 Hi, I'm Jay Fiedel. This is Tink Tech, the 9 o'clock clock on a given Thursday, and we're initiating a show called The Movie Show with our movie reviewer, George Kasin. Good morning, George. Nice to see your smiling face. Good morning, Jay. Good to see you. So you looked at and really appreciate the time you spent in it. Reviewing the movie called, it's a serial called The Underground Railroad. It's particularly appropriate right now because we've had a lot of news about June 19th. And in fact, Governor E. Gays signed a bill and President Biden's about to sign a bill designating that a holiday both state and federal. So it's appropriate that we talk about The Underground Railway because it is about slavery in the 19th century in the south, and taking the railroad, so to speak, to the north. So can you give us your impression about this movie? Some people said it was unnecessarily violent. You think it was? That was one of the points I want to make about violence in movies, on all shows, TV, movies, and how it anesthetizes those in our society who have some mental issues. So I really would agree totally that we have to try to see if we can get less violence. There was a lot of shooting, killing. And as I said, when these young people and older people who have issues see that, they get anesthetized that killing is okay. So definitely I agree with wholeheartedly on that question. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I saw, I didn't see as much of it as you did, and I appreciate you looking at it. But I thought that this was interesting and different in the sense that you got to be in the environment of slavery. You got to be next to, with even thinking in the mind, to the extent that was possible of a slave on a plantation in those days. And it was much more graphic than I had ever seen before anywhere. It was much more troubling, actually, because it's one thing if you're reading a book and they tell you that there were brutalities, but if you see them, and certainly this movie, this serial, did show brutalities to you. What did you think about that? Was that accurate? Was that appropriate? I think that the atrocities were accurate. The timing was not accurate. And some of the other historical facts that are really peripheral to the main issue of how brutal slave slavery was. And as a former history teacher, I'm very hung up on accuracy, historical accuracy. And I'll get sensitive because of what happened to my family in Turkey, and then the way Turkey has been altering historical record. And then there was two Israeli historians last year corrected everything. They wrote a book. So I'm very set. Now, the issues I have is that, for instance, South Carolina was depicted as less horrendous for slaves. But that was not the case. South Carolina was more onerous than North Carolina. So that was only one of it. And also, maybe I should get on a tangent, there was no railroad. There was no underground railroad. It was only alluded to that, that it was, you know, there were all these halfway houses that would be protecting slaves as they went to the north or to Canada. And there was nothing underground except maybe from occasionally. So those were the main things. That really lost credibility for me. Because I say, are you kidding me? Who in the world could have built a railroad underground that was not, you know, visible, was not known? And went all the way that way. That was ridiculous. It was, you know, it was a play on words to start with, but here it was a completely unexplained, completely fictitious idea. And I said to myself, gee, how much of this can I believe if they're creating it out of whole cloth that way? There was no, it was a conceptual railroad all the way to Canada. But it wasn't actual. Can you imagine who was going to do that? Who was going to, you know, dig all that soil out secretly and get a locomotive underground? How do you do that? It was the author of the novel, who used to believe this when he was a small child. So when he wrote the novel, he wanted to project that into his novel. And there were, you know, I mean, there were other things like it'll come to mind of how it wasn't really historically accurate. But that was the main thing that both you and I sort of feel that it's sort of, that's when I first started seeing it, you know, the brutality was very real. But it sort of left a credibility to me because they're depicting an underground railroad when there was none, you know, so it just made me laugh. But as you said, that was the initial thing that I questioned the credibility. And then I went back and researched South Carolina, North Carolina, the first Georgia where they started. And then from North Carolina, they went to Tennessee, they jumped over Kentucky to Indiana. And then there was that Valentine's Farm massacre of this more affluent, beautiful farm, right? But that wasn't accurate. That the reality happened in Tulsa in Greenwood in 1921, which was way after the Emancipation Proclamation, Juneteenth, all of that, right? And so even in 1921, and to this present day, presently, Republican legislators, legislators are trying to do Jim Crow laws to restrict lack and other brown, you know, minority people from voting. So we're in 2021, which is 100 years after 1921, when there was that horrible massacre of affluent black