SINNERS - Preacher and the Slave

Justin:
[0:01] All right we're doing our first patreon episode preacher and the sinners 2025 this is a good movie i've been talking about this a lot i love this movie um if you are worried about it being uh spoiled for you don't because this movie is meant to be re-watched i think again and again so i was just like chomping at the bit to re-watch it because i knew the moment we started watching it again i was like oh yeah this was pre-shadowed and this was pre-shadowed just from the very first intro sequence so um jake how you doing

Jake:
[0:35] Good hey i'm jake that's justin uh this is going to be a cross uh how would he call it a cross pod it's going to be run on both the preacher and the slave feed and the pot damn american feed um so if you're listening from pda hi i'm jake anders is out of town uh so we're doing some movie night but i've been wanting to talk about this movie for, minutes since it came out because it's got so much shit going on if you i want to contradict justin here if you don't want spoilers if you haven't seen the movie at all then maybe watch it because i'm going to spoil the movie it does maybe you maybe it's it's so ubiquitous in the culture you might know already what it's about and so maybe you're with that in mind you don't give a shit but somewhat of a nuanced spoiler alert up top um but i think it fits pretty well with like we talk about a lot of horror on the show and stuff like that as a genre has a lot of good stuff going on i think there's like a horror thing going on with history and race and jordan peel and all that shit so it fits pretty nicely into that niche um and yeah i'm i'm excited to talk about sinners and some shit from history uh but joining us is uh so it's uh you know for obvious reasons and also because you're very smart and my friend and uh.

Jake:
[2:00] There's just no way to be like i i feel so funny like doing a doing a movie like this and then being like okay like how do you have the conversation with like.

Jake:
[2:14] We have to get a black podcaster to be with us, or else it is not okay. And not just for optics reasons. I mean, from perspective reasons, it would be stupid to not talk to a black friend of ours.

Justin:
[2:27] No, I think everyone needs to know my perspective on this movie. It's really important that I'm heard and that I'm seen.

Jake:
[2:34] Anyways, Tony Possible, welcome to the show.

Tony:
[2:36] See this is the benefit of actually having black friends is it's not weird when you ask me to be on your show yeah you know if you if you only hit me up every like you know nine months to like talk to talk black that'd be one thing but being that we're actual friends it's different and um and you know don't worry guys um we can go ahead and three-way post this i can post it on my feed never mind never mind oh we will not be posting it on the million death goal feed because it no longer exists um yeah so uh thanks for thanks for having me on and not allowing me to slip into obscurity now that i'm um uh on uh somewhat of a pod podcaster hiatus i

Jake:
[3:12] Believe it's a hiatus or at least a creative hiatus of sorts i don't for me like being done with anything anytime soon so you know it's still always a good time it's always a good opportunity to promote tony you know people love tony they're gonna follow tony.

Tony:
[3:28] I'm gonna pretend like um like you're not having me on because of my podcast because technically i don't have one right now and because you just you just think i'm smart um and i'm gonna i'm gonna hold on to that i'm gonna pretend like i'm a scholar and not a podcaster right now no

Jake:
[3:41] But that literally is true because your podcast is over.

Tony:
[3:45] So valid see i'm gonna see i'm taking it

Jake:
[3:46] Yeah put that in your hat and that's not the phrase listen my i'm having a fucked up week i'm not gonna go into detail about it for the audience just take my word for it my brain's not working all the way so i'm gonna say shit like put that in your hat and dot dot dot that's not how that cliche goes put that no man smoke it.

Tony:
[4:04] That's what all the cool kids say they call they you know they call their their smoking devices hats pass the hat bro and it's like a it's like a bong or like a pipe or whatever what have you a blunt it's just a hat all the cool kids are doing it

Jake:
[4:18] Yeah i would wear that hat that sounds cool.

Justin:
[4:21] Okay no speaking of cool kids though i heard you know like every once in a while the news has to do like um like like an explainer of teen slang and like a bunch of them were just like what is an avocado an avocado fucking aubergine eggplant uh was an eggplant mean and then they were like getting through some of them and it's like hedgehog means neo-nazi and i was like do people do that because it's hh is that like a real thing people are doing oh it's like a cypher

Jake:
[4:56] I've never heard that one and i encounter neo-nazis on the internet quite a bit so i thought i.

Tony:
[5:03] Would have yeah yeah i've never seen that one um i both encounter nazis a lot and i have an 11 year old daughter and i think between the two i would find out about the hedgehog being a um you know uh a current emoji colloquialism but i i'm i've never heard of it it seems like a stretch to me

Justin:
[5:22] I feel like the rest of them were stretches

Jake:
[5:23] I feel like whenever the like on the local news or just the powers that be the authority whoever it's your your like teacher in elementary or middle school doing some shit like this for they make some shit up right they don't actually come up with a full list of like now kids here's where when when you're offered drugs they're going to refer to them as pot and dope and whack and sky like you know they didn't do their own homework there there's always shit that you've literally never heard of except for in a dare pamphlet.

Tony:
[6:01] How would you how would you even use it would you be like hey are you a hedgehog hey i'm a hedgehog hey i you know i practice hedgehog ideals like i i don't get how you would even use it would only be like insulting you know he's a hedgehog right that's the only way i can think of actually using it

Justin:
[6:20] Yeah but it's too it's too affirming i think you know maybe in discords because this person got it from somewhere because it's too clever for uh uh a journalist to pull up but i don't know just like as a react in a discord or something just like everyone's going hh hell hitler hell yeah i i can see it that's why i was that's why i half believed it

Jake:
[6:39] I feel like that's an insult to Sonic and his milieu honestly they would never and also there's no white hedgehog in the Sonic universe I don't think yeah there's cause he's.

Justin:
[6:54] Yeah, because he's an eco-communist. This is clearly what the games are about.

Jake:
[6:58] Yeah, they would be Dr. Robotnik slash Eggman. But I guess everybody thinks of themselves as the Sonic. That's how it works. It's like how Republicans think that they're like the rebellion in Star Wars. The Nazis want to be Sonic. However, there's no way for them to square that with him and the rings. You know what I mean?

Jake:
[7:21] That's white supremacist anti-Semitic propaganda is that he is after the rings and when you hit them they explode or he's back I don't know you know what you can twist anything any which way which is a great segue into talking about a film that has some obvious intention in it I think I'm a little curious to hear what people think like Ryan Coogler's intention here is because it is pretty clearly about something in a heavy handed way and I don't even say that as a criticism I just think that that's like that goes with this type of storytelling you know that's a criticism you often hear of like Jordan Peele, and uh you know what's going on with you know race and his movies and stuff like that and, I think that that's um kind of like a straw man that people throw at these like these socially conscious horror films because it implies that the point of like horror movies is to be subtle and i don't think that it is at all i think a lot of these are like especially like this you know kind of has a it it's almost like what do you call it like an homage or like a continuation of like, some kind of pulpy horror genre stuff yeah and the point of pulp is often you know to beat you over the head with it and be like over the top and stuff like that.

Jake:
[8:44] So, uh, I definitely feel like this movie is, you know, if you asked Ryan Coogler if.

Jake:
[8:53] There is like a one-to-one, the vampire cult in this movie is a representation of this. And I don't know if I 100% have pinned down what it is other than just like whiteness. I was thinking earlier, maybe, maybe like the police, like the cops is an institution. But I don't know. We'll get to that. But yeah, let's talk about the movie.

Tony:
[9:14] We'll get to that.

Jake:
[9:16] I love saying that a hundred times in a podcast, but we'll get to that. And then never getting to it sometimes. Um but anyways so yeah I already spoiled it if you have made it this far it's fucking that's a big twist right but it's fucking it's gonna be a famous movie forever so I think the more and more you're gonna know it's a vampire film uh but that's kind of like the big reveal after the first half of the film but the first half of the film it's about like these brothers twin brothers smoke and stack who, are uh returning fine as hell oh yeah i.

Justin:
[9:53] Can't believe they found two dudes that hot

Tony:
[9:57] No they couldn't they couldn't there's only there is only one michael b jordan and uh michael be damned my guy my guy just keeps on looking so good i

Justin:
[10:06] Remember that post where um after um the the black panther movie came out this girl posted that

Jake:
[10:15] Or

Justin:
[10:15] Though this this guy who was an orthodontist posted that one of his female teenage patients had to come in and get her retainer fixed because she clenched her teeth so hard she snapped a retainer

Jake:
[10:26] And then.

Justin:
[10:27] She found she found the post on tumblr and said this is my orthodontist and then and then he uh michael b jordan paid for her to get her retainer

Jake:
[10:38] Fixed because he said i.

