Word: droll
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Though I find the words "imperialist" and "revolutionary" rather droll in American usage, now I wonder if the generation gap is not something more than that--a distinction between a search for truth and a belief in forms. When the non-violent and stupid excesses of those without authority are met by the grisly, sadistic, and inordinate excesses of authority, where is "academic freedom" or "democratic process"? And where are they when the authorities excuse their own excesses as "only human, after all." I know of no such humanity...
...plot ravels, the author spoofs a variety of human miseries, including college musicals, graduate clubs, the New York Police Department, love, marriage and funerals. These grotesqueries are achieved with a satiric style that matches the droll gazelles of Stewart's imagination. However, far from merely a formless pastiche of perverse events, Stewart has actually created an absurd murder mystery with a strong narrative structure. The clues, leading back to a 20-year-old college musical production and a war refugee organization, are pursued by two bumbling characters who keep the story full of suspense right up to the final...
JUNE'S voluptuous flatmate Childie (Susannah York) is funny rather than witty, as when she and June dress up as a droll Laurel and Hardy for an evening at their club. Mercy Croft, a prim, trim executive from the BBC who becomes the "other woman," carries off her starchiness and professional sympathy with exactly the air of inhumanity required. Throughout the film she is constrasted with June, the earthy, outspoken dyke who never pretends to be what she is not. In the end, Mrs. Mercy shows her true colors in the famous "explicit scene...
Underneath this droll gimmick, however, is much more. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are at the center of Stoppard's work, and they become its tragic heroes. Like Didi and Gogo, who bide their time with games of the spirit while waiting for the never-to-appear Godot, Stoppard's heroes devise their own games to endure the waiting for their Godot...
...collecting, the classical, medieval and Renaissance periods are only spottily-though sometimes handsomely-represented. There are two Titians, a Raphael Resurrection of Christ, a Mantegna St. Jerome, a commanding Velásquez portrait. There are also some diverting minor works, such as Quentin Metsys' Contract of Marriage, a droll example of genre by a Flemish contemporary of Erasmus, showing a young man dutifully snuggling up to an ugly but rich old wife...