Word: absurdity
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Carswell's further discussion of the O.A. is quite to the point--he himself realizes its superiority to any E., however A. His illustration includes one of the key "Wake Up the Grader" phrases--"It is absurd." What force! What gall! What fun! "Ridiculous," "hopeless," "nonsense," on the one hand; "doubtless," "obvious," "unquestionable," on the other, will have the same effects. A hint of nostalgic, antiacademic languor at this stage as well may match the grader's own mood: "It seems more than obvious to one entangled in the petty quibbles of contemporary Medievalists--at times, indeed, approaching the ludcrous...
...minute is the non-criticism of Jackie Brown. Its reviews have had all the analytical ferocity of a dog rolling over and playing dead, and we can be sure Quentin Tarantino has rubbed that pup's belly--explaining feelingly to a wheedling New York Times or an absurd Charlie Rose about how the borrowing of mediocre orchestral tracks from '70s B-movie is a gesture of high art. He's a used car salesman, but the problem is, people are actually snapping up the Gremlins and Pintos he purveys...
...feel, how does it affect you. There's no such thing as objective criteria applied to music, it's all subjective. If it makes you happy when you listen to it, terrific. All this notion that music has to be complicated to listen to, I think that's absurd...
Perhaps most absurd is the controversy surrounding treatment of the founding fathers. It seems that paying unqualified tribute to George Washington and Thomas Jefferson is now a suspect act. Tours of Mt. Vernon now include a supplemental section focused on the poor condition of the slaves held there. New Orleans recently removed Washington's name from a public elementary school out of sensitivity to black students. If this process of retrospective condemnation continues, our currency may soon require quite a facelift. May I suggest Jesse Jackson for the dollar bill...
This is not to say, however, that I hear the death-knell of liberal compassion or civilized political thought among the booms and bangs of Starship Troopers. In fact,Starship Troopers is sophisticated enough to recognize and comment on its own absurd, jingoistic hubris. We know this because director Paul Verhoeven punctuates his movie with the kinds of stentorian radio calls-to-arms familiar from World War II newsreels, and the same stylized "heroic" dialogue of '50s-era comic books and trading cards...