The Underground Railroad: 02 - South Carolina
Amazon Studios“Who built all this?”, asks Caesar at the end of the first episode of The Underground Railroad, referring to the titular subterranean transportation system he and Cora are about use to escape their hellish existence on a Georgian plantation.
“Who builds anything in this country?”, he is told in return, which is an answer aimed at him and the audience in equal measures. After all, this story has a purpose that transcends the mission statement of televisual entertainment and is yet to be fully revealed, even though its fundamental parameters are crystallized enough to be discerned.
In this second episode of the series, Cora and Caesar – having boarded the underground train – have successfully evaded capture and found sanctuary in a town of Griffin, South Carolina, where they have been given new identities. Caesar is a builder, whereas Cora works at a museum as a performer. This sudden change of scenery surely is meant to jolt the viewer. The two characters no longer wear dirty rags, nor do they live under the overt jackboot of any slave-owner. They do not get to witness torture executions or experience constant physical abuse on a daily basis. They seem incorporated into the society. They wear elegant clothes. They have roofs over their heads. They are free to roam the streets. However, this new-found normalcy proves to be short-lived as a slave hunter Ridgeway (Joel Edgerton) is sent after them and – moreover – the seemingly idyllic town full of polite and well-meaning folks is not what it looks like. Beneath the courteous smiles and well-mannered behaviour of the white inhabitants of the town lies not only a thinly-veiled sense of racial superiority but a truly sinister agenda, which puts Cora and Caesar in immediate danger.
If the opening chapter was an impressionistic painting aspiring to capture the atmosphere of utter terror that permeated the lives of people enslaved and forced to work on plantations of the Deep South, this follow-up adds some new colours and nuance to the picture. Because – as in music – repetition legitimizes, the attentive viewer will be able to pick out important recurring details which are sure to play a vital role in the thematic construction of this unfolding narrative. Particular attention is paid to books: Gulliver’s Travels and The Odyssey, both of which are already easily connected to the circumstances of the lead characters. One can be read as a loose allegorical take on the predicament of African Americans enslaved by real-life Brobdingnag, while the latter – one that Caesar feels might be inappropriate for him to read – deals with a never-ending voyage home, a theme central to The Underground Railroad as well.
However, for the time being the narrative sets these large-scale ideas to one side and focuses on the world Cora and Caesar inhabit. This – as remarked upon by one of the operators of the railroad – seems to be a world built by black people for white people to unjustly rule over. On multiple occasions the filmmakers seem to pay closer attention to this glaring racial disparity by holding the camera’s gaze on lift operators, shopkeepers, cleaners, servers, who are all black. They are essential for this universe to operate unperturbed. This world is built with their toil and blood and yet they are consistently treated as sub-human. This is an incredibly important detail to adorn the living canvas of this narrative because it makes the experience of black Americans utterly dystopian on multiple levels. The filmmakers succeed in sketching out an incredibly complex moral landscape in which at least one of the characters – Caesar – might feel hopeful about their odyssey concluding here simply because the looming threat of suffering and death has been removed, as though not having to fear for one’s life was enough to satisfy the requirements of a prosperous existence. What he must realize, and he does with Cora’s help, is that he is being gaslit. He is not respected by white men, but manipulated and abused and, worst of all, expected to show gratitude for not being physically maltreated instead.
This is why this episode is immensely important to the thematic development of the story as a whole. It is filled with extremely important observations that – sadly – continue to be relevant at present. Barry Jenkins’ camera takes the necessary time to bring attention to truly shameful facets of American history and adds important colours to the growing narrative. He establishes a parallel between what happened in America and the fate of other persecuted minorities in the history of the world. In a measured and subtle manner, The Underground Railroad is becoming harrowingly symmetrical to blood-curdling accounts of The Holocaust. This immediately grounds the story even more and gives it a completely new and horrific dimension, which is sure to develop further in future chapters where Cora and Caesar’s odyssey is going to interweave with the show’s thematic sphere much more tightly.
