Word: comics
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...words suffrage and suffering. (It goes without saying that any number of men might have responded exactly as the women did.) But for the most part, The Man Show, like its FX counterpart, is less offensive for its sexism--most of which is just silly--than for its comic unoriginality. After all, Howard Stern has been getting strippers and porn stars to say and do outrageously stupid things for years...
Each of the five "islands" has its own design appeal. The Lost Continent decor is instant antique: imposing Athenian edifices that seem about to crumble before your eyes. Spider-Man and his Marvel superhero pals inhabit a comic-book-bright boulevard. Toon Lagoon is haunted by old favorites from the rotogravure, like Beetle Bailey and Dagwood. Jurassic Park's primeval foliage conceals a labyrinthine playground, a Discovery Center where you can see a raptor egg hatch, a Pteranodon Flyers ride that lets you soar above the park and a mechanical triceratops that pees and farts on cue. The beast, nicknamed...
Polke depends not just heavily but entirely on the "appropriation" of visuals from all manner of sources, from comic books to ads, from news photos to William Blake. He skips and flitters like a frenetic troll through this forest of images without feeling the least impulse to make narrative sense. His work has the rambling, no-rules character of a dopehead's monologue. Indeed, just as Filippo Marinetti, leader of the Italian Futurists 90 years ago, called himself "the caffeine of Europe," so one of Polke's doodles, of a glass tube with powder spilling from it, is titled Polke...
Loyalty. Honor. Courage. Fortitude. Ideals that, sadly, aren't revered or seen much in our world anymore. The comic book warriors of the "Star Wars" films indulge in these virtues with abandon upon stages breathtaking in their special effects. The Jedi, strong in the "Force," battle the Dark Side, i.e., the evil very present in the world, in all worlds, and across galaxies and time. The success of the execution of this is unparalleled--attracting theatergoers of all ages and points of view, from Harvard undergraduates to their sometimes Luddite parents...
...Scorpioni are far from deadly. They're a group of English ladies living in Florence, raising an abandoned, illegitimate child in British virtue and avoiding Fascist thuggery. All that becomes harder to do when Italy enters World War II. Maggie Smith and Judi Dench are glorious comic actresses, while Joan Plowright provides a firm, touching moral center to the film. They almost make you forget Cher's totally out-of-it work as a disapproved-of American and carry the film to its destiny, which is one of inoffensive inconsequence, prettily staged...