Barry Jenkins’ The Underground Railroad Is a Stunning Adaptation and a Brilliant Critique of Black Suffering as Entertainment

There is a horrible and brilliant scene in the first episode of The Underground Railroad, Barry Jenkins’ breathtaking miniseries adaptation of the Pulitzer-winning novel by Colson Whitehead. A runaway has been captured and returned to a cotton plantation in antebellum Georgia. Stripped to the waist and covered in bleeding lashes, the man (played by Eli Everett) hangs by his wrists from a tall wooden structure.