Justin:
[10:41] Felt kind of uh responsible that's amazing

Jake:
[10:44] This is only tangentially related but i told tony this story the other day i was gonna repeat it for the mic this is very funny uh there's this video of like janet jackson's, shows from the 90s her live uh concerts where she was doing this shit where she was wearing like a latex cat suit and had this like kind of snm cross on stage and she was that was like her for a little while like her like motif was a lot of that stuff for most.

Tony:
[11:14] Of her career i'll say i mean you know miss jackson if you're nasty

Jake:
[11:18] Yeah totally it was that and uh she was bringing guys up from the audience putting them on it and then just sort of like doing a like a stripteasy sort of like lap dance on them i guess and for whatever reason and it's very funny that the context maybe here is missing a little bit in the clip they just like they just lose their minds with you know horniness um, And they, I remember this now they're like shouting and like, ah, and, uh, you can't really tell, but it kind of seems like maybe that's one of them, two of them busted a nut. So the, the clip went viral with the caption. Uh, what the fuck is it exactly?

Tony:
[12:03] Miscellaneous unks shooting their poison. And I don't, I don't know if I told you this when we were talking about, but what's really crazy about that is that original post is only like two and a half months old. The one with that caption yeah it's only like two and a half months old and like i feel like time is going by so slow but yeah greatest caption of all time amazing video that's been around forever but that that caption brought it back

Jake:
[12:25] Yeah that's definitely a big spike on like the know your meme graph or whatever is that shit popped off for whatever reason a couple months ago or for whatever reason it's fucking funny but um i was reading the comments under a one iteration of that post and somebody had a similar story which is that they said that when they were when they were a kid uh one of the unks is that was their like middle school math teacher oh yeah yeah they like figured it out but i don't think that janet jackson paid for their uh, their dry cleaning or whatever the fuck the solution to that is.

Justin:
[13:05] That's your own problem

Jake:
[13:06] Anyway so yeah michael v jordan's looking very good as smoke and stack doing the thing where you play twins in a thing classic parent trapping it yeah or like uh what's his face in the deuce um oh the hell's that guy's name whatever doesn't matter james franco uh yeah plays two creeps in the douche um in the deuce and, Yes, so there's there are these characters that have the returning to 1932, Mississippi, and they've been off working for what is the syndicate in Chicago, like the Italian crime syndicate. Yeah, Chicago outlet, I think it's called.

Jake:
[13:50] And that's kind of never on screen. It's a thing that they just sort of like allude to a lot. And they sort of come back into town with like this pretense that they made a bunch of money in Chicago and they came home to maybe like do good and do right by everyone. So they're going to start a business and that business is a juke joint in an old like saw mill or some shit that they bought off this guy named Hogwood, who is a, you know, a gold racist white looking guy. Um but in the interaction where they buy it off of him he's doing stuff like call it like oh you boys got a lot of money and they're like why the fuck just call us boys and he's like oh don't mind me that's just how we talk down here because microaggressions jake yeah he's uh he's uh he's he did it he did a racism he did an imperialism right yeah um he's.

Justin:
[14:47] Post-racial now the clan's gone things are better yeah yeah

Jake:
[14:51] Well they mentioned the kluks clan and he says like that basically he says like oh that's not that's over you know that.

Justin:
[14:57] Was a good touch

Jake:
[14:58] And it's so good uh you know very foreshadowy he seems like a bullshitter right and he's saying no no no no no i'm just here to sell you the sawmill and so they buy it and then they go back around town and they're having this like a homecoming thing and like it's cool because it's like this part is very like tarantino-y to me like you introduce all the characters kind of one by one by going around town and they're all just set up for the like kind of action part of the story that comes after this or whatever but they're all important so there's like uh i can't remember whether it's smoke or stack no it's stack stack's ex-girlfriend is like a white passing black woman very interesting kind of what's going on here her.

Tony:
[15:47] Her grandpa's black uh-huh her grandpa's black and that's uh that's to be noted i guess because she yeah she's very uh very light-skinned that's coming from me so um that says a lot i'll be at her grandpa's black

Jake:
[16:02] Yeah, and she's like, so there's like kind of, it's kind of interesting because she's kind of like Sean King or logic kind of like literally passes as a white person.

Tony:
[16:13] I don't know why you got to do her like that.

Jake:
[16:15] Well, not in character.

Tony:
[16:16] I don't know how to Sean King logic her. That's fucking brutal. I don't know.

Justin:
[16:22] I was going to say she was passing strange kind of stuff.

Tony:
[16:26] I was going to say she's just like my kid is what I was going to say. But i mean you're gonna sean king logic i mean fuck

Jake:
[16:33] You know what that's a better way to put it she's like a tony's kiss i.

Tony:
[16:37] Am gonna tell my kid that if if anybody if anybody sean king lodges occur she's allowed to shoot them

Jake:
[16:43] Yeah there i mean for sure there needs to be a better person like.

Tony:
[16:49] Sean king or logic

Jake:
[16:53] Okay i mean i don't know if there's not a better person to reach for in the collective conscious or that was just a me problem uh fucking.

Tony:
[17:01] Bro from um bro from uh gray's anatomy

Jake:
[17:05] I don't know watch gray's anatomy oh.

Tony:
[17:07] I don't know he's he's all he's just some young handsome light-skinned dude um but he's also they they look more similar than your other two examples okay i forgot his name he's good and uh he's also a self-aware mixed man like myself um who he does a pretty good job he says some good stuff but i forgot his name

Jake:
[17:26] Yes he forgot his name though you can't just say bro from gray's anatomy i suppose everyone knows.

Tony:
[17:32] What i'm talking about

Jake:
[17:33] Um but like so i think that that's kind of i don't know it's an interesting point to bring up for him in this film because uh she's ultimately like uh she's invited to the cookout to of sorts um just like literally because vampire logic of are you or are you not invited into the thing comes into play in this film and stuff and she's very much like she is part of the community and she's what Staxx girlfriend who he's kind of trying to get back together with.

Jake:
[18:11] Smokexx is the woman who's like cook and she's very knowledgeable of hoodoo which is interesting because hoodoo is like a syncretism thing, it's like indigenous folk you know religion stuff kind of mixed with colonizer shit it's the other who do and voodoo are kind of out of the same process but i noticed justin you have some notes about who do here can you enlighten me because i'm trying to remember i talked about this a long time ago on the show when i like wrote a i made a podcast about the uh the haitian revolution and, Voodoo, I remember, is like syncretism into the Catholic sort of religion from Haiti and then further into like in Louisiana. It gets mixed with Spanish stuff and all French stuff, obviously. What is voodoo specifically? Do you know what the difference is there? Remember there's like a split like it's more spanish or it's like from dominican or something like that.

Justin:
[19:20] I i know that the etymology isn't necessarily linked like they they might be completely um different words so like there's some thoughts that like hoodoo like had like a similar sound and then started being confused with voodoo and that's why they sound the same um but yeah it's a lot of like small little like like like curandrismo stuff like you know just uh yeah like you sweep like stuff like when you're sweeping you put a little in the corner and you like say a little prayer and you put you know when you're sweeping the house or something and then they talk about like mojos and uh you know different um sort of so it's it's really nothing all that special it's just a kind of folk magic that people do all the time um that everyone kind of has and everyone's you know because like my great-grandfather used to do stuff like that he was a water witch and he would you know do stuff like that as a farmer so did

Tony:
[20:22] He like uh uh what is it called dowsing was it called

Justin:
[20:25] Yeah dowsing yeah water witching did

Tony:
[20:28] He do that you find water that's so sick

Jake:
[20:31] Where whereabouts is he from.

Justin:
[20:35] Alabama okay

Jake:
[20:37] So it's that cool like like folky out in the sticks stuff like.

Justin:
[20:43] Yeah yeah stuff like that yeah voodoo

Tony:
[20:46] Voodoo is uh voodoo is uh um a little more like uh theatric it's it's what it's what azalea banks did to ruin her apartment where like hoodoo is more vibes based you know who there's more vibes based more like i don't know just kind of be thoughtful practice spiritual practitioner stuff like it's it's it's and it's i think they do a pretty good job like depicting in here

Jake:
[21:08] Yeah they're.

Tony:
[21:10] Not like a scary witch thing but like a wholesome good practice

Justin:
[21:15] Right yeah they had like a hoodoo coordinator i think was something jay told me interesting yeah

Jake:
[21:22] Um yeah because it's like it's not i mean it's a supernatural movie so it comes into play a little bit in that sense but it's very much just someone who has knowledge of something that maybe precedes uh you know the modern era a little bit using you know sort of intuition to suss out what's happening and stuff and it works very metaphorically it's also uh like pretty much one-to-one kind of parallel thing within uh in like like latin people's cultures i'm not sure what the how the breakdown goes you know the way there's voodoo and hoodoo between like mexican and other like latin american cultures via this like syncretism process what the differences are but like i in my family i had old ladies that would rub an egg on you and shake the broom at you and shit because of breweria and curanderia and shit. The price of eggs has really probably thrown that into all sorts of chaos. Shout out to the.

