Word: ersatz
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Korda's scenario, the sexes do meet. The "lowlevel satyromania" beneath the chill surface of office life engenders assorted love affairs. But because of the status scramble most liaisons are ersatz. When the colleagues of one executive discovered that contrary to the sly suggestions he liked to make, he was really not sleeping with his pretty secretary, the poor chap felt obliged to fire her and take another job himself. Here, as elsewhere, Korda often chooses an odd example, then proceeds on the assumption that it is some kind of norm. In real life, secretaries are often victimized...
...ACADEMY IN PERIL; John Cale (Reprise, $5.98). A bizarre, whimsical but steadfastly intriguing serving of pop esoterica from a young composer who has worked with both John Cage and the rock group, Velvet Underground. Cale's orchestral writing (played by the Royal Philharmonic) often sounds like ersatz Charles Ives, Cale's piano parts (played by Cale himself) like sleepy Debussy. Yet within their pop context, they possess a kind of "laid-back" mood that may just appeal to the rock young...
...Without a doubt, Eleanor is prettier than George. But for all her ersatz eyelashes and frosted hair, her image is still one of a wife parroting the absurd, any-promise-for-a-vote utterances of her husband...
...players would even turn their backs on the audience, and "performance" was almost a dirty word. Now the show is everything. A few rock groups share the evening with stand-up comedians or clowns and trapeze artists to liven up their act. Some musicians wear mime makeup and practice ersatz Marcel Marceau. Others appear in full drag-flowing scarves, high-heeled wedgies, false eyelashes, mascara, lipstick and cheek-clinging glitter. With the revolt long since gone out of the music, what is left is really a new kind of vaudeville or sometimes a freak show-occasionally first-rate, frequently diverting...
Comic relief is provided by a cast of four regulars, who make up a motley, multiracial sampling of the building's tenants: an Italian con man, a black superintendent, a fiery Puerto Rican and a jittery white liberal. "Quite on!" shouted the ersatz liberal in a demonstration of solidarity with Davis in last week's installment. "You know," he added, "I was the first to complain when they took Amos 'n' Andy off the air." It is a complaint likely to be echoed by a broader audience when the Melba Moore-Clifton Davis Show ends...