Word: dialectics
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...characters manipulate the audience. The audience will react to every linguistic image-every "box"-while totally forgetting that the people on stage are human beings having nothing to do with the way they talk. Many old liberals will be so hung up on their knecjerk reactions to dialect that they will fail to deal with these people on the basis of anything but those superficial bases for which they have Pavlovian responses. The audience will be too screwed up-and frightened-by the play's complex inverted humor to listen to the words- or laugh...
...bravado of the two leading actors. Robert Shaw bellows and glowers in his ornate armor like a psyched-up Errol Flynn. Christopher Plummer, in cloak, loincloth, gold necklaces and flowing hair, looks like the lead singer of a particularly exotic rock group, and his attempts at a Peruvian dialect occasionally make him sound like one. His performance is unabashed camp, consisting about equally of ego, bluff and plain old Spam. It is obvious that he has not had so much fun since he spent all that time over in the corner of the screen sneering at the kids...
...bound by an elaborate ceremony of medieval hocuspocus. Flanked by the boss and his lieutenants, the initiate and his sponsor may stand in front of a table on which are placed a gun and, on occasion, a knife. The boss picks up the gun and intones in the Sicilian dialect: "Niatri representam La Cosa Nostra. Sta famigghiaè La Cosa Nostra [We represent La Cosa Nostra. This family is Our Thing]." The sponsor then pricks his trigger finger and the trigger finger of the new member, holding both together to symbolize the mixing of blood. After swearing to hold...
...farther from the reefs of Tahiti, Easter is the world's most isolated islet: a tiny (45.5 sq. mi.) blob of wind-scraped lava jutting from the gray Pacific like a roost for passing frigate birds. Yet on its stony surface, dozens of enormous statues, known in local dialect as modi, stand and stare. Some of them rear up to a height of 40 feet; many of them wear a subtle expression that presumably only sophisticated sculptors would attempt or could achieve; the best rank among the greatest sculptures of all time. What men produced these monsters? Where...
...past, Honduras and El Salvador have managed to live together in relative peace. Their people speak a common dialect that reflects their Spanish-Indian descent. They are both plagued by poverty and illiteracy, both are ruled by military leaders, and both depend economically on agricultural exports to the U.S. (coffee from El Salvador, bananas from Honduras...