Grushenka
Literotica Guru
- Joined
- Oct 7, 2006
- Posts
- 516
I thought I'd add to the holiday posts with this TV review from today's New York Times online (edited only for brevity). Think I'll check it out as the review itself made some points I'd not put together before.
Happy Thanksgiving (if appropriate), Grushenka
They Came, They Assembled, They Ate a Substantial Meal By VIRGINIA HEFFERNAN
That odd little band, whose eccentric and sine-qua-non American accomplishments we celebrate next week, gets a tantalizing hearing Sunday on the History Channel’s “Desperate Crossing: The Untold Story of the Mayflower.” The show is nominally a documentary, but it is as full-dress as a Bob Fosse production. Betraying (as usual) no nervousness about the place of re-creations in nonfiction programming, the History Channel flaunts a huge and talented, if barely credited, cast; elaborate set design; music cues; and makeup that convincingly suggests scurvy, among other New World transformations.
It bears repeating that this is a far cry from the hallowed documentary way of Ken Burns, where impressionistic, metonymic re-creations (lighted candle, turning wheel) are used to illustrate points made by commentators. On “Desperate Crossing,” the commentary seasons the action, not the other way around.
The History Channel’s approach makes for rollicking watching. The early scenes set in England — the furtive meetings of the religious separatists in strange Scrooby — are deliberately underlighted but supremely suggestive. Was it really true that a group could be fined, or worse, just for coming together? No wonder “freedom of assembly” is written into the Bill of Rights and many of those early American Protestant sects have names (like Congregationalists) that reflect pride in the simple fact that they have managed to form groups.
James I, both intensely intellectual and intensely rugged, is a worthy opponent to the highly naïve pack of dissidents as they become increasingly determined to reject the Church of England. Eventually, fleeing James, the men and women who reject the state-led church hierarchy make their way to Holland, where their piety sits somewhat awkwardly with the local customs of contention and scrappy commerce. But the Pilgrim adventurers nonetheless try the Dutch way, and some get married there and even learn to fight from a mercenary named Miles Standish. Finally, Standish in tow in case they meet savages, off they go to America on the cargo ship Mayflower, after a half-dozen false starts.
It seems ridiculous to refrain from spoilers when this story is a chestnut of American history and will end only in a roast turkey, but the details of the Pilgrims’ crossing — what they ate on the Mayflower, how cramped it was, who was born en route and the astronomical cost of the voyage — have surely escaped your memory and are in any case thrilling to see rendered in living color.
In this viewer “Desperate Crossing,” against the odds, awakened new curiosity about competing myths of origins: both the first story (about the noble search for religious freedom) and the second (about the cruel seizure of someone else’s land). For that reason, it is a terrific way to celebrate Thanksgiving and an antidote to it.
Happy Thanksgiving (if appropriate), Grushenka
They Came, They Assembled, They Ate a Substantial Meal By VIRGINIA HEFFERNAN
That odd little band, whose eccentric and sine-qua-non American accomplishments we celebrate next week, gets a tantalizing hearing Sunday on the History Channel’s “Desperate Crossing: The Untold Story of the Mayflower.” The show is nominally a documentary, but it is as full-dress as a Bob Fosse production. Betraying (as usual) no nervousness about the place of re-creations in nonfiction programming, the History Channel flaunts a huge and talented, if barely credited, cast; elaborate set design; music cues; and makeup that convincingly suggests scurvy, among other New World transformations.
It bears repeating that this is a far cry from the hallowed documentary way of Ken Burns, where impressionistic, metonymic re-creations (lighted candle, turning wheel) are used to illustrate points made by commentators. On “Desperate Crossing,” the commentary seasons the action, not the other way around.
The History Channel’s approach makes for rollicking watching. The early scenes set in England — the furtive meetings of the religious separatists in strange Scrooby — are deliberately underlighted but supremely suggestive. Was it really true that a group could be fined, or worse, just for coming together? No wonder “freedom of assembly” is written into the Bill of Rights and many of those early American Protestant sects have names (like Congregationalists) that reflect pride in the simple fact that they have managed to form groups.
James I, both intensely intellectual and intensely rugged, is a worthy opponent to the highly naïve pack of dissidents as they become increasingly determined to reject the Church of England. Eventually, fleeing James, the men and women who reject the state-led church hierarchy make their way to Holland, where their piety sits somewhat awkwardly with the local customs of contention and scrappy commerce. But the Pilgrim adventurers nonetheless try the Dutch way, and some get married there and even learn to fight from a mercenary named Miles Standish. Finally, Standish in tow in case they meet savages, off they go to America on the cargo ship Mayflower, after a half-dozen false starts.
It seems ridiculous to refrain from spoilers when this story is a chestnut of American history and will end only in a roast turkey, but the details of the Pilgrims’ crossing — what they ate on the Mayflower, how cramped it was, who was born en route and the astronomical cost of the voyage — have surely escaped your memory and are in any case thrilling to see rendered in living color.
In this viewer “Desperate Crossing,” against the odds, awakened new curiosity about competing myths of origins: both the first story (about the noble search for religious freedom) and the second (about the cruel seizure of someone else’s land). For that reason, it is a terrific way to celebrate Thanksgiving and an antidote to it.