Tony:
[22:25] I think it's making it more effective though.

Jake:
[22:29] Yeah.

Tony:
[22:31] They're literally more valuable now so they hold a little more power because they do hold a little more power. I think they're more effective now than ever.

Jake:
[22:40] Also you got to do the spell really well because you're worried about cracking that egg and then the price of it you know just damn look at that another four dollars or some shit, um yeah so you get the egg rub on you and shit and it would supposedly get rid of the loho the evil eye and uh, yeah it's like it's funny you know we all make jokes about it shit but it's uh fucking every culture's got this kind of every culture that is a culture right as opposed to whiteness which i guess we'll get to we'll get to that in a minute. I'm going to keep going. We're going to get to that. Anyway, then they go around town. They meet Cornbread, big old 20-dude, comic relief kind of guy. They're hiring everyone for the bar, for the club. Cornbread's going to be the bouncer. They need to get sign-painted, so they run into... What are their names? There's two Chinese immigrants, Bo and I can't remember the wife's name.

Justin:
[23:38] Ruby Ruth.

Tony:
[23:40] I think Ruby, yeah. I think you're right. It's funny because it turns out arguably one of the most important characters in the movie in a way.

Justin:
[23:51] Mm-hmm.

Jake:
[23:52] Yeah. Fuck my cat. So, yeah, she comes into play pretty hard. We'll get to that. And, yeah, so... Then they get to this kid, Sammy. Sammy's like their cousin. he is this young like kind of guitar prodigy and his dad is a preacher, played by Saul Williams who follows me on Twitter and I almost pulled the trigger and said do you want to come on my podcast to talk about this movie but I'm too embarrassed I respect him too much.

Tony:
[24:32] Saul Williams is so sick like he was a total game changer for me I saw him at like 16 open for cursive and plans mistaken for stars whoa and he just did like spoken word um and this was before he even had like a music album and then i would kind of just like fall in love with them and just like follow him and he was one of the first like blatantly you know revolutionary speakers i came across at like 16 years old um who was you know using poetry as his medium and like absolute game changer huge admiration for him i'm glad that's really that's really cool i'm glad to see he's doing cool stuff like this too it got me real got me pumped because i was worried that he had like Because you don't see that very much anymore. You don't see poetry. It's not a popular thing right now. So I'm happy he's still doing something cool. If you don't know Saul Williams, definitely check out any of his poetry. Listen to any of his albums. Nicky Tardust, amazing. Everything he does is pretty fucking cool.

Jake:
[25:42] Yeah, I got to know him really early in my life when I was like 19 or so. I remember I was walking around. Uh i i had a my car breakdown in the middle of a blizzard one night when i lived in austin which is really crazy because it's like texas like it doesn't get that cold there and i was really young and i really know how to fix it and i didn't have a jacket for some reason and this is also kind of like a weird origin of radical politics night for me because uh like the i think i remember getting picked up by the police and they were just like fuck off you know and i was walking around without a jacket in the cold and a van full of people doing mutual aid for like homeless people basically, threw a hoodie at me and i had that hoodie for like the next 10 years it just fucking saved my life and i ended up like making it to a house that i knew someone lived at my friend chelsea.

Jake:
[26:42] And i saw my phone was dead and all this crazy shit this is kind of before phones or what they are banged on our door and she let me in and i slept on her couch and i read i just pulled a book off the shelf and it was the dead mc scrolls which is one of his poetry and it like changed my life like i remembered him fucking forever and saw him play live and stuff and uh then later on yeah like rick rubin kind of like produced his stuff into like music albums where it's you know kind of hip hop basically but uh yeah he fucking rules so he plays the preacher and he's very ominous you know and his son sammy is like playing guitar in the church and they have this conflict where sammy is like really into the blues and his preacher father is warning him that he's playing with the devil and the supernatural by engaging in music like that and he got this young cool rebellious kid with his two cousins in town who are coming back and so he's he hops in the car with them because they have like a cool ass old like fucking gangster era car and they're driving around he's like in the back with the guitar and stuff and they're making these plans to make the uh the juke joint right and they also go get this old this other old blues guy. What the fuck is his name? I can't remember.

Justin:
[28:02] Delta Slim.

Jake:
[28:04] Delta Slim, right. And, yeah, so they get the whole kind of crew going and they, what the fuck happens next so they they get everyone together and they're they throw kind of the first night of the juke joint and they're gonna try to run it as a business, and people start showing up and they're a lot they're like they're having these like you know kind of business discussions about how much to give away because that is like part of like bars and stuff like that like do you give away a bunch of booze and shit on the opening night to get people to come back in or whatever but the smoke and stack are very business savvy and they're very concerned and it turns out they haven't really let on that like they didn't actually like make it big in business they stole a bunch of wine from the various racialized gangs in chicago uh because they keep saying like you know hey hey delta slim you know if you play we'll uh we'll give you all the irish beer you can drink we got irish beer and italian wine, and there's a lot of interesting like early kind of capitalism things going on like when they meet up with the uh bow and ruby to get the sign painted they they do a lot it was grace.

Justin:
[29:33] I was totally wrong bow and grace

Jake:
[29:35] Bow and grace that's what it was last.

Tony:
[29:38] Time i co-assigned you

Justin:
[29:39] Yeah no well i mean that was a terrible idea

Jake:
[29:42] I did i was like we're just gonna go with ruby and then be wrong the whole podcast is probably gonna happen no so like yeah but at that point when they meet up with them they do like a bunch of haggling and they're both like really good at it and stuff because it's like early you know i don't know that's just a thing in that part of capitalism before it develops into its modern fiat currency stuff. It's normal to haggle. There's a part where he gets a parking spot and he grabs some kid off the street and he says, watch my car. I'll pay you this much money. And she's like, okay. And then he's like, no, haggle with me. You're supposed to do it like this. Let me teach you stuff I've learned from going to the big city and stuff and sussing out how this system actually works. So they do have this wisdom from going to this place. And it's like, they're in the South. So all these people have... You know, have these ideas of like, is it true up there? Like, is it, is it, can you make money? You know, is it different? Is it like the promised land? Is it, is it a way to get out of all this shit that's happening? Like Jim Crow down here and stuff.

Jake:
[30:45] And they kind of have this really solemn, ominous wisdom with them having gone up there and then sort of like not even wanting to tell everyone. No, it's not true, because clearly they got into some sort of situation where the way that they got out of it was tricking the Irish gang and the Italian gang by stealing beer from one and wine from the other and then playing them off against each other and skipping town and telling them, oh, the Irish stole your wine, you know? And then it's like, they're going to figure it out. That's why they had to skip town. So they've got all that stuff. They're going to use it as like capital to start this fucking thing. But they start to notice as everyone comes in a, you know, people, there are people they hired to work for him or like given the bar away, but also be when people do pay, they'll say like, I, uh, all I got's like these wooden nickels, which are company script.

Jake:
[31:44] And as I think it's stack is kind of like the kind of concerned business savvy one is like crunching the numbers. You started to realize there's no possible way for them to build a business enterprise in this economy basically where everyone's getting paid in company script because company script that you would get paid in in like the jim crow era is uh you know it's it's proportionally like one fifth of a dollar to a dollar or whatever the fuck the ratio is there it's it's watered down money that's good at the company store and is functionally a thing that kept uh freed slaves from being able to to just operate at the rate of white people and start businesses so there's like there's a lot like the black wall street thing from kansas sort of happening here um the the a big part of this story is like the, you know, the, the impossible dream of like.

Jake:
[32:50] Starting black businesses and being like a black like liberal kind of thing in society that competes with and you know is equal to all the white businesses which is like a thing that like you know even you get told still today like oh just do that and if it's not working then it's you're just bad at it or whatever but it was like rigged from the start it was never possible because it's a company script thing.

Tony:
[33:16] And that is kind of like a running thing about um that they kind of talk about with why they left chicago too is because they went to chicago to like you know go make money to go like make it big but at the end of the day they were like still working for white men you know and so like they they're like okay we need to work for ourselves we're gonna run this jug we're gonna do this and make this happen and so like that's a huge motivator in it is like again this attempt this struggle this this this wanting to like gain independence um you know without being reliant on on not only somebody else but specifically like you know a white man like that's that's you know if you can avoid it please do yeah

Justin:
[34:00] It was weird too because seeing all the wooden nickels those are like kitsch now in the south so you can go to like like the rattlesnake festival or whatever and they'll give you like commemorative wooden nickels and stuff and so i've had like wooden nickels my whole life and i never put it together that those would be used as like company script i just thought it was like i don't know like commemorative coins that people would make for cheap and i never realized that those were used as company money and now that makes the whole thing uh much more uh nefarious and ominous as kitsch in the same way that you know you get old reprints of confederate money down here

Tony:
[34:40] It's funny because it's like it it's it's already this you know um fake representation of a fake thing anyways like to start with and the fact that it actually was used that way it makes it so yeah it makes yeah because i remember like getting those from you know fairs and shit and even here in california um getting them from like uh you know fairs or like when i went to like i went to the grand canyon i think they had stuff like that there it's like for some reason it's americana and yeah as far back as you go it's been it's been it's been hollow capitalism

Jake:
[35:14] Yeah there's a lot of shit like that in the south that i like at first glance is just like oh it's a kitschy like your grandma has all these little statues you know what i mean and then the.

