Word: ennui
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...CENTRAL INGREDIENT missing from Old Acquaintance is energy. The characters move with a distinct sense of unease, reciting their lines by rote as if they're reading from the script. From the sense of ennui and uncertainty the actors themselves generate, it is difficult to determine whether they lack adequate preparation or are simply sick of reciting the same old lines. When the characters occasionally do interact with each other, the result seems more like children squabbling over marbles than adults bickering over marriage...
...grumbles about the nuclear power plants he passes, and is horrified at the despair of jobless young people, but the nec essary briskness of a travel book prevents him from saying anything compelling on these subjects. At times he seems to be seeking out ennui at its most numbing, as if to raise torment to a mystical level...
...picture forms showing 60 years of hectic freedom leading to powerlessness, ennui and immobility. Yet the picture is exaggerated. It is convenient to think of a time in the thrall of science as absent of religious faith, but one look at the millions of Poles, Guatemalans, Irishmen, Americans and Englishmen drawn to the recent visits of Pope John Paul II suggests that all the mysteries of existence do not bubble up only in laboratories. One reason the martial-law government of Poland so fears the Pope's influence in that country is that he reaches feelings in the people...
...minutes degenerated into a painful post-mortem of the previous hour and 15. Early shares in selected cities averaged about 8 compared with Carson's 20. Advertisers apparently remain confident: according to Silverman, national spots are already sold out through March. But to relieve late-night audience ennui, the show must first cure its own schizophrenia. Notes Thicke: "It will take about six to eight weeks to find a groove that is comfortable. Variety is fine, but we have a little too much variety...
Instead of meekly succumbing to these hazards, which many assume to be modern man's natural lot, they are saying no to ennui and enervation by fighting back in a directly physical way-in the gym. Muscles rippling as they strain against heavy weights, chests swelling as they dance in an energized aerobics class, they are venting frustrations, building bodies and sharpening minds with one of mankind's oldest panaceas: exercise. They are America's physical elite, the new Spartans...