community in Tulsa, Oklahoma, we're still dealing, and we're still dealing with black people being shot. I mean, George Floyd, it was with a policeman, but there was this other runner, nice young black guy, was running in his neighborhood. And these three white rednecks, I hate to say white, but they shot him just because he was running in the neighborhood. So I'll be quiet now. But that's the point that there's, as you said, there's credibility issues. The other thing I wondered about, and you must have questioned it yourself, is that part of the early episodes on the series involved a community in Atlanta, which elevated former slaves to lead an elegant life. They were well dressed, they went to balls, they ate like kings. They were, you know, they were living the high life, as well as any Southern belle might live the high life. The only thing, and this was really nefarious, the only thing was that they couldn't have kids, they couldn't get married. They had to stay in this kind of static arrangement, where they were like on display as successful former slaves. It was nerve wracking to watch it because you knew that all around, this is antebellum all around, there were horrible things going on, yet these people somehow had found a niche of affluence in Atlanta. Was there any truth to that? It was in South Carolina when they had gone from Georgia into South Carolina. From my perspective, there was no truth to that at all. Because as I said, South Carolina, the slave laws were more onerous against slaves than even in North Carolina, which is also onerous. So that was total fantasy. I mean, the author of the novel did a lot of this, you know, it was fiction. You know, the basics are important that it was so, it was brutal, it was horrible. But these facts were like you said, it wasn't even in Georgia, it was South Carolina. And yes, they were in finery and they were having a beautiful life dancing. She and her first boyfriend that, you know, that he looked like he was part Native American, you know, all of that is just all fantasy. I mean, other than the basics, as you said, of the brutality of slavery, a lot of the historical facts were all, you know, I mean, and plus, not only do you have the author of the novel, plus the screenplay, it was changes. And then the producer and the directors, they also made changes to make it more, you know, appealing or more interesting. So the facts were sort of, but that was South Carolina, but that's that was not in the movie, but that was not the facts. That's totally, you know, bogus. It's very troubling. It's very troubling because a lot of people may not see the distinction that you're talking about. They may say, well, okay, it's, you know, it's realistic enough that I believe it. And it must have happened to something like this. And so, okay, I'll accept this as my history lesson for today. But that's very misleading, because it isn't true. And you get you get this mixture of fantasy and fact, and you know, you come out the other side and you don't know what happened. And therefore, I mean, me, I begin to question, you know, the whole premise, because the underground railroad in American history was a real thing. And if I don't know the difference, I say, that's interesting the way it worked here. These are really interesting things. But I don't think it portrayed itself as fictitious. It asked you to believe. My my issue is as its former teacher, high school and junior high school social studies teacher, these kids or even adults are going to see this thing, believe it's true, right. And, and they're going to think that that that Valentine's farm that massacre happened before the Emancipation Emancipation Proclamation before Juneteenth, right, 1862-1965. And, and they're going to think it happened in Indiana, when it happened in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in 1921. And then so many other facts that that are like just not true. And then, and the kids are going to believe that there was an underground railroad actual trains underground. And this is, and this is what they're going to believe in a teacher is going to ask them, you know, maybe they're going to study under slavery. And these young kids are going to think that there was actually an underground railroad. So I mean, that's why I'm, I was initially very uncomfortable with all these lack of historical veracity. But the basic idea, as you said, it's important for the public to know how brutal slavery was given the recent political climate where they're trying to, you know, changing history that there are these people that say the Holocaust never happened. My family in Turkey, that it never happened. You know, this is all, you know, that's why I believe in historical veracity so that young kids don't get the wrong idea. Well, you know, the problem is, if I tell you there's a railroad where there wasn't one, if I tell you about a community in Atlanta where it really wasn't like that, if I tell you about, you know, the Valentine farm issue that didn't happen until 1921 in Oklahoma, I am undermining your understanding of history. And if you lose confidence, okay, in what I am rendering to you, then maybe you don't accept, and some people would probably take it this way, then maybe you don't accept, you know, the underlying story that you and I both