Word: cliches
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Among the truths that keep getting buried under the icing of cliché is one about frustration and how it leads to violence. In a bestselling study, Love and Will (1969) Psychiatrist Rollo May began his "search for the sources of violence." That phrase is now the subtitle of his new book Power and Innocence (Norton; $7.95). Both works are closely related; an understanding of one is a help in reading the other...
Everything is gray: the landscape, the light, the morality. There are no heroes, only villains and victims. The splendid myth of the West originated in blood and mud, both of which are in abundant evidence here, along with every other cliché of what has come to be called the antiwestern. The action takes place mostly on the main street of Coffeyville, Kans., which looks like a bayou. Whoever is not shot there is pretty sure to catch it in the saloon, which, like every other set in the picture, has been designed and dressed to look determinedly shabby...
...Hollywood version of the Holiday story is no better. A spindly, cliché-ravaged tale of the sorrows of show biz, Lady Sings the Blues stars Diana Ross, former lead singer of the Supremes. That is a casting coup about as appropriate as signing up Sammy Davis Jr. to play Charlie Parker. It is eerie to watch and listen to Miss Ross, the princess of plastic soul, work her way through such songs as Strange Fruit and God Bless the Child. She has the phrasing, and the Holiday intonation. What she doesn't have is the passion. Her Billie...
...given to white shirts, gray suits and highly polished black shoes. He rarely touches coffee-let alone grass-and confesses that he would be "terrified" to take peyote except under Don Juan's guidance. The phrase "drug culture" is ceaselessly bandied about in America. It is a swollen cliché, and not very descriptive either. Culture, as Castaneda would say, is consensus. Instead we have abundant drug use, which is a different matter...
Peerce is a cinematic version of Frank Sullivan's clichè expert. During the tree-climbing episodes, the camera peers up from a low angle, the sun making dainty little flares in the lens. During a confrontation in the drawing room of Pinny's Boston home, a clock ticks loudly, a desperate device intended to lend a little spine to the sponge cake theatrics. As for the unfortunate actors, they are all nonprofessionals and are likely to remain...