Word: brutalized
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...politicians-and a surviving handful of military veterans who arrived in Taiwan in 1949 as part of Chiang's fleeing Nationalist Army-who argue that the dictator paved the way for rapid postwar economic progress and fended off a Communist invasion. Those who suffered under four decades of brutal martial law, along with many younger Taiwan citizens, aren't shedding tears, however. "Most of those statues were built by the KMT when they were trying to control the thinking of the people," says Taipei resident Ellen Wang, 25. "It's ridiculous to have them on every campus...
...feature. Based on Satrapi's four graphic novels, published in France beginning in 2000, the movie is a very personal, painful and somehow larkish retelling of her growing up Iranian under the repressive regime of the Shah (she was nine when he was overthrown), then under the even more brutal and soul-grinding Islamic Republic, before she emigrated to Europe as a student. She spends time back in Tehran with her family, and getting married, finally coming to rest in Paris, where she launched a career translating her and her family's pleasures and perils into comic-book form...
There isn’t even an admirable end to the whole enterprise. Instead of spending hours before a glowing Apple in an attempt to outshine his section on the following day, a student can now indulge his narcissism with the brutal military conquest of his peers. The former case is irritating, but at least it earned some eager tyke a meticulous knowledge of Kant. And whatever happened to duels? This lust for social dominance could well eradicate itself if we only returned to the days of pistols at dawn...
Sound like a formula to you? What these stories are reacting against is not so much fairy tales in general as the specific, saccharine Disney kind, which sanitized the far-darker originals. (As did Shrek, by the way. In the William Steig book, the ogre is way more brutal, scary and ... ogreish.) But the puncturing of the Disney style is in danger of becoming a cliché itself. The pattern--set up, then puncture, set up, then puncture--is so relentless that it inoculates the audience against being spellbound, training them to wait for the other shoe to drop whenever they...
...brutal slaying of two young Sunni Muslims in what appears to have been an act of tribal revenge by a Shi'ite clan has reminded Lebanon of the deadly passions that can be unleashed by the bitter public feuds of their politicians. The kidnapping, torture and murder of Ziad Ghandour, 12, and Ziad Qabalan, 25, is the latest act of sectarian violence that has left many fearful for the future, even as Lebanon's chastened political leaders scramble to unite in condemning the killings...