Justin:
[35:26] Fucking plantation gas stations in georgia always throw me always i'm like why did you make fake plantation houses for gas stations.

Tony:
[35:34] I did not know that was a thing.

Jake:
[35:36] Yeah, what?

Justin:
[35:37] Oh, yeah, you drive up like 75 or whatever, and every gas station is like, see the plantation, whatever, and it's just like a gas station. They say you're chocolate-covered almonds and shit.

Tony:
[35:47] Are we, like, even allowed to get mad at people getting married on plantations if they're still getting gas at fake plantations?

Jake:
[35:54] Get married to the gas station plantations. It's so romantic. Um so anyway yeah so they uh they throw on the party and then they start to notice the material reality thing the the you know this stuff come apart and then like a good you know heavy-handed supernatural horror movie along with this the other stuff starts to happen right so uh and there's like i don't know i'm probably missing some finer points here there's a lot of fun stuff going on with like love interests and shit and yeah.

Justin:
[36:30] There's a quick thing we skipped over and i like forgot about it but there's choctaw vampire hunters right yes crucial show up before this and like Because it's one of the things where you go back and rewatch it, they show up again. It's like the Irish had this, and in Africa they had this, and Choctaw had this when they're explaining these muses that are born. And I was like, Choctaw, that's an interesting one to throw in there. But then you have the vampire hunters who are chasing down Remick, the Irish vampire, to this clan couple. And he's like, please, these Choctaws are trying to steal my stuff and they killed my wife. And so they harbor him. And then the shock to like chase him and are trying to warn the lady uh and then she's like whatever get out of here and they see the the sun setting so like well we're done we can't do anything after night so they leave and then you find out that remick has uh changed her husband and they change her right

Jake:
[37:32] Right right yeah and as the party's going on uh people are showing up But then like the Remick, this Irish, like kind of weird, now that he's got his like little thrall, his two like Klansmen, husband and wife, he's formed a little like little 2010s Brooklyn Tweed kind of thing going on. They've got like their little cute ukuleles and fiddles and shit, and they're playing Irish folk music. And they come up on the party.

Jake:
[38:11] And but because they're vampires, the one vampire rule that's really big in this story, there's a few of them, but like this is the one that kind of functions as a plot hinge or whatever comes into play where they come to the party and they ask to come in. And it's you know really interesting and clever and confusing because it's a party and there's like i can't remember there's a cover or not and there's there's a um cornbread is the bouncer and stuff so they just get into a situation where it gets really suspicious like that they're trying to come in and also because they're uh they're white and they're you know they're kind of going like hey you don't why do you want to come in here you know are you trying to pull some shit and there's this kind of thing going on where they're like oh yeah but we're irish we're irish immigrants you know and we love music and you're playing music and they play their music and it's like hmm like there's something to it like this is kind of cool you know but is it really likes it.

Jake:
[39:15] And it like it i think it's worked as a really good metaphor for like the irish being on this hinge point historically of buying into whiteness because on some level you go far back enough irish people are you know they were colonized they have a fucking culture uh it is kind of cool but there's this point in history where it's in the we're i guess this is where we should bring up uh ignatia there's a book called how the irish became white and it tells a story about Irish integration into whiteness and the big, big thing that whiteness is in the patriarchy and the economic sense and the racial sense and everything in America, basically by virtue of like... Kind of buying into the democratic party, like a political machine doing a lot of subterfuge becoming cops. And the main point, I guess this book I'd say is that a lot of Moses was done by throwing, African Americans under the bus and making all of their politics like, no, no pick us and not them. We're better than them or whatever. And, and, uh, there, uh, that's so, i think that yeah there's an argument to be made that remick is like that process or whatever well.

Tony:
[40:40] I think that's actually a really important part to bring up is yes so like the like the like american irish you know has done this thing where it's kind of become racist you know there's a lot of anti-black sentiment within you know these like irish cops whatever whatever i have like irish uncles who'd said some really unsavory things to me growing up um but remick does come with this like genuine admiration and that's when you learn that he's like from the old world he's from ireland and he does remember oppression and that and that does speak to like actual irish people um you know like from ireland yeah and the and the long-running history of solidarity with oppressed people um you know everything from like the expressions we're saying today about palestine um back to you know collaborating with uh frederick douglas back in the day like there's always because they are an actual oppressed people in ireland um there that is so i think that his admiration it's is shown because he is from there he is not from america right

Jake:
[41:50] I guess to me this is where i'm like i'm not even 100 sure what i think he's supposed to be like Ryan Cougar's intention is because uh he to me I'm like he's the hinge point between these two things because he definitely is the old world but he out of survival also he's kind of become someone who works on vampire logic because he is a vampire and the only way to survive for him is to keep turning people right so he's kind of going around and trying to absorb people into his cult and like i mean also also to get back to the history like if you watch the movie gangs of new york there's some interesting stuff here going on where.

Jake:
[42:43] The the no nothing party is in the background of that film a lot that like a lot of the scenes take place in these like political halls or these big weird like american flags that they're configured a certain way i remember looking this up when i watched the movie but they're from this thing called the no nothing party which was a democratic party machine thing that i think a lot of irish people bought into if i remember correctly it plays into this somehow but it was very anti immigrant like it was the uh divide and conquer sort of kind of logic of uh you know capitalism imperialism whatever the fuck right uh and whiteness specifically and he i guess here's what i'm curious like everyone's perspective on right so i kind of came up with the conception of his cult as post racial in a lot of ways and that's where I think, he went from the old world Irish to what Irish people are now not Irish people but like the Irish identity or whatever in America as something that got absorbed into and like subjugated to and you know sort of bought into.

Jake:
[43:56] Whiteness as the power structure here because he you know he's.

Jake:
[44:02] You watch all these characters get turned like at first they're our friends and then they maybe even get bit off screen and like the next time you see them they're just kind of like hey it's great actually come out here don't worry about it hurts a little but it's fine and everyone's like buying into it and he's got this whole group of people that are all half of them are black now and stuff he's got some Chinese people in there and shit, and And he's like.

Jake:
[44:29] It very much reminded me of like the police and the way like in modern, you know, in America, there is within groups like ethnic groups and black people and Irish people and fucking Mexican people and stuff. You know we all got like we all know someone who's like don't listen to those fucking college kids like it's an opportunity it's a great opportunity that i'm going to go to the police academy and stuff like that and like you know we'll just rise up all of us and stuff and the whole kind of second half of this movie is that like kind of tragically playing out and there being like this one lone survivor at the end who's just you know can't do anything he can't overthrow it so he just started living out his days and remembering the last moment basically before everyone became post-racial in this way also i think we i skipped over probably like the biggest scene in the movie which is the one where uh right before all the vampire stuff happens sammy's playing guitar and it like breaks reality kind of.

Tony:
[45:32] Man you this is tough because like we we maybe we need to go because like i have those are the two things i want to talk about is that scene and what you just mentioned go

Jake:
[45:42] Off on both of them i'll put a note yeah yeah.

Tony:
[45:44] Um okay so the one of the things it's a pretty the it's a pretty blatant metaphor that's happening and it's something that i've always been pretty passionate about um is so one of the priority of of the vampire um is that one of the things he does is he doesn't you know just like suck your blood and make you you know um make you immortal but what he does is he takes on um your music that's part of his thing is he takes on your music and he became you know he's able to kind of master your music because music is one of the things that's most passionate about him it gives him a power it's it's that it's that vampire trope of being able to hypnotize this is the way they use it in this movie is music is how he hypnotizes um and and and to be frank um

Tony:
[46:33] Black American culture revolutionized music so much so that everything you hear that is known as modern music can be traced back to Black American culture. And I don't want to do the thing because I hate this thing where people are like, yeah, it's like tribal based. I'm not talking about Africa. I'm talking about Black American music. He is so drawn to this. He understands this and respects this so much that he wants this. But he also wants to take this on as his own, much as capitalism and commerce and marketing and record labels has vampired all that is black music and black culture and made it their own to do their own powerful thing. Because he's this powerful entity who is much more powerful than them in a literal sense that he is immortal and all that. So he can take their thing, use it as his own and do much more with it and profit off it much more than they ever could. And that's like a thing that really does happen like we're not even going to get into the whole policing aspect of it I mean I'm not going to get into the whole policing aspect of it it's a cultural thing

Tony:
[47:41] Recently we've kind of like discovered that America is kind of this hollow shell when it comes to the market right we don't have anything to export the only thing we really export is like war and culture but unfortunately I can't tax a Swedish guy for having cornrows right So like, this is where we're at now. And this, and it's something that I don't think people do talk enough about and actually understand the gravity of the impact of, of modern pop culture, modern, regular, you know, whatever the, the zeitgeist to the most basic person is influenced by black culture. And I think this was a this was like a very blatant um metaphor for the vampiric way that white culture has approached black culture

Jake:
[48:29] Yeah you know what I was thinking about a lot when I was getting into this part is like this funny thing about Israel where like.

