Word: emblemmed
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...part of Foster's teen prophesy proved timid. She directed herself as the mother. Destiny, if not autobiography, demanded it. Not that this is the Brandy and Jodie Foster story; that would be too simple. It is more aptly an emblem of the strength, intelligence and self-awareness Jodie Foster has applied to ensure that a perishable commodity (actor) becomes a lasting presence. The movie can stand as both an artful commentary on growing up strange and a calling-card film for a director who promises much and delivers most of it. Still, reverberations from Foster's extraordinary youth pulse...
BABY SITTER. In movies as in life, this is the most traditional woman's role: hearth stirrer, home saver, raising her children and supporting her man. It ! was an emblem, we now realize, of her superiority. Modern man knows that modern woman can do the old, cool-guy stuff -- run a tractor, beat him at poker, light a cigarette in a high wind -- but that he can't manage, so artfully or efficiently, what women have done since the cave days. So there's nothing inherently retrograde about Dying Young, in which Julia Roberts performs bedside therapy on ailing Campbell...
Dull speaking, in Costner's case, is an emblem of miscasting. The character of Robin Hood demands emotional exuberance -- not Costner's forte. He does not spring; he is coiled. He is a reactive actor; audiences enjoy watching him think. In Bull Durham, Field of Dreams and Dances with Wolves he played, quite persuasively, cynics who find something to believe in. But Nottinghamshire is no place for California dreamin'. Perhaps, in the two recent movies about legendary princes, the stars should have swapped roles. Mel Gibson could have been a dashing Robin Hood and Costner a provocative Hamlet...
...right emblem for this show. Religious and national myths are made, not born; their depiction in art involves much staging, construction and editing, under the eye of cultural agreement. Whatever the crucifixion of a Jew on a knoll 2,000 years ago looked like, it wasn't Tintoretto. And the American West of the 19th century was rarely what American artists set out to make it seem...
...ritual indictments of the past on the grounds of racism, sexism, greed and so forth that increasingly substitute for thought among our academics. Lo, the Native American! See, he is depicted as dying! And note the subservient posture of the squaw! And the phallic arrow on the ground, emblem of his lost though no doubt conventionally exaggerated potency! Eeew, gross! Next slide...