Word: dwarf
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...eventually utopia will only come when human nature has been transformed." Then he'd raise his arms and voice in a clarion call to the unsaved to come forward and accept Christ. He had confronted them with problems of human relations, of social inequality, of government corruption--problems that dwarf men into insignificance and inadequacy. And then he had given them...
...peasants - but when finally confronted by the forces of good, they appear as pitiful, helpless creatures. That sort of facile switch does little for credibility, less for coherence, and leaves the film's heavy freight of symbols (including a bevy of slaughtered animals and the ever popular humpbacked dwarf) lying about like so much unclaimed baggage...
Anderson's taste in satire is sometimes a shade too obvious, and he shares with Ford a sentimentality that can play him false, but the very impact and size of the movie (about three hours long) seem to dwarf even its mistakes. What will be remembered is not the occasional false steps but the prevailing tone of high spirits and ferocious humor in such scenes as a sex show behind a respectable hotel, or a trade meeting with an emerging African nation that manages to be both hilarious and horrifying...
Most doctors might see only one dwarf professionally during their careers; Rimoin's clinic, located at Los Angeles' Harbor General Hospital and staffed by ten physicians, sees 500 a year. Rimoin and his colleagues can now identify at least 50 types of dwarfism, and have determined the causes of many of these abnormalities. Midgets, who are tiny but normally proportioned, are usually victims of an underactive pituitary gland, a pea-sized organ at the base of the brain that is largely responsible for the secretion of growth hormone (HGH). Other dwarfs, who tend to have normal-sized heads...
Others credit the clinic with preserving their sanity. Los Angeles House wife Shirley Figone, who is normal sized, was upset about her dwarf son Chris, 2, until Rimoin arranged for her to meet a dwarf couple with the opposite problem - their normal-sized daughter was embarrassed by them. The meeting helped breach the isolation that so often surrounds dwarfs and their families. "We're saving a scrapbook for Chris, cutting out any newspaper stories we can find concerning little people," says Mrs. Figone. "We want him to know that he's not alone...