Over the weekend, I did my part, joining the legion of theatergoers to see Ryan Coogler's period piece vampire film, Sinners, starring Michael B. Jordan. The film rips: I laughed, I went "Oh shit!" a bunch, and I wept when the credits rolled. In the wake of seeing the film and seriously contemplating seeing it again, I finally peeked at some of the online chatter that I'd been avoiding so that I could go into the film with as fresh eyes as an entertainment blogger who has watched its trailers could.
Given Sinners’ massive box office success, it has unsurprisingly become a prime target for highfalutin discourse. Key among this is reductive interpretations, such as framing its message as "Don't invite white people to the cookout" or heralding religion as the cast's ultimate salvation, both of which fall short of encapsulating the film's essence and depth. However, one interpretation centering on a pivotal decision by an Asian character named Grace has veered into gross, toxic territory about the nature of solidarity between Black and Asian Americans. What began as lighthearted memes dragging Grace's choice like Star-Lord's infamous moment in Avengers: Infinity War has spiraled into some assuming the role of armchair sociologists to argue her actions reflect transactional and insincere allyship between Black and Asian folks.
Frankly, the Grace discourse has gotten so out of hand that I feel compelled to tap into my inner F.D. Signifier and weigh in on how I think these interpretations of the film's East Asian character are reductive and undermine the whole point of the film.
Spoilers for the movie you should watch.
Grace (Li Jun Li) and her husband, Bo Chow (Yao), are an Asian couple who not only share a deep friendship with Michael B. Jordan's Smoke and Stack but also represent the often under-acknowledged East Asian immigrant community in the Jim Crow-era Mississippi Delta. As local apothecaries, they play a crucial role in supporting their community and are instrumental in helping bring the film's Juke party to life. However, the merriment takes a dark turn when vampires, led by their Irish figurehead, Remmick (Jack O'Connell), surround the shed and start picking folks off one by one. In Sinners, vampires adhere to familiar lore, requiring an invitation to enter homes. However, a unique twist to their transformation is that they become part of a hive mind, with their spirits bound and unable to reach the afterlife unless pierced by a wooden stake. Amid the chaos, Grace asks Bo to retrieve their car so they can return home to their daughter, but tragedy strikes when he is also turned into a vampire.
As the story moves into the latter half of the second act, the main cast finds themselves in a drawn-out standoff with Remmick's growing vampiric horde. The horde even manipulates their collective consciousness to provoke or tempt the group into inviting them in and embracing eternal life with them. Matters reach a boiling point when Remmick, exploiting Grace's native tongue, gets gross about Grace and Bo's sex life and threatens their daughter. Understandably fed up, Grace bites Stack, whose hand muffles her mouth to keep her from screaming, and invites the vampires in, triggering the film's climactic showdown.
Many have taken to chirping on TikTok and Twitter, labeling Grace as the film's "crashout" — yet another piece of Black slang that has increasingly become detached from its original meaning. Others have gone even further, branding Grace as bad optics for Black and Asian solidarity, calling her stupid, selfish, and the most irritating character in the movie. They argue she was never really down with the cause and abandoned her allyship the moment her proximity to whiteness threatened her family's peace, leaving Black folks in a lurch.
@boopyape There’s so much power in shutting t f up
♬ original sound - Abe 47
But Grace isn't a mom who acted out of selfishness; she's entirely in the right. Framing her decision as endemic to an "us vs. them" narrative between Asian and Black communities, where she and Bo were supposedly driven solely by profit margins to join the juke party and inevitably betray the group, completely misses the point of the scene. The group was already hesitating over their next move, with the alternative of holding out only leading to Remmick's horde growing stronger, taking over the rest of the town, and leaving them no safe haven. Even if they somehow enlisted the vampire-hunting Choctaw Native American tribe in some hypothetical MCU-styled expanded universe spinoffs (please, no), the odds were stacked against them. Sinners had been building towards this moment, where the juke party inciting a last stand was the best bet to eliminate as many vampires as possible and prevent the threat from escalating further. Why get caught up in the bureaucracy of dealing with vampires when you can nip it in the bud?
Grace's decision also led to the most metal and heartbreakingly romantic scene in the film — her stabbing Bo in the chest as the two immolate together. It was a tragic end to them, but one that promised she'd reunite with her fine-as-hell husband in the afterlife. Her decision was essential, jolting everyone out of their stalemate and to squabble up; anyone saying otherwise is wrong.
The rhetoric framing Grace's pivotal decision as emblematic of anti-Black and Asian solidarity is not only gross but also entirely at odds with the film's overarching theme. Sinners emphasizes how music connects us to our ancestry and builds bonds between folks within America's cultural melting pot. Grace's choice wasn't an act of betrayal — it was the most practical and necessary option given their dire circumstances. Twisting her decision into a narrative about false allyship drowns out the nuanced discussions this film genuinely deserves.
