Repeat after me: spit is vanilla
Sinners has a 'spit in my mouth' scene. Why are people freaking out?
Sexy vampires immediately make me think of Twilight. Admittedly, I haven’t watched all the films, though CGI Renesmee does haunt my nightmares. However, when I was a tween, I inhaled these pulpy, heterosexual propaganda novels, page by page.
Nominally this franchise is about vampires. Realistically, it’s about being a teenage virgin in a small town and pinning all your pent-up erotic fantasies onto a walking red flag. (Or, in Edward’s case, not having had sex for 90 years.)
In the case of Sinners, the latest entry into the blockbuster vampire genre, the story has considerably more layers than Twilight. (That is, after all, to be expected: Stephenie Meyer’s efforts at plot and dialogue are worst than most Wattpad entries).
If you haven’t seen it, here’s an explainer: Thankfully knocking A Minecraft Movie of the box office top slot (when will the video game adaptations stop?), Sinners is a supernatural, blues musical from filmmaker Ryan Coogler, of Black Panther fame, and an exploration of identity, generational trauma, and racial politics in Jim Crow-era Mississippi.
As you may have guessed from the above description, the film flips plenty of expectations about what makes a vampire film. And that may well be why viewers have been, alternately, discomfited and titillated by one scene which languorously embraces the erotic connotations of the genre — seeing Hailee Steinfeld’s Mary and Michael B. Jordan’s Stack engaged in a little spit play. Or, rather, drool play.
See, in this world, vampires are pretty synonymous with spit. They quite literally salivate at the thought of human blood and this is important to keep in mind because, after she’s turned by a couple of Irish vampires, a vampirified Mary seduces Stack in a scene which is a testament to the duo’s tangible sexual spark. They wind up having sex in a back room and as Mary gets closer to attacking her prey, Stack points out that she’s drooling. Her reply? “You want some?”
It turns out, he does.
Much has been made of this scene. On the one hand, there are slo-mo fancam edits and people on TikTok wondering, perplexed, how it was shot. On the other, a highly visible X post and a popular TikTok, both with very similar wording, argue some variation of: “Sinners is about how the people who spit in each other’s mouths are the most evil people amongst us”.
The commentary is divided, but one thing is clear: audiences are not being normal, not in any way. Case-in-point: guys on Reddit insinuating that the scene made them want to jerk off in the cinema.
As everyone seems to have forgot, fluid exchange is kind of central to the concept of the mythical beings which we call vampires. We can’t deny that this whole blood-drinking premise is pretty visceral, physical and, yeh, sensual. Just think of the goosebumps of anticipation. The gnawing hunger. The chiselled teeth sinking into a firm neck. The elasticity of the skin lapsing into an orgy of flesh. It’s all, pretty obviously, a metaphor for sex.
Of course, sex and vampires aren’t just linked cinematically, they’re mythically tied, too. In folklore, there are vampiric female demons like succubi, who feed off of their male victims by coming to them in their dreams, seducing them and literally sucking the life (ahem, cum) out of them. In Victorian literature, lesbian vampires like Carmilla form intense, pseudo-sexual relationships with their female prey and find creative ways to ruffle some petticoats and rip some bodices.
Despite being a class of undead beings, vampires are all about appealing to our most human appetites: straight-forward lust, rebellion from social norms, and erotic power. They represent the animal within us, jostling for a position on top (of the food chain).
But, of course, you knew all that: so back to the drool at hand.
For me, the furore, just highlights that the people who talk the loudest on the internet are divided into two camps: the painfully horny, and the painfully puritanical. I don’t think any of these people know what they’re talking about.
So, let me deliver the only verdict you need to hear on droolgate: asking someone to open up wide and take your saliva? It’s a lot less kinky than letting them suck your blood.