found credible, that is that there were atrocities on these plantations. And then the whole thing lose, the whole thing loses credibility. And then, you know, young person says, well, you know, this is television, I can't believe anything on here. And it's just like, you know, the news that Trump has criticized, you know, for being fake. And so, and then of course, you have this really troublesome aspect about American entertainment slash news where you don't know which one is which, and you don't know which one is accurate and not accurate. You don't know whether you're getting a straight poop. And this is troublesome. I don't know how we fix that, George, but this movie is an example of how you can get off, may I say, I have to say this, off track. Very good. That was definitely off track. Well, you know, part of it too is this, I mean, if you watch the Cable serials, you say, my goodness gracious, there's a whole generation of people coming up into the movie industry that really know how to make high value productions, you know, the lighting, the color, the sound, it's beautiful. And it actually adds to the credibility, even if you shouldn't be giving it all that much credibility. And you say to yourself, this is really entertaining, engaging, very watchable. It's a work of art. It's what it is. It's a work of art. And you can take that same team and you can give them a script that is completely untrue and have them produce it in a way that appeals to people and where everybody going to go and watch it. I don't know, this is also troubling to me. I'd really rather watch an old fashioned black and white documentary that doesn't have this high value aspect to it. And then I would be educated, although maybe not so much entertained. No, true. I mean, the acting was superb. That South African actress did Korra. She was phenomenal. The bad guy that was trying to, you know, slave catch her. He was really good. They were all great actors. And as you said, the scenery, absolutely fantastic, beautiful, you know, pictures and everything. But as we said, the veracity was there. And in today's day and age, there's so much fake news out there that I don't want to see. I mean, people enjoying this, you know, I mean, to me, I like 1940s, you know, black and white, happy movies, you know, in my old age. Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. This was, I mean, this was stressful. Those 10 hours of seeing these black people getting cut and whipped and killed and horrible, horrible things left for dead, you know, it was just horrible. So it was crying. But so I mean, I like these 40 movies like Casablanca and all these other movies that were, you know, pleasant. But as you said, fake, there's a fakeness there. And it's pervading our society today. And Donald J. Trump is a key factor in fake, fake news, you know, there's, I mean, every other thing that comes out of his mouth is false and people believe it. So I mean, that's why this movie sort of got under my skin. And would you say this is a fake movie? I would say there's a lot of historical inaccuracies there, especially when you said Atlantis, you know, South Carolina, that those black people enjoying themselves dancing on the ballrooms, that was totally bogus. I mean, that might have happened, you know, maybe in the north, because New York, New Jersey was states, but by 1800, they didn't have slavery anymore. And, you know, that's the second part of what I wanted to discuss is how black people rose when they weren't being held down like in the north, right? You know, my mother was from Patterson, New Jersey, she was raised there. And they were affluent black people that they knew. I mean, they're neighbors, you know, I mean, Patterson had a very early black community, and they became like, like I was alluding to in an email, my mother at 18, she wasn't Native American, but she was modeling as a Native American for this artist, Ralph Armstrong, who did talent of girl pictures. And she had a appendicitis. So her brothers didn't want to have a regular appendicitis operation. So they found this black doctor in Patterson who had finished medical school at 58 years old, right? And he had perfected a buttonhole appendectomy. This is back, my mother's born in 1911. So this was in the late 20s, right? Like right when she was modeling, when she won the Arthur Murray Beauty Contest, that's how she got into modeling. This guy showed up. And it was 1929. And gave her that buttonhole appendectomy. That's the kind of black people there. And when they moved it from Patterson, they got, my family got wealthy, that five bright cleaning stores within 10 years. And then they moved to Montclair. And Montclair also had affluent blacks. So when you have that kind of a difference, right, the North and the South, the South Ku Klux Klan, black people still getting lynched. And it was much better than New York, New Jersey, I mean, for blacks. That's why they all left the real underground railroad. They got to Canada because there was freedom. And then they could meet their own level of rise in the society where there weren't being unnaturally being held down. And then when I lived to Long Island, like I was saying, Rochelle Griffiths gig, her mother was white, her father was black. They lived in the white neighborhood. They didn't live