Spoilers

The life of Arnold Ridgeway…

Episode 4 takes a break from Cora and Caesar. Both of their fates are tied to that of Arnold Ridgeway, the slave catcher. This episode follows him as a younger man – perhaps in his late teens, and explores a pretty much a single episode in his life.

It’s worth contrasting this with how Them handled the White POV. In Them, Alison Pill’s character, Betty, was shown to be built from trauma, someone who spiralled into a life of misery in the hope of escaping the abuse she suffered as a young woman only to find herself trapped by her marriage, her life and her society. It went a long way in trying to apologise for her behaviour (unsuccessfully to my mind) and perhaps present her racism as an outlet for her own troubles.

In contrast Arnold Ridgeway is shown as someone growing up in a home where he’s had his own troubles, but they’re presented as nothing out of the ordinary. He lives in a loving household where his father’s faith and outlook on humanity is one full of compassion and magnanimity.

The show is built around the truth that Arnold doesn’t fit with his father’s world view. He finds it hard to have people laugh at him for ideals he doesn’t believe in, finds it hard to not really know what his purpose is. So far, so typical teenager.

As his father says when asked why he hires Freed Men to work in his forge, ‘Iron is Iron’. Arnold is shown looking for something else to fill him with purpose from the beginning because his father’s view of the world is not enough to make a space into which Arnold fits.

It’s not clear whether his father ever provided him with a proper explanation for his anti-slavery views but what becomes rapidly apparent is that Arnold has the kind of temperament which will see others suffer if it helps him achieve his own aims.

In this case two key incidents mark Arnold out not as extraordinary but as typical of so many people. In the first he literally talks a boy into a well where he breaks a leg just to satisfy Arnold’s whims. He appears shocked at what he achieves but he isn’t regretful for a moment.

Later, he sees a coat he wants to buy but is frustrated by a shop keeper who rightly spies he does not have the means to achieve his goal. Humiliated and embarrassed, Arnold overhears a conversation between a group of slave catchers and, without prompting, offers to show them where the slave will have hidden.

The leader agrees to cut him in and we see the economic incentive here for Arnold (and so many of those who’ve grown rich by exploiting others) – why respect other people as people when you could make money from their labour? Underneath this is the hint that Arnold sees both roads to respect – that of standing up to those who are selfish and venal and that of becoming like them, of becoming part of the crowd.

He argues with his father over using freed men rather than slaves and for Arnold the argument is economic and it speaks to the great charge of why slavery truly ran aground – the fact that the industrial revolution made the per unit cost of owning slaves uneconomic on a macro-economic basis. Don’t get me wrong – there were many who argued against slavery from a moral or religious basis, but the deep movement was as much provoked by a falling profitability as it was by becoming socially unacceptable and in many ways the two were deeply entwined. If you couldn’t make money being a slave owner how could it be a respectable profession?

If the last parts of the US to accept the end of slavery (and fight a war over the question) were those who were most economically reliant on it, this shouldn’t surprise us. In Arnold, the man who later in his life holds the fates of both Cora and Caesar in his hands, we meet an average human being given a great start in life but who finds his meaning in exercising power (monetary and physical) over others.

Will we see more of Arnold’s background? I don’t know. The important thing here is this – the show doesn’t excuse his attitudes nor even really explain them except to say ‘this is a man’ and then show what men are capable of.

What’s interesting is Arnold doesn’t appear interested in reasons except to justify the course he’s already decided he wants to take, and this is truth well acknowledged – that while some are ideologically driven many more are driven and use ideology to hide the true seat of their motivations.

Verdict: I was disappointed by Betty in Them. I wasn’t disappointed by this presentation of the young Arnold Ridgeway. In his inconsistency, his venality, his yearning for meaning, we see the contradictions which are inherent in us all and lead even the best of us to make decisions which set us on paths we may never recognise take us away from the truth of the lives we thought we were searching for. 7/10

Stewart Hotston