Word: crass
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Every critic seems, at some point, to be influenced by this syndrome; at their best, the put-downs are clever and amusing--at their worst, crass and tasteless. But what's always offensive about the syndrome is that it is antithetical to any exchange of ideas. It's much easier to come up with a put-down than with solid reasoning explaining why a critic disagreed with or disliked a film...
Pending such feats of instant nostalgia, all we are left with is the pictures. The crass cultural chauvinism and blatant flackery that surrounded and fed American pop have not by any means gone from the art scene, but they are muted. All the talk about how pop meant a democratization of the art experience, how it would obliterate the line between "art" and "life," has turned out to be the merest jive. It could hardly be expected to convince anyone in a world where Lichtensteins cost $50,000 apiece...
SOREST LOSERS: The Exorcist bunch, miming superiority to the whole business as crass commercial competitors kept walking off with the prizes that they felt their delicate little art film should have...
What is offensive about the new "realistic" cops-and-robbers movies is not that they are (fashionably) nihilistic, but that they are crass and simple-minded. In their world everyone is contemptible, acting solely out of venality or lust. No human institution can be trusted, and the few men able to derive order from society are strong-arm maverick cops...
...Kenny Solms and Gail Parent. Lorelei has been touring the country for eleven months. Perhaps that is why not even the Art Deco sets - inappropriate for a 1920s story- look fresh. The book, which always had the flaw of seeming more heartless than its heroine, now seems just plain crass...