in a little, the black enclave we had in our community, which was the same, same kind of houses, you know, it was just a separate black neighborhood. George Griffiths gig was a building contractor, very well known, very well respected. My mother had him was going to have to put an extension in our on our house. So here you had a black papa like Obama family totally integrated into the white community. And Rochelle married Mark Orcelander, who was her boyfriend there in high school. And she's an attorney now up in Westchester County. And she's very successful. That's what you have when you don't hold to that's not to say they're, you know, what's interesting is you had the plantation experience in the south that was built in by the founding fathers. They could have done the 14 whatever the was the 13th amendment long before 1865. But they didn't do that. And they built slavery, baked it into the country. And for 80 years between 1780, something, when the Constitution was written originally and then 1865, that's a long time. And in that period, one interesting thing happened. It was the the Clotilde experience where the ship was on 60 minutes. The ship was the last slave ship in 1808. Why? Because Congress had outlawed bringing new slaves to the country in 1808. It was against the law. And so the whole thing was like baked in it was the slave owners said, oh, that's okay, we'll just have them have a lot of children. And we'll build our inventory of slaves that way. And they kept on doing it. In fact, it got worse in my observation. Not that I was there, but in my reading anyway. And so what you had was really two different worlds. And economically, the slave owners were very wealthy because they had these assets that kept on working for them. And the children kept on working. And it was, you know, the cost of their labor was free, essentially, after you paid for them. And the product was huge, depending on how much you pushed them around. And so a whole civilization developed down there. And these guys felt more and more strongly about it as you get to the Civil War. And the Civil War was about slavery, really. And they tried to perpetuate it. It was very important to them. And they never really accepted the result of the Civil War. And they beat the federal reconstruction. They collapsed by the end of the 19th century. And we had the Ku Klux Klan re-emerging in the 1920s right around the time of the Oklahoma incident massacre. So somehow the whole notion of slavery and the distinction between black and white is it started with the Constitution and it continues till today. And one of the story I want to mention just to provoke you is that although there was no slavery in the non-slavery states prior to the Civil War, there was plenty of racial discrimination, racial hatred. And there was an incident that took place in 1863 during the Civil War, during Lincoln's attempt to terminate slavery in New York City. It was a hot Saturday night. You know the story? It was the New York riots, August of 1863. And there was some issue about the draft. And the Irish community, which was fond of drinking in bars on Saturday night, it was a Saturday night, were very excited about this rule that had come down from Washington, the proclamation, I guess, on how you could avoid the draft by paying some money. And they couldn't afford to pay the money. They were ticked off. And this somehow transmuted itself into a race riot where on Saturday night, they went out and looked for blacks in New York City, New York City, not a slave state. And they hung them from the lampposts. It was wholesale lynching in New York City. And unforgettable, really, when you think about it. But it's an example of, okay, we don't have slavery, but that doesn't mean that we don't have anti-black sentiment. And so going to Canada was a better bet, because I don't think they had the same level of anti-black sentiment. But all this has to be seen as part of American history. So the movie touches on a number of things. And I think the great loss here is that, you know, the movie doesn't give you the context. Yeah, when they showed the Indiana, you know, that beautiful farm until they got massacred, you know, that Valentine's farm. That was in the north. That was a non-slave state. But you know, one of the other things what you alluded to about New York, in Philadelphia, the two Hawaiian princes that eventually became Kamehameha IV and Kamehameha V had gone to Philadelphia with what was his name, Judd, you know. And they were treated very poorly, because they were dark skinned. And that left a very bad mark with them. And it really, really affected the history of Hawaii, because they became very anti-American, while their uncle, Kamehameha III, was very pro-American. Because of the treatment they received in Philadelphia, on some train they were told that they can't, you know, they would, because the conductors thought they were Black. So it really left a mark on the Hawaiian kingdom as well. So slavery, bad, bad thing, and impacted our history here too. So leave it at that. Yeah, well, so the movie is, I guess it's a contribution of a couple of points that you may not have been thinking about, such as the brutality of the plantations. But it really doesn't help us understand the enormous implications of slavery. I