Word: babeling
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...quest for universality in music, Bernstein begins with monogenesis, the idea that all language evolved from a common origin. As a metaphor, monogenesis lies behind the Biblical Tower of Babel myth, and as a general principle it lies behind a century of serious philology, but it is not an idea with any scientific foundation--linguists believe the dozen or so major language families to be unrelated. Still, it reminds Bernstein of a discovery he made when he was an undergraduate: the first four notes of Aaron Copland's Piano Variations rearranged and transposed in various ways turn...
...Fundamentalists all, the parents contend that the schoolbooks breed doubt of the Bible's literal truth. One contested passage compares the scriptural account of Daniel in the lion's den to the old tale of Androcles and the lion. Another suggests that the biblical story of the Tower of Babel is a myth explaining the origin of languages. "We object to books that ridicule a child's faith and treat biblical stories as fables," says Mrs. Alice Moore, a school-board member and vocal opponent of the teaching materials. "The inference in many of these texts is that the Bible...
...commitment there was had bred nothing. For her affair by the new rules with her ex-husband, at the end of the film, she has a new line: "telling the truth now...because we make no demands." Her myth is that if only people didn't talk in a babel of lies they would love in a smooth, enduring way. But beyond commitment and non-commitment she can't think of any reasons why people can't talk things out. Her myth is a more select version of what too many say: If only people understood each other they could...
...turned their backs on traditional scholastic programs and sought new methods, they made one horrifying mistake: they allowed students to dictate the needs. Sesame Street may be America's last vestige of fundamental learning. The ivory towers have been razed and replaced by Towers of Babel, where the Lucas Tanner Method of Unstructured Free Expression holds sway...
...because he takes great pains to bury the thematic superficiality beneath a superstructure of desperate metaphor and elaborate production. The movie is rendered largely in frosty, antiseptic hues, giving every scene the air of the laboratory. The hospital where the operation is performed on Benson (George Segal) is called Babel. The doctors (Joan Hackett, Richard A. Dysart, Donald Moffat, Michael C. Gwynne) dress in white uniforms that make them look almost military, like shock troops of the future. After Benson has had the operation, which misfires, he runs all over Los Angeles killing at random, until he is violently dispatched...