Word: brahma
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JUNIOR BONNER begins with a black-and-white fog-grained portrait of the title rodeo star, played acutely by a mellowed Steve McQueen, lowering himself onto a snorting Brahma bull called Sunshine. The rodeo announcer tells us some basic facts: Jr. was a two-year bull-riding champion, now nearing 40, a bit past his prime, Sunshine has never been ridden for the full 8 seconds time. The gate to the pen is thrown open, clowns dressed in baggy checked pants and vests and red fright wigs lure the bull out and get him jumping. Bonner holds...
...hair-brained prospecting schemes), and the mother is going to be installed in the development curio shop. Junior himself is swiftly losing the respect he once held in other men's eyes. He asks stock contractor Buck Roan (played fullheartedly by Ben Johnson) if he could ride the Brahma bull once more for his hometown people, even offering half his purse money for it. Roan (before he finally accepts) shakes his head: "You've just got to admit to yourself you ain't the rider you were a few years ago...neither me nor my cattle aim to make...
...dingy Back Bay apartment. That night, standing in the front parlor of O'Brien's Funeral Home, reeking of liquor, with a flask filled with John Jameson's in his pocket, he was living testimony to the fact that a Boston Irishman couldn't make it in Brahma society...
...road to Sebring is lined with dead armadillos crushed by hot-rods headed for the race, speeding through pungent clouds of orange-blossom fragrance. On either side are expansive, marshy pastures, dotted with browsing brahma bulls and heifers. There are other signs of the area's normal atmosphere -the Sebring without gears. On the town's outskirts sit neatly tended villages of mobile homes and shuffleboard courts. Sebring is middle Florida, where the air is clean and dry, and the main profession is retirement...
...third function of a living mythology is to support the social order through rites and rituals that will impress and mold the young. In India, for example, the basic myth is that of an impersonal power, Brahma, that embodies the universe. The laws of caste are regarded as inherent features of this universe and are accepted and obeyed from childhood. Cruel as this may seem to Westerners, the myth of caste does give Indian society a stability it might otherwise lack and does make life bearable to the impoverished low castes...