Fifth Annual Symposium on Pop Culture and International Law: “I Am Your Way Out” – Reading the Violence of Validation in International Law Through the Movie Sinners

[Reabetswe Mampane is an assistant lecturer in the Department of Public Law at the University of Pretoria. 

Babatunde Fagbayibo is a professor in the Department of Public Law at the University of Pretoria.]

In one of the scenes in the movie Sinners, the Irish vampire, Remmick, employs a form of ‘fellowship rhetoric’ to entice the Black patrons of the juke joint to join his vampire community. Remmick specifically states: “I am your way out. This world already left you for dead. Won’t let you build. Won’t let you fellowship. We will do just that. Together. Forever.”  

This invitation at first appears innocuous – an offer to join in community with a like-minded individual who has experienced a similar colonial trauma to the Black patrons of the juke joint. However, when assessed through a deeper and more critical lens, Remmick’s proposal is revealed to be a gimmick intended to scrub the Black patrons of their own identity, forcing them to abandon their existence in order to participate in a fellowship of Remmick’s own design. He is, after all, arguing that the Black patrons’ way out of the brutalities of Jim Crow South-era racism is by becoming a vampire like him and moving through the world as he does. 

Remmick’s “fellowship rhetoric” is similar to the way in which the Global North promotes Eurocentric political and economic values and principles as “universal”. Through this, the Global South is expected to adopt neoliberal politico-economic orthodoxy, which often includes institutional and ideological practices. In the context of international law, scholars and practitioners are expected to operate within the Eurocentric parameters of the discipline. Like Remmick, the validation structures of international law ensure that the “I am your way out” ideology is consistently reinforced, accompanied by an implicit threat of punishment for any form of dissent. In other words, the “fellowship rhetoric” is tinged with the refrain: “I’m (always) right, you’re (definitely) wrong!”

In this essay, we will use this and other scenes in Sinners as a metaphor to explore the violence of Eurocentric validation in international law. In this context, violence is not only the killing or maiming of a people, but also the systematic erasure of their knowledge systems. Remmick’s proposal to the Black patrons to abandon their achievements and join his utopian vampire community is similar to the agenda of neo-liberal prophets who prescribe ill-suited, abstract solutions to developing countries. 

A Hegemonic Proposal

Remmick’s invitation to join his vampire community is steeped in hegemony. According to Remmick, the only way in which the Black patrons can live a life of legitimacy, one in which they can “build” and “fellowship”, is if they allow themselves to be dominated by him, become a vampire like him, and move in the world as he does. This is not dissimilar to the manner in which Euro-America has packaged and presented its politico-legal ideology to the global South as the only legitimate way in which to practise and engage with the law, much to the exclusion of other ways of knowing in the world.

Joining in fellowship with Remmick requires one to operate within an extreme form of collective consciousness, what is described as a “hive mind”. The “globalisation” of Remmick’s “fellowship rhetoric” is a tactic he uses to validate the idea that the only way for the Black patrons to exist as legitimate beings in the world is to join him as vampires. In other words, they are expected, without a choice, to surrender their entire autonomy to become part of the “hive”. This is similar to how international financial institutions present “choiceless” options to developing economies, with the promise of pathways to political and economic prosperity. Interestingly, but perhaps unsurprisingly, Remmick tries to convince the Black patrons to join him by referring to the shared trauma of colonialism experienced by Africans and Irish people. He also invokes the similarities in spiritual connections with ancestors through music. This is what Fernand Braudel refers to as “a process of both infiltration and superimposition, of conquest and accommodation”. 

The Violence of (Eurocentric) Validation 

For centuries, the presentation of Eurocentric ideology and principles as the only yardstick for determining who or what is included or excluded from the discipline has resulted in all kinds of violence. Similar to Remmick’s annihilation of the Black patrons after they rejected his proposal, Eurocentric ideas were used to justify slavery, colonialism, theft of cultural artefacts, and unbridled interference in the affairs of countries in the Global South. This is also reflected in how the international community responds to international conflicts and determines which civilians are worthy of protection. A glaring hypocrisy is the reaction to the conflicts between Ukraine and Russia on the one hand, and Israel and Palestine on the other. In the former case, there was a swift rallying of support behind Ukraine, a European nation that was on the cusp of joining NATO when its war with Russia broke out following Russia’s invasion of it. Generally, the international community was quick to accept that Russia was the aggressor in that case, and was deserving of punishment swiftly meted out in the form of sanctions and bans from participating in international activities. The Israel – Palestine conflict of course has a different history, with the United Nations determining that Israel has committed genocide in Gaza since October 2023. However, in this case the international community has been slow to condemn Israel’s conduct since October 2023, finding every possible avenue to defend its actions. 

The violent suppression of resistance by liberation movements or those who propose alternative politico-economic ideas of self-determination is why Makau Mutua noted that the third world’s historical view of international law is one of “domination and subordination”. Violence also takes the form of the long-lasting after-effects of neoliberal economic policies, which further entrench inequality and multidimensional poverty in the Global South. These policies strip people of their dignity and further erode trust in national and global governance structures.

Excluding people and their knowledge systems from the ideative ecosystem is also a form of violence. This not only inferiorises them, but also denies them the dignity of agency. Mia Mottley, the prime minister of Barbados, noted that people lose their sense of agency when they are unseen, unfelt and unheard. Remmick’s ultimate intention of using the music created and performed by the Black patrons for his own purposes, with complete disregard of the Black patrons’ agency, is a relatable example in this respect. For Remmick, the validity of the Black patrons accepting him as their “way out” and believing his “fellowship rhetoric” does not lie in their agency or autonomy, but in how useful they are to him in achieving his ultimate goal of erasing any trace of their existence from the creative process. Eventually, Remmick’s proposal is met with a visceral rejection by the remaining Black patrons of the juke joint. They see the proposal for what it is: a replacement of the racism of the Jim Crow South with a form of slavery that binds them to a lifetime of hiding from the sun and feeding on human blood. Importantly, it is a way of life that they have not chosen for themselves. In this sense, one could say that the Black patrons are asserting their dignity of agency in refusing to accept Remmick’s gimmicky “way out” offer. 

Sinners is a good example of the confrontation of the dominant and the subordinate, and the violence the latter experiences as a result of that confrontation. When insisting on asserting their existential agency, the Black patrons were met with a violent end, one that threatened their physical and psychological existence. Although a tragic conclusion to their lives, their refusal to be dominated by Remmick is a lesson in the validation of self through resisting the uniformalisation of knowledge. As the African saying goes, many roads can lead to the market.