artistry was, but.
The arc of their wings as they opened up to land and just settle in as birds do when they go from flight to standing. Like, yo, that [00:07:00] impressed me after the fact when I realized like someone made that and a lot of things were made in the movie, but like, I don't know. For me that was that. Those are two moments.
I also wanna talk about something that happens around Delta Slim. So when we get to the railroad stop, we have a Pullman train, right? And we see one of the Porter Pullman, he's about to help Mary up onto the train. And then we have, you know, the confrontation, the scene, the introduction to Mary and to this story.
And we learn later on, right? Well, we can learn that scene. Mary's probably white passing. We later know for sure. She definitely is white passing. Um, and meaning like she is black and specifically how Right. We know, oh, my mother's father was half black and he raised her, he [00:08:00] had to save her from being, you know, murdered by whatever kinfolk of, uh, the white mother.
For being murdered from by, like, from being murdered. 'cause they're Ku Klux Klan. Um, the sentence didn't make sense and that don't matter. But you got what I said. And before we meet Delta Slim, before we meet Mary, when we are being introduced to the scene of the railroad stop, right? The camera is panning sideways.
Sideways. We're seeing all these characters and set and, and back stories. Populating the background of the railroad stop and we see another performer or another black perform black man performer, uh, making music for enjoyment as well as tips. And there's these two tittering te, he, he just like annoying white women.
[00:09:00] Putting money into somebody, you know, somebody else's cap. And this is all happening in the background as, uh, as Sammy and Stack are walking and you, the, the director and the creators of the creative minds behind this have like, set this scene for us to understand one of the many scenarios in which, how do you end up.
With a baby like Mary or Mary's mother, uh, or Mary's, uh, grandfather, how do you end up like half black? And I'm like, obviously we know, we know the many awful myriad ways, but what we're seeing, right, there's a lot of talk about.
Well, maybe there's not a lot of talk about non-consent of relationships between black men and, and rape by white women and bullying out and the [00:10:00] fetishization and like that is happening. And like, what even really is consent in a power dynamic with a, within a system, if not with a person who specifically does not recognize your humanity?
Uh. Doesn't, not even humanity, doesn't recognize you as human. And so we're seeing these white, these tittering, white women fetishize potentially, right? Like it looks like fetishization to me. So I'm gonna call spade a spade. Um, and right. And there's no. White men around, it's just the two white women, um, being in this illicit behavior together.
Right. Fantasizing, maybe trying to start a transaction or a relationship with the black man that they're tipping. Um, but like these are all the things I, with my context and understanding or adding to the layers of that scene. That's, this is what I'm saying. And [00:11:00] so how might. You end up with a free half black granddaddy, I'm assuming he was free, uh, just because of the choices he had baby in raising that baby and having the freedom to claim that baby.
Uh, right. We don't have all those details. Where are they from? Are they from Mississippi too? Did he run away, yada, yada, yada. We don't got all that, but I love, I hate that. Part of the scene because it makes me feel such grotesque, uncomfortable things, but it is, I, I love that that is how we get introduced before we even know who Delta Slim and Mary are to the player, the instrument player himself, as a, as a concept at the, at anywhere.
And, but then also. In that same, those two, like three characters in the background, were getting so much richness for both [00:12:00] like, like just the tying of that and then the tying of the other two. I love that. I love that. That's all happening in front of our faces.
There was like, I think one more thing I wanted to talk.
Oh yes. Also still connected. Dot for dot for dot. Mary. Is in, I think art, like I could be remembering all of this, could go to . Excuse bleep if I remember this wrong, but Mary gets married to a white man, a white land owning man in Arkansas. When we get to, we learn that right then and there. I think at the railroad we get to the juke joint.
Okay. People are playing, paying in wooden coins. Annie, smoke and stack reconvene [00:13:00] upstairs. Smoke. Tell these to get it together. Get it together because we taking dollars. We're trying to make our money back. What you think? This is a charity already and they kind of, you know, go back. They do back and forth rebuke him and, but what comes out?
Information, let's get, I, I don't need to tell you. I know you've seen the movie. Um, the information that comes out is that Stack Selling was selling as in Arkansas in Little Rock. This was, you know, uh, and he gets asked, would you let a John pay you in a note? No, absolutely not.
Why did I want to connect that part? There was a reason why, I know it's, there's something unspoken to me happening about like both of these [00:14:00] things happening in Arkansas. It's the illicit list of the relationships. It is.
It's whether or not, you know. If you selling ass, like, I mean, literally you selling ass, like as in, are you sleeping with men, right? You're prostituting with men as well as with women, right? And so there's no, it, it's probably both. It can, it has the openness of interpretation to be both. Um, and I think about the specif.
Stack tells Mary, I found you a husband. They don't have no people out in Arkansas. Arkansas. So that time period in which a husband is found, Mary [00:15:00] gets married off and Stack is selling ass out in Little Rock. I feel like that's happening in. A timeframe. Oh, I've been worried about bleeping things out and I've been bleepy bleeping this whole time.
Oops. Um, explicit label, but I wonder if the man that Mary is married to is a John that paid stack. To sleep with him.
Snore. You hear the baby snore.
And I'm like, I, I don't know. I'm just, my brain's turning and I'm thinking like, is that why, you know, for several reasons why after all these years, Mary [00:16:00] doesn't have kids that are like mentioned. At least Mary. But I don't, I don't, let's just assume she doesn't have kids. Mary has no kids. Mary isn't pregnant.
Um, maybe homeboy felt safe marrying her off to this man. Because that white man is a closeted gay man who probably had no interest in sleeping with his woman, which is now that man's wife. I wonder about that. Like, that's just like a little world that I built in my own head about supposing and just giving credit to the creators and being like, okay, there's no loose ends.
Everything is set with intention. Everything is set with intention. Um, if I assume that everything matters. What more can I build about this world other than theto, the one film and story that I've been told about? I think that's really [00:17:00] I'm missing. There's one other thing I really wanted to talk about.
Well, male prostitution, for one that never gets talked about.
I feel like I've seen this enough, but just acknowledging the healthy masculinity, the balance of masculinity, feminity through a
womanly, dominant led relationship. Loved seeing that on a silver screen. Loved it
and there's not much more I just wanted to add just to acknowledge it. That was enough for me. But yeah, I feel like I talked [00:18:00] about my least favorite scene, my favorite scene, my favorite motif, and. My quiet little storytelling hypothesis that just popped in my brain during the shower one time after the third took three times for me to put it together, but I did it anyway.
Thank you for joining me.
I can't wait to hear people add more. I can't wait and I can't wait to jump into my next ting, which I am. I just finished these from by Meg Smitherman. And I want to talk about, uh, a joke that I feel like I saw on TikTok. Someone talk about being like, why, when did [00:19:00] white men women stop giving? White woman in the music and pop industry like Taylor Swift Bangs, Britney Spears bangs were white girls who knew how to be and stay white and not appropriate, and, and, and code switching into a code they ain't been programmed with.
Um.
More things. Uh, and I feel like this author kind of did that. The I, she's not black. I'm looking at her picture in the back, and I seen her on TikTok, Meg Smitherman. So excited to talk about a white woman who knows how to write as a white woman, not have all white characters necessarily. And, and also be damaging in that and [00:20:00] still pop off in her way to me, like Right.
Anyway, peace.
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