BLACK IN FOCUS
AMON WARMANN chews over the main moment in Black film and TV this month
THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD SETS A HIGH BAR FOR FUTURE BLACKTRAUMA NARRATIVES
MY DEFAULT REACTION to any announcement of a new movie and/or TV series that focuses on slavery is a heavy, here-we-go-again sigh. Merely thinking about the harrowing violence to come and the racist behaviour that have become prerequisites of the subgenre is exhausting. Case in point: the first episode of The Underground Railroad — a ten-episode adaptation of Colson Whitehead’s awardwinning novel of the same name — is, to put it mildly, a lot to contend with. We see Black bodies being savagely whipped, burned alive, and more. Barry Jenkins wastes no time in throwing us in at the deep end.
The reason I carried on watching was because of who was in the director’s chair. With
Moonlight and even more so with If Beale Street Could Talk,
Jenkins has proven himself a skilled filmmaker when it comes to depicting the African diaspora on film. My trust was rewarded once again with this series, in large part because of how Jenkins chooses to approach Black trauma.
Where other similar, and far inferior, stories have wallowed in the brutality,
The Underground Railroad
distinguishes itself by emphasising the humanity of its enslaved characters. Even those with smaller roles have some personhood about them, irrespective of the many hardships they endure. Furthermore, at multiple points a character’s gruesome fate is described rather than shown. It’s a tacit recognition that not all atrocities need to be put on screen in explicit detail for said cruelty to retain its disturbing power. Jenkins has said he aspired to “honour my ancestors with this show”. The director halted filming at multiple points to capture portraits of all the actors “standing in the spaces our ancestors stood” for his moving, 52-minute, non-narrative extra film, The Gaze. “We had the feeling of truly seeing them and thus, we sought to capture and share that seeing with you.”
We will see slave narratives going forward, and that doesn’t have to be a bad thing. There is value in Black men and women telling these stories and drawing links from the past to the present, which has historically been one of art’s great functions. The key lies in the approach, and any Blacktrauma content that follows
The Underground Railroad would do well to pay close attention to the hows and whys of Jenkins’ achievement. Maybe then I’ll greet that inevitable announcement with genuine interest rather than trepidation, no matter who is involved.