Spoilers

A ghost appears in the smoke, a dark shadow against fire and brimstone. Jasper resolves into focus, a dead man walking. From there we see many slaves stood, unmoving, in a field. Among them is Caesar and then Lovey. The ghosts of Cora’s past, or are they here to see Ridgeway?

It is a beautiful, haunting moment and perhaps a key to this episode, titled Proverbs. For we see that Ridgeway has come home to Tennessee although we do not know why.

What is clear is his conflict at arriving here, the place he ran away from as a young man. Upon arriving it seems the house is abandoned but then he is greeted by Mack, the boy he talked down the well, all grown up but still limping, still fearful of this man who so casually broke him.

This is Ridgeway’s legacy; a broken man, a dead mother and a dying father. The forge which brought life to his childhood is cold and the ghost of it sits like a ruin around his neck.

The question for me is what was he expecting? A rapturous welcome? The return of the prodigal son? Revenge upon the father who he couldn’t understand?

In a strange and unsettling move, Ridgeway has Cora dress up in new clothes before taking her into town – yet she is still in chains. Does he mean for people to think she is his wife or his slave? It seems he doesn’t know why he’s treating her this way. We see her walk past other people of colour and there is not a step she takes which isn’t observed with stares.

Except Ridgeway has an entire performance in his heart – one about reclaiming his past and proving his father wrong. All his old anger seems to be there, simmering under the surface, and, for once, Cora is the last thing he cares about.

Ridgeway has his own world view to contrast to that of his father’s belief in the Great Spirit and it is grim and nasty and he relishes in the cynicism of it. There is a long discussion about the nature of Manifest Destiny, the idea first proposed by newspaper editor John O’Sullivan in 1845. For Ridgeway the arguments around Manifest Destiny are only so much dissimulation – lies people tell themselves to justify their heinous deeds, to cover over their greed and evil with a veneer of civilisation. We get the impression he’d rather people were simply honest about the evil they do. I am not sure I agree, for when people dissimulate they at least acknowledge what they do is wrong. If they were to accept their evil for what it was and do it anyway? I am not sure there is any way back to compassion and reason for such minds.

For Ridgeway it is a mood that says “take what is ours and if that means others must give up their claims so we can have what rightfully belongs to us, then so be it.” Not up lifting, but subjugation and if not subjugation then extermination. It is not to redeem but to conquer. The imperialist mission par excellence – to go somewhere else and replace those who live there by assimilation or erasure. One way or another, empires cannot allow those they colonise to persist except that they conform to our way of living and that they can’t ever really do because they are not us, not truly.

Finally, too, he explains why Cora and her mother (whose ultimate escape he still hangs onto) are so important to him. For they represent a truth so terrible that were he to acknowledge it as true then it would be to admit a flaw in the system he has spent his life upholding and evangelising for. He knows that any flaw in this ‘perfect’ system would bring it tumbling down and rather than face this possibility he would prefer to wipe from existence any evidence that could prove this error in all he believes.

Ridgeway, like so many who know what they do is wrong, would rather utterly destroy those he exploits than allow for one moment the possibility their complaint might have merit. Why? Because they know that to admit these complaints have merit would overturn the lives they’ve lived, would mean an end to their privilege and would mark the end of a world in which they, by virtue of nothing more than their birth, have an upper hand.

He tells Cora a series of stories which underline the gaps he perceives between White folk and everyone else, how he believes these gaps cannot ever be bridged. He relishes extinguishing her hope.

And then he’s done. Happy to have told Cora she is to die so he can continue living the life he wants to live, to continue believing his fictions. She is his sacrificial lamb, but she is not the first and she will not be the last.

Yet the episode moves on – the town has freed men and women and they invade Ridgeway’s home and set Cora free, leaving Mack, the man wronged by Ridgeway so long ago, to ensure he does not follow Cora once more.

If Ridgeway’s speech to Cora was his justification then when he wakes and sees Mack sitting over him gun in hand, his talk while Mack sits and says nothing?

It’s his confession.

Mack is his priest, dignified and silent in the face of the evil Ridgeway has done all too willingly. In the room next to where his father is laid out, Ridgeway tells why he did the evil he’s done and asks for a small mercy before he accepts his death while apologising for the small deeds and not the big ones.

However, Ridgeway is some kind of blessed soul because before Mack can kill him, Homer rescues him.

Cora is free and it is wonderful to see. Yet Ridgeway is not dead, perhaps not even chastened. We have seen how complex Ridgeway is but we know this – he is a racist and regardless of his history he is at peace with the lies he knowingly tells himself, the justifications he has fabricated to allow him to do evil. The same lies he ridicules in others. Ridgeway knows what he does is wrong but does not care. When we consider the idea of people being ignorant or uneducated or worth winning round – Ridgeway is the ultimate example of the bad actor – the one who knows what he does is wrong but hides it, even from himself. Despite him being sympathetic in many ways, he is a man who must be judged and found wanting.

This episode explores further the idea of those complicit in racist systems, overlooking Cora as subject in favour of examining Ridgeway as a tool. Ridgeway has no real power in society, no wealth and is without any kind of privilege except that he’s White. If he has power over Cora it is a microcosm not an example of the power to change worlds. Yet he finds fulfilment in being a tool and takes a pleasure in being an arm of the state despite the social pariah it makes of him.

The director, Barry Jenkins, is reminding us that prejudicial systems pit those who would be natural allies against one another for the gain of others. For example, shouldn’t poorer people be naturally allied regardless of skin colour? Especially against those who would otherwise exploit them? Perhaps, but racism (and misogyny) are perfect vehicles for keeping people apart.

What we haven’t really seen here is the explicit power of government, just its servants. One question left unanswered is how much the prevailing economic system works to keep people apart, to stop them from uniting for their own benefit. How much is unchecked capitalism to blame?

9/10

Stewart Hotston