A cat calling for better research.

Desperate Sensitivity

“Desperate Crossing” is tendentious entertainment. So what is its untold story? With this film, the History Channel reveals to us that the fractious, bumbling, ignorant, rude but picturesquely pious Pilgrims were taught how to get along wisely with the world around them, by their noble Native neighbors who represent a superior and more humane society that the newcomers would inevitably destroy. As a Native representative laments, “The life that we have even today is not the life that we would have made for ourselves. And that life is our God-given right, but we have not been able to get back to it yet.” Although the Pilgrims had lived and worked peacefully with the Dutch for a dozen years, and tried to appease King James by promising all obedience their consciences allowed, a final authoritative voice instructs us that “it was the Indians who made [the Pilgrims] realize that the great work of living is living with others. That is the true importance of the Pilgrim story."

Getting back to the film – the pictures are simply so pretty, the actors so convincing, the story so nearly familiar. Does it seem churlish to wish that the story had been more complex, more accurate – less a fraudulent piece of propaganda about cultural sensitivity?