Jake:
[48:41] Israel and the United States obviously very similar in like the project of genocide right and it's like manifest destiny shit or whatever things in common but the main difference i'd say is that uh the united states's culture maybe by nature of absorbing so many cultures or maybe by nature of just having cooked longer like is the vampire thing and it has the richest culture in the world because it fucking all the people it kills and dominates it all that stuff gets sucked up into it and you know there's kind of evil like it kind of sells that culture the culture of resistance back to people and stuff and it's like kind of warped in this weird way but like whatever I mean it still produces like all these things that everyone admires the other hand Israel their culture sucks the only thing that's good about it is stuff that is directly just ripped from the one people that they've occupied so like yep what's the only good Israeli food is like hummus or something you know that's just like Palestinian shit but without that left to its own devices Israeli culture produces like, like the worst dancing like you've ever seen in your fucking life just no soul you know there's no one there really to for them to just rip that shit off of it by nature of being this like.

Jake:
[50:05] Successful ethno state that secured itself it can't do this so it just has this like embarrassing soulless artless kind of quality to it it's.

Justin:
[50:15] It's florida it's the worst people in new york and new jersey go there so the worst people you know in new york move to israel to steal someone's house and also move into my neighborhood in florida to because they want to live in the suburbs the same class of people it's what always gets me about people talking shit about florida i'm like no that's your worst people keep coming down here and rebuilding this culture right over and over again

Jake:
[50:43] There's a hell of jewish culture that's a thing but like israeli culture is not, you know it's not a obviously the whole thing about israel is not equated one-to-one with judaism and it's it's the worst of you know even if it's i mean there's a lot going on there is it even all jewish people and stuff a lot most zionists are not jewish or stuff but it's yeah it's that it's like uh by nature of its project it's the worst most soulless thing you know well.

Tony:
[51:09] So a huge reality of culture, culture is logically dictated by art, whether people realize it or not, whether you're consuming it or not, does influence everything around you. A lot of this stuff that has influenced American culture that has become the world culture that is a byproduct of black culture was created in a vacuum of oppression. And you can't create good culture in a vacuum of dominance that only started, is it like 70 years ago? And also, I've seen a lot of bad DJs in Israel, not seen many black people there.

Jake:
[51:48] Right.

Tony:
[51:49] And so they're just playing themselves in that sense. um but yeah that's that's like that's unfortunately that is the sad truth about these things that we love that are that are deemed as like that we that we consume as culture from all all aspects you know um it's that whole thing it's you know rock and roll is black music like that's that but that is a byproduct of oppression and like that's how cool works what you need it's how cool works exactly yeah

Jake:
[52:17] I mean like rock and roll is like this thing that has such a funny history because it's at some point gets sold to white people and it's mind-blowing to white americans and it would not exist if not for whiteness subjugating black people in america and it's like in that moment of like some teenager in the 50s some white teenager hearing it for the first time at blowing their mind that should be like a lesson or whatever but it just happens over and over and over again in history of uh like people realizing like that there's an authenticity that they want their soul wants and it'll go as far as to adopt it from people who they've created the precarious conditions that created it or whatever.

Tony:
[53:11] Well it's also a thing where it's just like what's happened is it was commodified and made accessible and like the thing is whether we like it or not we do like things from people who look like us like i will be first i'll be the first person to say that i am probably going to be more inclined to like your hardcore band if you look like me and and that's just that's just the way it is but what happens is is that unfortunately um if we want to make a living off of this art we do need a rick rubin to co-sign you know to co-sign for d for def jam to make def jam happen with russell simmons it doesn't have like so def jam does not happen without russell simmons being co-signed by you know by his jewish friend rick rubin um who's like you know a smart savvy guy and run dmc doesn't get to be as popular if they don't also sign Beastie Boys alongside with it and make them tour together. You need an access point. Unfortunately, the access point is usually, oh, this person kind of looks like me, so they probably can understand what I'm feeling.

Jake:
[54:20] But I feel like with that exact process, because it's catering to white audiences, it's creating kind of a fake, almost like an invented history kind of thing. Because it's taking like the the spirit of having been the underdog in a situation and then making the person that's the face of it now a white person which is resolving the conflict in white americans heads which is that they are in the vampire cult and not in the fun party where you get to actually have a that's.

Justin:
[55:01] Yeah i want to do some discourse that's what i want to ask because there's obviously people saying like is parts of this movie pandering to the white gaze because there's that scene where remick says he starts doing the lord's prayer and he says oh yeah that language that faith those words were forced on us too drawing this direct lineage between like the african-american experience and the irish experience in ireland and for me that was where my eyebrows kind of shot up the most because like i mentioned before or the stuff I studied is very replete with white supremacists and they love talking, like saying shit like that. So people repeat it sometimes like serious black scholars will repeat it because, you know, they had a graduate assistant do that part because they didn't give a shit about it. Um, so I've seen this kind of stuff like show up in actual books about race and go, Oh no, please. You, the guy you're citing is a white supremacist. He's a Holocaust denier. So it happens. And yeah, but what do you think about like that critique?

Tony:
[56:00] A couple of things there is like, So, you know, the important thing...

Tony:
[56:08] There's like anti-black American racism is a very specific thing. It's a very specific particular thing that people don't realize even other black people participate in throughout the world. It's a very specific thing. And the truth of the matter is like I was referring to earlier is that, yes, he did that. But that is a real thing that happens when white people want to pander. It's not inaccurate. And if they mean it genuinely, then it's not a bad thing because like I was referring to earlier, Ireland, actual Irish people in Ireland, yes, the modern version is obviously like they're still like Protestant or Catholic and it's still Christians amongst Christians or whatever. But there is like an origin of yeah well i i had to get rid of my my old ways my old gods because i because i was you know imperialized so it's one of those things that sucks because it's real and it and it is and it is a thing that should be noted but is it actually being taken seriously is the different part and yeah people use to weaponize it but if you actually take it to heart then you do get things, like I said, like, you know, Frederick Douglass going on to work with Irish Marxists back then. And so, like, there is a genuine place for it. But, yes, it is mostly weaponized.

Tony:
[57:38] Another thing I wanted to mention about you were talking about...

Tony:
[57:43] We were talking about how making it accessible by looking like you. I do want to say the blame is still on white people and non-black people. And this is to say because the music's always been there. You just chose not to consume it the whole time. So one thing I do that is awful for all of my friends is oftentimes they'll have a band that's like a classic band or whatever. And I'll kind of just toss it aside because I'm instantly going to compare it to its black contemporaries. And typically it's i'm just gonna like that more it's probably gonna be a little bit better like i do a disco dj night every once in a while my only rule is i don't play abba and people fucking hate me for that but i'm like i fucking dare you to stop dancing i fucking dare you to stop dancing and then get in my face about putting some fucking ab on so yeah like the blame the blame is still on non-black people for not just genuinely consuming in the first place because it's always been there but you need you needed elvis's hands himself to like make it accessible and make it approachable you needed you know run dmc being not sorry you need bc boys being a little bit silly and having you know a hardcore route so you're like well they're not just rappers they also play like punk music and i know that's a that's you know that's a white rebellion thing even though you're you know still forgetting early black punk um but yeah so it's like the onus is still on everybody else I just need to make that clear no

Jake:
[59:09] For sure like white people who like Eminem and no other rap because that is the only way that they feel good about it that feeling I think there's like it's more like I don't even want to reduce it to just a feeling that feeling comes from like ideology like you can't, you can't, you can't make that argument on the grounds that it's just a matter of taste because that taste is formed from like understanding the very thing that you're talking.

Tony:
[59:37] About exactly yeah

Justin:
[59:38] Like that photo of the the three like white kids losing their mind in front of like a a sax solo like you don't need elvis to sell that they were at that show losing their minds genuinely but something in the culture tells them yeah but that's bad for you and that's you know i mean like like underground resistance to the nazis was like based around jazz like people you couldn't get white kids to stop listening to it yeah

Jake:
[1:00:02] The swing kids yeah.