mean, this is not that long ago. And when you think the Reconstruction failed, in a hundred years ago, there were racial massacres in this country, all in extension of the same kind of slavery thinking. When you think that right now, the South is filled with white supremacists who vote for Trump. You know, we still have the legacy of slavery. It is baked into the American exceptionalism. And I don't know, does the movie help us understand that, George? Does the movie help us come up with a solution on this? The one thing that really left in my mind is before that massacre in the movie Valentine's Farm or in Greenwood in Tulsa, that basically when Black people are not held down unnaturally, they will rise in society. And from my own experiences and my mother's experiences, that's when you have assimilation. So when there's less racism. But I mean, that movie alluded to that a little bit with that South Carolina, that was not true. But then up in Indiana, that there was that maybe after, maybe a little before, but after, you know, emancipation, proclamation, and whatever. But it's like when Black people assimilate into society and you get to know them. I mean, my mother knew Black people from Patterson, you know, their neighbors, you know, and they lived in East Side Patterson, which was the more affluent part of Patterson, you know, you have a different perception. So the movie showed a little bit of that, how, you know, the high, the beautiful ballroom dancing. But it's that, it's that just like so many other ethnic groups, you know, and racial groups, when they rise, they become assimilated, you know, like my parents came from overseas and we assimilated us. So that's the key that a little bit of that Valentine's farm, a little bit of that fake thing from South Carolina is was important. And, you know, it wasn't only that they couldn't have children in South Carolina, they were doing experiments on Black people like that Tuskegee thing, where these Black men were dying. So they were using them as experiments, you know, similar to Dr. Mengele in doing the Nazi era. Right, in the name of science, yeah. Exactly. And that's what they were doing. That was what was being depicted in that South Carolina, which you thought was Atlanta. But I mean, I mean, the time frame is wrong. The location is wrong. Underground railroad, which does not exist, the very little underground, it's all fake. So getting back to what you're saying is that we're not there yet. I mean, bottom line is we had a Black president, a Hopper Black president, and we're still not there. Black people are still being shot in the streets, right? And we've got to all come together as a community, you know, as our whole American Ohana. And we're not there yet. And I think you alluded to that. We're not there yet. We're now in 2021. And there's still what's going on right now as the whole Jim Crow laws, the Republican legislators are in Georgia and Arizona, they're trying to cut Black and Brown people out, you know, through Jim Crow laws. So I'll leave it at that. Well, I'd like to add one for your consideration. And that is this, if you're going to make a movie that pretends to be historical, then you've got to do the research. And you've got to be faithful to the history. It would not have cost these filmmakers anything to be accurate. You know, pick the wrong state, why do that? Pick the wrong time, why do that? They could have had a very good movie if they'd only done their homework. And I think the net effect of it is to lose confidence in the movie and the movies, misunderstand American history, they would have done a much better job, made a much better contribution if they had only done their homework. What do you think? I couldn't more totally agree with you that that was the problem with this series of 10, that so much historical inaccuracies that anybody, any educated person, you know, I was a history teacher, so that was my forte, right? That would know that this is bogus, but the unsuspecting uneducated public would believe that this is true and have a totally distorted perception, even though the basics are important to show the brutality. You know, I couldn't agree with you more, a little bit, and they didn't even care to do research. It was all fantasy, and it was the author that started off, you know, as I said, his childhood understanding he portrayed it in this novel, and then screenplay, you know, the person who did the screenplay, and then the director and the producers, they played with the truth. And it was really bad news, as you said. I mean, a little bit of research would have had a really good movie. Thumbs down, then? Thumbs down, George. I would say thumbs down to some of the presentation, but the basics of showing that brutality to the public was good, and as you said, they really showed you could actually, I mean, it was breaking my heart. I was getting very upset because it was so real, the brutality, but couldn't agree with you more. I mean, I would say thumbs down, but with reservations, there's pluses to this movie. I join you in that, George. Good review, George. Thank you very much for the review of the movie. And we'll be back in a week or two with another one, probably completely dissimilar, but equally incisive. Thank you so much, George Kasin, the movie show. Aloha. Aloha.