Word: agrounder
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...subtle stimuli of a controlled environment. After modifying Victor's sense of touch with daily baths and focusing his wandering gaze, Itard sought to teach him the connection between the look and feel of objects and their corresponding names. But even at this early stage Itard ran aground. Victor's senses responded only when food was involved: he turned to the sound of walnut being cracked but remained unflinching in the face of a deafening blast. Like many behavioral psychologists after him, Itard managed only to make Victor perform imitations, rather than conceptualize the significance of language and social behavior...
...have two or three difficult years ahead of you. The Community is in the habit of coming to the aid of its members in difficulty. In the event of another economic crisis, there would be great need for the common front of all members. If you run [the Community] aground, certainly Germany will survive more easily than Great Britain...
...such a sympathetic reading runs aground on the love story which comprises the second half of the film. Once Raffaella accepts subjugation, in a cathartic scene where she kisses Gennarino's feet after he has symbolically thrust a stake through a skinned rabbit, the comedy is dissipated. Using the graceful closeups which distinguish her style, Wertmuller evokes the intensity and eroticism of a great love affair so subtly and effectively as to make Last Tango in Paris seem like a mouthwash commercial. The subjective gaze of the camera and the expressive interaction of the actors combine to compel the audience...
...derive from its radical ideology or policies but from its seizure of disproportionate political power. With neither electoral strength nor major grass-roots support, PCP influence has come through acquisition of high positions in the army, state bureaucracy and municipal government. In the North this strategy has run aground, where appointed Communist village officials serve as targets for peasant fears about Communist power and the revolution in general. The PCP's anti-democratic policies have mobilized peasant communities, once sympathetic to the revolution, against it under right-wing Catholic leadership...
...closing four parochial schools in black neighborhoods brought to a head long-simmering dissatisfaction with his administration. Given his New Orleans record and the fact that the cardinal has allocated $21 million in subsidies to various projects in Chicago's inner city, it was ironic that he ran aground over black education. It was not the decision itself that caused the trouble. Enrollment at the schools had been dwindling steadily, and Cody argued that the costs had become prohibitive. One thing that upset some priests was that the school shutdowns came four months after Cody had unveiled a closed...