Word: communalism
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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This sense of being both backward and culturally different from the West has haunted Russian intellectuals ever since Peter the Great (1672-1725) first tried to hector his unwilling country into the arms of European culture. During the 19th century, Slavophiles argued that the spiritual and communal culture based on Orthodoxy was superior to the materialism and rationalism of the West. Their opponents, the Westernizers, bemoaned Russia's "Asiatic" backwardness. They wanted their country to absorb as much of Western economics, politics and culture as quickly as possible...
...there any immaculate sorority houses with teddy bear wallpaper and plush pink carpets. And there are very few generic college dorms, with long communal hallway, box-like cinderblock bedrooms and bathrooms shared by the entire floor...
...residents--who call their dorm"the Butt"--live in "pods," huge circular commonrooms with singles branching off of them. Most ofHurlbut's oddly-shaped rooms are comfortable andin good repair. Unlike the other first-yearresidences, Greenough feels much like a"typical" college dorm. Long narrow hallways, tinyboxy rooms, and communal bathrooms are the normhere...
...glorious waltz Family Reserve is a list of family deaths, including that of a baby who choked on peanut butter and jelly. "The help, she didn't know what to do/ She just stood there and she watched him turn blue." But then this bizarre vision turns into a communal sing-along with the departed: "We're all gonna be here forever." Looking across the border separating life from the afterlife, Lovett sees they are part of one seamless journey. The dead will teach the living how to grieve for lost friends and lorn love...
...Zentropa plunders the film vocabulary -- back projection and superimposition, black-and-white with shrieks of color -- to anchor its weirdness in classical technique. The legerdemain reminds you of the artificial nature of movies even as it draws you back to the era when pictures seduced the audience into a communal trance...