The thing that is the most depressing is that the real history is always more interesting than the movies because the movies inevitably put the story into a familiar genre and leave the messy human realities out. Instead of broadening out our experience of what the human community can do -- heroism mingled inextricably with cowardice and stupidity in the same person, for example -- they narrow it down to familiar stock characters and acceptable responses. The most interesting thing about real history is how different the assumptions and responses were of human beings who were no smarter or stupider than we are. I think it comes down to a fear of undermining our current world view -- that we are smarter and better and more understanding because of our progress than these ignorant cardboard figures who lived then.

A completely different example: I teach a course that includes a whole section on the slave trade. The only thing the students will not accept, will not allow, is that the British were primarily responsible historically for ending slavery. Since they had been among the main beneficiaries, they had to be evil. And since they were evil, they must always be evil. When you give them the real history, they consistently demand that the heroes must be the slaves and their minor revolts, because they were the good guys. The idea that the British Parliament, Quakers, and a collection of meddling do-gooders could have turned around the whole enterprise for fundamentally moral reasons is unthinkable. Even the economic arguments (only partially convincing at best) don't help: these people were evil, so they couldn't possibly do any good.

yours, Peter T.