Word: embalmer
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1960-1969
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Christo-he never uses his surname-knows how to muffle a rampant motorcycle so that it acquires the petrified dynamism of a stuffed buffalo or a blind folded rhinoceros. He can embalm a slender sapling so that it lies with the mute pathos of Pearl White bound and gagged on the railroad track. His current winding sheet in Chicago enfolds a cadaver so Brobdingnagian that even the man in the street has been confronted by the undertaking...
...youngsters immerse themselves in noise that is so uncomfortable to their elders? A Florida teenager explained: "The sounds embalm you. They numb you. You don't want to hear others talk. You don't want to talk. You don't know what to say to each other anyway." So why listen? And, eventually...
...true that "tradition tends to embalm the moment in time when the culture feels it is at its peak." Call our generation neopagan, secular or whatever, it is at odds with phoniness and insincerity. Our irreverent generation is not bent on overturning the past, but on crying out against the arbitrary embalming and sanctification of one historical moment. Our American lack of "tradition" is not our national stigma; our innate respect for and optimistic sense of an evolving human experience has been the unsung American contribution to modern civilization...
...classic context, tradition tends to embalm the moment in time when the culture feels it is at its peak. British sovereigns ride to their coronations in an 18th century coach with an escort of cavalrymen wearing plumed helmets, and the guards at the Vatican are still dressed in the costumes Michelangelo reputedly designed for them. It is impossible to imagine a guard of honor for a U.S. President dressed as Minutemen. For Americans believe profoundly that the best is yet to be; that whatever it is-a building, a custom, an institution-they can do it better next time...
...rest of the film is equally far-out but seldom funny. Obviously enamored of Dr. Strangelove, Scenarists Christopher Isherwood and Terry Southern (also co-scenarist of Strangelove) commit the funereal folly of thinking that any joke about death is worth repeating To cremate a pet cheerfully, embalm a baby, or mold crazy expressions onto the face of a corpse (John Gielgud, for example) may be good for laughs among professional crapehangers, but on a giant screen such gags seem merely gratuitous...