Word: absurdum
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...church began promoting instead increasingly reason-divorced myth-dogma, e.g., the immaculate conception and bodily assumption of St. Mary. At least the implication was "Here is myth for myth's sake, it's good for your souls," a kind of return to Tertullian's "Credo quia absurdum." Now suddenly there is a new obsession with narrow historicity, and the Pope seems ready to jettison whatever and whoever did not "actually happen." It looks like a watershed: either much more will have to be dumped, or a return to a crude fundamentalism is in the works. Either...
Papp's company prances through this reductio ad absurdum. Especially good is Robert Ronan as a Ptydepe instructor lecturing a class on interjections: " 'Psst!' becomes 'cetudap,' 'mmnn' becomes 'vamyl,' the poetic 'oh!' is rendered in Ptydepe by 'hrulugyp.' Our very important 'hurrah!' becomes in Ptydepe 'frnygko jefr dabux altep dy sa-varub goz terexes...
COCKSURE, by Mordecai Richler. Satirist Richler's basic weapon is seductio ad absurdum in this stylish spoof of the communications industry and pop culture...
Richler's basic weapon is the mace of reductio ad absurdum, which he wields with skill and ferocity. A publisher compiles a book that documents little acts of kindness shown by the Nazis toward Jews, and holds a benefit dinner for wives and children of deceased concentration-camp guards; a school play casts ten-year-olds in a staging of Sade's Philosophy in the Bedroom; a teacher encourages the academic achievement of her boy students by rewarding them in an entirely extracurricular manner; a nun appearing on a Joe Pyne-style TV insult program is publicly reduced...
Visitor from Hollywood is a case of seductio ad absurdum. It rests on the somewhat shaky premise that a Hollywood producer would set up an afternoon rendezvous with a suburban ma tron he once dated-17 years before-in order to kill an hour in bed. There is more lacquer than lecher in Scott's peacock-of-the-walk performance, but Stapleton is properly kittenish as she downs vodka stingers until she can only feel the bites on her neck...