Tony:
[1:00:04] Yeah i i mean that there were there were there were people in berlin who would house black jazz artists and let them you know work on music and fund their lifestyles to actually support and like nurture the art because they had a respect for it they weren't like show me so i can do it they were like nah like do you and yeah there's a rich history of that but unfortunately in order to have a modern jazz revival we need bad bad not good to make an album yeah and i'm you know i'm happy it happened because we're getting a lot of you know a lot of people who deserve credit are actually getting the credit they deserve right now and having a moment but let's be real in order for it to you know make its way back into like um to like pop culture into being popular amongst like young adults we they needed bad bad not good to do a fucking mf doom riff and that everyone's like oh maybe this jazz stuff is pretty cool

Jake:
[1:01:01] Yeah and it's uh yeah it's i see what you're saying because it's you're i feel like you're a hater for this sort of shit and this is a very good argument for your haterness about like, accessible shit like mf doom and so i'm understanding what you're saying now via this exact kind of conversation uh and it's it's like frustrating because it's it's uh undermining the original thing that's derivative of or whatever.

Tony:
[1:01:30] I'm a hater, but I'm usually right. I'll go ahead and say that.

Jake:
[1:01:36] No, this is a good case for exactly what you're kind of talking about. Because you talk about this shit a lot. It makes me laugh. But this is what this is. This is kind of making me also think of like, because they do a little bit in this movie of kind of making these concepts understandable by alluding to other ethnic groups and racial groups. There's just like these couple of Chinese characters. In the supernatural music part like when all these basically of his song you know breaks the space-time continuum and like all of these celibate like artistic things and dancers and shit from other parts of history just appear in the room and because there's fucking chinese immigrants hanging out some of them are fucking from chinese culture and stuff there's that there's the irish stuff um there's i.

Justin:
[1:02:24] Really wish they had gotten

Jake:
[1:02:25] Whoever made.

Justin:
[1:02:26] The mixes in the elvis movie because I was really underwhelmed by the music scene musically. But I'm like, if they had done a mix with all this stuff, and like really, really catchy, I'd be listening to it in fire every day.

Jake:
[1:02:41] I couldn't make it through the Elvis moves. I have no idea what you're referring to.

Justin:
[1:02:45] There's like all these mix-ups of Elvis and modern music and kind of rules.

Tony:
[1:02:49] I do think that in this scene, they did like prioritize, because you're right, there was an opportunity to have like you know a number one hit song right here off of a soundtrack i do think they prioritize the scene because this scene like i was talking jake about this um as a hater i was ready to like when this started to happen when all of a sudden you know he's playing his music and everything kind of slows down and like zooms out and zooms in and there's like people from other places in other times representing the cultures and all kind of demonstrating the history of dance and music throughout these cultures this should have been so corny they should have made me go like oh brother but they did it they did it pretty pretty in a way that felt felt good and felt earnest and i did look i did look over to my because i wasn't sure about i can only speak on so many things you know as a mixed man um i wasn't sure about like the chinese representation i did look over to my wajin girlfriend and she did give me a nod she said it's cool they're doing a good job um uh and so like that that made me feel good about also liking that scene yeah it should have been bad um but he pulled it off and like but you said there is a missed opportunity with the music i do think the music could have been mixed to prioritize the song rather than like the magic that was happening i see yeah i

Jake:
[1:04:07] Liked it a lot but as yeah as a scene in a movie i remember like Yeah, like really impressed in the theater. But I wouldn't go home and listen to it. It doesn't make sense without the visual. But I just brought that up because I wrote the Chinese part of it because I, Because with Orientalism being a facet of this, you just reminded me of a thing that I'm a huge hater for, which is that they made a white American version of the movie Old Boy, which is like a perfect movie. And I haven't seen the white one. I refuse to see it. I don't know why they would make it other than just this like the very cynical logic at play here which is that it will make money and it'll get white people to enjoy it more if it's hey that person looks like me which is fucking insane because white people also like to fetishize asian shit so you yeah tell them that movie i'm sure that would work in a racist way all its own but uh they fucking did that and it makes me be insane in.

Justin:
[1:05:07] This version he knows it's his daughter but he's just like like that

Jake:
[1:05:10] Yeah um it's a reflect white culture of course so yeah exactly they.

Tony:
[1:05:20] Actually do they actually do uh play dance with the devil um in it uh by what's his name uh

Jake:
[1:05:28] Immortal more.

Tony:
[1:05:30] Technique they do play the more technique song in it um during the scene

Jake:
[1:05:34] Um so I'm going to jam a quote in here from Ignatia is somewhat relevant, I think, but it's, uh, yeah, I think it's going to get me somewhere. So there's a quote from the, how the Irish became white, where he says whiteness, uh, since white was not a physical description, but one term of a social relation, which could not exist without its opposite white man's work, quote unquote, was simply work from which African Americans were excluded. And I think that point is, uh, it's very interesting because like.

Jake:
[1:06:09] A lot of Americans conception of race comes from a real facet of this, which is like, which does have to do with like skin color and the sort of arguments about race being, you know, something that is about discrimination and how the cops treat you when they pull you over and see you and stuff. But a material kind of function of it does have to do with like these origins of it being not defined by taking a bunch of like Caucasian people and going this color that they are is the best. It's a nothingness. It is. It's a it's a it's a social it's it's the great non race and non culture that everyone potentially can get absorbed into Irish story. It's kind of confusing in this light because the Irish people are fucking white skin tone or whatever. But I think about this a lot with regard to like this question of why the fuck there are so many brown ice agents and cops and stuff like that.

Jake:
[1:07:12] Because, you know, a lot of people in families like mine, everyone's got a fucking uncle who's all MAGA and shit. Everyone's got a brother or whatever that wants to be a cop. And the arguments they're making in our time are a reflection of, I think what's kind of going on with the post-racial nature of the vampire cult where they're like, you know, Oh no, no. And also the stuff with the clan guy going, that's all over. That's in the past. And him like representing a more overt.

Jake:
[1:07:45] Race like kind of identification that almost in in juxtaposition with the vampire cult it's like the clan guys the old world and the vampire cult being like we have black people in here and everything is kind of the new world that we live in where the the domination in play re-manifests itself by obscuring all that and almost using uh like the the the using all this stuff against itself and going let's define race specifically as like color now that we've defined it that way you can't call the cops racist because we have a couple black cops or whatever and it really at its core it's just one big group that has control of everything you know, uh and it's kind of both like i get that but um i think that like his his cult also.

Jake:
[1:08:43] Okay so there's another parallel and something i've been reading which i'll probably do an episode on later at some point because i know we're gonna kind of wrap this up at some point um but i've been reading this book called hammer and hoe which is about the kind of like tragic short-lived untold story of the communist party in alabama around this same time in the great depression which is oh.

Tony:
[1:09:03] I was i was wondering because like knowing you i wasn't i might have been like a hoe with a hammer

Jake:
[1:09:07] Oh it.

Tony:
[1:09:09] Might have just been like you know some good old-fashioned smut i thought we're gonna talk smut but okay now yeah what you're talking about let's talk about this book instead

Jake:
[1:09:17] It's actually a pickup artist book called how to hammer a hoe uh, uh i'm reading it with manufacturing consent it's a it's a it's a double whatever the fuck no uh it's about it's about like jim crow era communist party shit that happened in Alabama, which is um... One of the great untold stories of the left or whatever. Even communists in America historically were kind of unaware that this happened down here because it was separate from the communists in the north. And it manifested in a really specific way given the labor dynamics of the south and stuff like that.

Jake:
[1:10:00] And I'll probably do an episode on it at some point and get into the details of it. But like the kind of thrust of it is that in the beginning, communist organizing in the era of like, what is it? The mine mill, I think is what it's called, which is like one of the proto IWW unions that was really radical, like really, really offered an opportunity to lift Jim Crow era black Americans out of poverty and to like, you know, taught people literacy and stuff like that. And taught people all these things that the system sort of purposely keeps from them. And their kind of main obstacle for a while was the black middle class and the early NAACP and those sorts of organizations, which were much more into buying into the system and considered communism radical and were, uh, you know.

Jake:
[1:10:57] Like bought into like this kind of respectability, politics, dynamics and stuff. And kind of throwing the far left under the bus or whatever. And a lot of kind of long history dialectical processes happen. But basically, the argument that this author makes in Hammer and Ho is that the death of this is like kind of during World War II, I think. Maybe one. I can't remember. Fucking don't quote me on this. But the movement...

