Word: decays
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...only bang talked about in the area was the one feared by local seismologists. Weakened by age and decay, the aging structure was likely to collapse in even a moderate earthquake. After three years of strident debate, the legislature discarded the idea of new $100 million office towers and opted for renewal...
...bolstered by elaborate political superstructures, capitalism and socialism are still primarily economic systems that succeed or fail on how well they channel the energies of their producers and meet the needs of their consumers. The numerous, severe troubles afflicting capitalism and socialism today-inflation, recession, unemployment, poverty and urban decay-are all basically economic ills with political side effects...
Business and personal bankruptcies tripled in the past two years. There are also smaller signs of decay. Humane societies note an increase in reports of stray pets, as owners abandon animals they can no longer afford. Last Friday Jimmy Johnson showed up at a downtown Detroit center with two German shepherd pups. Said Johnson, out of work for two years since he was laid off by Chrysler: "It's either feed the dogs or feed the kids." Public amenities are disappearing: next summer all but the most popular state parks will have to close for lack of funds...
...decay is symbolic as well as physical. When a prominent businessman is killed, the authorities send Pixote and other boys to participate in a police line-up, even though all had been locked up at the time of the crime. A new cycle of official brutality begins, and when the mother of one boy complains to the press about the situation, the child is killed by his guards. One of the film's most moving scenes portrays a crowded dining hall of youngsters watching one of their number falsely accused of the businessman's murder. The boy pulls...
...Waste Land's familiar cast of characters-Phlebas the Phoenician, Mr. Eugenides, the Fisher King and the rest-do not appear. Instead, there is an Eliotian tone of dissociation, alienation and decay; and it is grafted onto an ambitious composition not unlike the burning phantasmagorias of Bruegel, filled with emblems of evil. Eliot (if it is he) functions, in the picture, like the figure of "Mad Meg" in Bruegel's Dulle Griet, striding through the landscape and inventing it as she goes...