Jake:
[1:11:30] Got pretty, pretty weak and eventually absorbed into all the NAACP and black middle class stuff. And the absorption is where you lose any, any possibility of actually ever kind of liberating from it. It's like this kind of tragic self-defense tactic to just buy in because it just, it kills everyone and squeezes everyone outside of it for so long. And that's like, that's what I kind of I think the end of this movie is about where, you know, stack shows up to Sammy as he's an old band playing a show in Chicago. And he's been a musician his whole life. And they kind of just have this moment of having split paths. And you have this like one guy who they let live. Who's the last person from the era before the great absorbing blob thing. That is, it's called like took over everything and they just go like, that was the last fun day of my life. You know, that was the last time we were truly free i think is what the way they put it or whatever um because the.

Justin:
[1:12:30] The shop is like doomed from the beginning like they know they're not going to make enough money they know the clan's coming they've got weapons they're they they know that this isn't gonna last they're they're gonna get killed either by the gangsters from chicago when they figure out what happened or they're gonna get killed by the clan or they're gonna run out of money so this is kind of just like defiance in the face of all of the odds that they're in

Jake:
[1:12:56] Yeah and like what were you saying about like the authentic art coming from the struggle and then people in the safe part in the cult that they got absorbed into wanting that that art still uh it's like that's what the true like the truly sad thing about, whiteness taking over everything and offering people safety within itself is that you know That's like a Faustian deal. If you buy into it, it's a grift. And part of that is that you lose meaning. And case in point, people inside of whiteness, even though they will tell you, oh, it's great, it's the best system ever, get in here, be a cop, capitalism will save all of us and all this stuff, their soul still tells the truth, which is that they they would they would rather have an authentic experience you know and that's why that's why all the co-option is happening i guess the argument i'm making that's why you know elon man in the world but he still he just wants to wants to be cool yeah and you can't be cool when you when you're in when you sold your soul like that you know.

Tony:
[1:14:06] I mean it unfortunately it's a thing where it's like you know uh in america if you're not part of the ruling class if you're not a white man um one of the the way the way you can survive the way you can survive um and maybe not and only kind of care about the people like literally closest to you potentially is to like assimilate you know and the the ultimate way to like to to assimilate is to like literally join join the boot that's that is on top of you you know and like but you forget that you're doing that, like you said, you're doing that at the cost of everything that you come from.

Tony:
[1:14:54] But if you don't care about where you come from, then you don't care about what's happening to the people who still do care about where you come from, you know? So it's like, yeah, you might be, you know, like you said, seeing all these non-white ICE agents is so wild because it's like, man, you don't have like memories of these people playing a role in your life. Like, where did you grow up and why do you not care about that? Like you're ready to throw that all away just because you think this is going to make your life easier it um and and i kind of understand it because like you know as a teen i would like relax my hair um you know but then i fucking grew up and realized it's it's it's a it is about everybody around you and this is about preserving where you come from in a positive fashion in a way that you know that works um and you know now i'm like a fucking you know pan-african marxist So it's like, you can get there, but not everyone does. And it's really, it's, it's heartbreaking every time.

Jake:
[1:15:54] Yeah. And like seeing people trying to resolve that contradiction, it's just obvious. You can tell like, it doesn't work. Like I'm thinking about like during the protests out here, there was like guys that would show up. There were like a cyber truck that drove like through the streets at one point. And we all started booing, but then we realized they had a Mexican flag hanging out of the back of it and we're like oh this person doesn't realize these things are highly contradictory like they bought in and are still trying to make it like oh no i didn't this is good actually for us and if you talk to that person long enough you know you might they might be like totally like they're just a betrayer of mexican shit and they're just like let's listen to some benson boone and you're oh my god what happened to your soul you know but they also but they might not be they It might be like trying to resolve the contradiction by actually being like, no, no, no, this is totally good for us and stuff like that. And that is, you know, eventually that contradiction splits open and you start to realize glaring things about it that don't make sense. And if you talk to that person long enough, it will kind of come, just will make itself obvious that like, yeah, you cannot be like part of La Rasa and also an Elon guy at the same time. Despite your fucking your best attempts but like that contradiction is everything being fucked up right now is that being jammed into a fucking hole that it doesn't fit in and not fucking working.

Tony:
[1:17:23] I mean, that's a lot of, you know, it's, you know, the importance of maintaining, you know, class analysis and everything you do, especially when you're viewing something like a racial lens, because, you know, an exercise that, that, you know, Americans, you know, minority Americans have done forever, is to show off materialism to show off your goods to, and, you know, even if it doesn't, even if it is in a way that is not accepted by white people, my chains i i'm wearing my you know my my my you know i have spree wheels on my truck and those are expensive and i did that so if i can do this then i must be valuable yeah you know and that's the thing that's always happened so like they still don't understand like having a cyber truck is a way to say i have money i have money i made it in america despite you not wanting me to right you didn't want me to do this you didn't want to you you never wanted to see a mexican flag on a Cybertruck but I did it and it's done and that's because they're going through this without without the lens of class and the effects of capitalism because again it's another way to assimilate it's another way to like to pass well

Jake:
[1:18:39] That's I mean that's in a nutshell my take on this movie is that's what the vampire cult is is, someone trying to make that argument and you know Marxism and like being fucking woke and shit and being conscious is a way for us to access the thing that gets lost and in the metaphor of this movie the thing that gets lost isn't even like you know it isn't really presented through like Marxist lens it's just like fucking humanity you know which is what Marxism is the thing that's kind of like helping us identify as being alienated which is yeah it's all the same kind of story it's just understanding that but uh yeah it's just losing your fucking soul you know.

Justin:
[1:19:18] Like when when cornbread gets turned he immediately the way he talks starts changing yeah uh which is like the most jarring thing of him trying to like ask to be let back in and he's like well we're just here together aren't we and uh we we need to have love and then it's so unsettling to watch him just like his whole affect changes because i guess like the vampire is trying to figure out his memories and trying to work out what's gonna work to get inside but that's that's the thing about like what is the vampirism because the first time i watched it i was kind of like i don't know i think it's vampires kind of got a point and then the second time it's like it's because it's undercut because like stack at the end is his own person stack and and uh marry or their own people so it's kind of confusing uh because they're no longer under his thrall and they seem to be their own personalities but the idea that vampirism is the Cybertruck with the Mexican flag, I think actually makes a lot of sense.

Jake:
[1:20:20] That's my take. I don't know if I have any other huge ideas to contribute. If anybody has any other thoughts on this.

Tony:
[1:20:25] Even to meld yours two together, when they do meet up again, he's still playing the blues, but Stack is now doing, and Stack now has a late 80s hip-hop rap fit on. They both have very 90s hip-hop fits on. And so they did, you know, they did, like, evolve and assimilate a bit where he's continued to play his blues. And so there is a bit of that, too. So there, you know, you definitely there is a melding of the two, I think.

Jake:
[1:20:59] Yeah, that's interesting. Ow, I can't just bit me. Yeah, he's like kind of stuck in time and he's just like solemn and he's hearkening back to a thing because like, well, because there's he's the only one. Right. so his yeah can't be a culture he's like one human so he can't uh evolve some sort of like neo blues thing he's just sort of like he's stuck in the past like a ghost whereas the, stack being like part of the he's like look this is we all went this way you know and it's surviving in sort of a way so he's not even like a ultimate i don't think in that final scene i don't think he's presented as like a villain really no it's like you know this this is how we got along this is how we survive they're they're.

Tony:
[1:21:49] Almost like envious because like they have to kind of stay young they have to kind of like keep on appearances

Jake:
[1:21:54] Yeah you.

Tony:
[1:21:55] Know where he gets to like live on and you know actually experiencing growing old and um that what that's like you know so that i think yeah they don't think they come off as villains at all

Jake:
[1:22:07] No, there's a lot of just, like, syncretism and survival in this story. Like, syncretism is the idea that, like, you know, stuff when, like, in colonization, voodoo is syncretism. It's stuff that was being threatened to be stamped out by the French. They launder it into Catholic saints and stuff like that. There's a lot of that shit in Mexican culture. Like, the Lady Guadalupe, I always fucking talk about her. Her origin is a really fucking cool human sacrifice figure called Serpent Skirt that's got a snake for a head and all this stuff. And so in order to preserve that, while the Spanish are killing everyone, we hid it inside of Catholic shit. And that's kind of a process in all of this as whiteness, as this blob that absorbs everything. That's kind of just how everyone keeps the authenticity and the humanity of all this stuff like alive uh and it's yeah it's a fucking sad image you know to end on but it's like accurate i guess in my opinion all right yeah.

Justin:
[1:23:12] Re-watching it yeah re-watching it was what made me try and like understand the horror of people being turned because you watch their you know it's explained to you their soul is suppressed they're no longer their own person And so like, you know, the horror is kind of like a slow creeping one where you realize like they're not actually having a good time. They are in a thrall in a way. But yeah, it was just so confusing because Stack just because he's the star of the movie keeps having to like be this character. So he doesn't come off as a suppressed, tortured person. He seems like he's having a great time. So yeah.

Jake:
[1:23:51] Yeah, I don't know. It's both, you know? Yeah. It would be incredibly stark to make it that, to argue the point that hard, that there's no humanity left in anyone anymore. I think it's just, maybe the point is that it's kind of hidden, or it's suppressed, you know? And if you're a communist, the goal is to kind of get it back, right?

Justin:
[1:24:14] Yeah.

Jake:
[1:24:15] Not to be a Luddite, not to be like, let's destroy everything and go back to before this, but to move forward and synthesize. Because like, I was thinking about when we were talking about music is like.

Jake:
[1:24:26] Better music comes from like the struggle, right? But a lot of people argue that better art also comes from having all the means, which is a lot of people who are like tech dork and right-wing people argue. But to some extent, that's true. I mean, you can make really cool stuff when you have all this technology the best art i would argue comes from um synthesis which is having the struggle and the means at the same time so like as a comic you a lot of comics say like um they wrote their best material when they were broke and then they got successful and they have this paradox happen where you're like oh now that i like i'm able to do this whenever i want i don't have the sauce anymore because my life is stupid and meaningless and uh i can't write jokes that like that people can relate to that's the struggle right but i i got all these tour dates and i can go on comedy central and stuff so you have the access some people write the greatest shit of their entire career right at that nexus point where they still have the struggle and they just got access to shit and then they taper off because now they've got access and they don't have any authenticity and like i don't know i kind of think like in the future if communism happens you that contradiction gets resolved and art will be really good because people's lives will have meaning and they'll have like the tools to make it all and that's like that that's that's how you that's how this comes back to communism i guess.

Tony:
[1:25:55] Yeah, absolutely.

Justin:
[1:25:58] Yeah, you've got to watch all the comics who finally make it get on a Zempic, and so suddenly all their fat guy material doesn't work anymore.

Jake:
[1:26:07] The real struggle.

Justin:
[1:26:09] Yeah, it's a real struggle.

Tony:
[1:26:11] That's why you can always fall back on slurs, you know? If you lose some weight, you can always fall back on using slurs. And then telling everyone else that, you know, they're stupid, and they just don't get it, that you're funny.

Jake:
[1:26:25] Yeah and the they're the real victims or whatever okay um i think uh i think that's that's all i got um we gucci everybody feel like they yep.

Tony:
[1:26:37] Banger of a movie definitely if you haven't seen it yet definitely see it uh i'm excited to re-watch it i only saw it the one time in the theater but i've been wanting to re-watch it um and i'm excited that i get to again um and also with uh you know y'all's inside it so that's kind of fun too

Jake:
[1:26:53] Yeah it was good i was uh kind of i don't want to say i was surprised but i just like it threw me a little bit and not that hard because i don't i haven't thought about this that hard but i just had this one conception in my head of ryan coogler from like black panther and how you know the online left when that came out was like what the fuck bro you made the black panther the enemy you kind of did you know you kind of arguably like switch this around in a way that doesn't work and i'm not sure what the fuck how that plays into his creative vision and his story my one of one theory rolling around my head is like maybe you had to make a marvel movie to get the bag so you could make your more authentic story in something like sinners or something i don't know but uh it was really good i'm fucking stoked to see what else uh you know this dude can spit.

Tony:
[1:27:44] That was one thing that I had a little apprehension because I just didn't know anything about Ryan Coogler. All I knew is that he did Black Panther. And then he's going to do this movie depicting this thing that I care about. And at first I was like, oh, man, I don't know about this. And I saw interviews with him. And I heard the way he talked. And I was like, man, if I find out this motherfucker is like a Nepo baby, I'm going to be so mad. And then I looked into him. And he's from the Bay. He actually you know he from a you know a working class home and like actually grinded and did the whole thing and i think that is exactly why he can make this movie like you're saying yeah because he does he does you know he does come from working you know working class struggle bay area being a black man in the bay area you know he does come from that and he also has held on to that which is why he does you know still speak the way he does he doesn't code switch um uh and like it and i think it was important that he did make this and that's why it did work um so you know so well i think if i found if i found out that you know almost the exact same movie was made um the exact same movie couldn't be made by some by you know by a rich kid um and it definitely comes through but like to speak on your you know coming from struggle but also coming from means the compromise between the two yeah

Jake:
[1:29:06] Or like getting the means i mean you know the meritocracy is not real but it's possible sometimes that happens i think that you know that he might be an example of someone who has the sauce who made it through successfully and got the fucking job and then uh was able to produce something like this because uh i agree seems very authentic he's got a cool fucking voice i love those clips where he was talking about like film shit and perforations and stuff. It's fucking badass. Your brain is just used to hearing some NPR guy talking about shit like that. He's just a very cool guy. That makes sense to me.

Justin:
[1:29:46] Yeah seeing as soon as i saw the trailer and i saw this again like some robert johnson meeting the devil kind of stuff which was how the trailers were it's like oh someone meets the devil and he's a blues player and i was like i'm hooked i'm gonna see this um and then actually getting into the movie and seeing what it was and like the way it's gonna talk because i was expecting kind of like i don't know like um what's that one that's the the odyssey uh the oh brother depression yeah yeah it was going to be like kind of an oh brother where art thou kind of thing about meeting the devil or whatever and it's going to be like a an escapade kind of thing and then you see this actual like action horror movie that's like horror is such like a low budget kind of thing it's it's that's why this movie works is because it's like hitting you over the head with stuff that otherwise wouldn't work and i think that's why horror is so interesting as like it's like working class film style that's like get it you get it are you scared what's you know is this isn't this shit crazy kind of approach that doesn't have to be super high-minded yeah

Jake:
[1:30:54] I know that's part of the genre that's like uh it's it's like comedy in that ways where it's like a low art form like it doesn't it doesn't have the fucking funding that like a big drama has or something but it also doesn't suffer from the limitations because it's like it's flown under the radar for so long because it's considered like trash so that it's just shaped a different way and you can do all this cool stuff with it and it's also been the thing for so long it's part of the culture so now it is like a truly um you know an homage to actual american reality and storytelling and uh came back around that way or whatever and um yeah i kind of think like sorry my last point but like for that reason like because it's so heavy-handed a lot of people i think... I kind of want to talk about this on mic because I feel like people got a really bad case of Dunning-Kruger effect with this, where they watched it and...

Jake:
[1:31:47] Think that they got the really simple message therefore it's dumb and it's just like they kind of but they missed the smart stuff that was embedded in it because they're like yeah whatever it's it's from dusk till dawn it's the same movie like what what's the fucking point you know yeah yeah and like the same thing i feel like happened in with horror with a horror movie with uh like the x trilogy the uh what's her face mia goth like it makes me so angry when people talk about the first one especially where they go yeah it's texas chainsaw massacre i mean it was cool it was like an homage but like you know i guess it was a cool horror movie what's the deal same thing it's like you if you you've done in kruger that or you convinced yourself you figured the whole thing out by getting the very obvious part of it you missed the subtext because that movie's about the fucking patriarchy the same way this is about like race and stuff uh actually kind of similar.

Jake:
[1:32:38] In the that way maybe good double feature or whatever but anyways um stop yapping i gotta get the fuck out of here and take care of some shit so thank you for listening if you enjoyed uh if you're a fan of pda and uh you want to hear me and justin talk about shit like this we're watching the show preacher on our little side project here the preacher and the slave um and if you're a pda fan or if you're from that i don't know listen to the other one if you're in la i have a show on the 25th at the lyric hyperion raising money to buy out uh the vendors in my old neighborhood in MacArthur Park. They're getting raided by ice. I've got really great comics. I've got James Adomian and my friend Ramin and my friend Sara, all the people you've seen me with before if you come see me. But I'll put the tick link up and the Patreon and everything. Anybody else?

Tony:
[1:33:29] No, but you know, I don't have a show to follow anymore, but you can follow me for future shows. I'm like Word is Bonner, Word is Bonn TV on everything. You can find me there. And yeah, I'll probably be at Jake's show so see you there

Justin:
[1:33:44] I'll put up the flyer for it also this is a video podcast so on the Patreon for Preacher and the Slave it's going to be the uncut version that YouTube won't take down so we put scenes from the show in the background so it's not just watching us yet but I'm also like editing in a lot of fun stuff and having fun doing video editing so

Jake:
[1:34:04] Get on our Patreons for that also I took my clothes off in the video and you missed it if you didn't sign up so get on that it's unedited.

Justin:
[1:34:13] I've got a succession of sluttier outfits that I've been saving for the video episode so nice

Jake:
[1:34:19] Yeah alright it's finished.