Word: ersatz
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...same 30's drama, with a different sex swap. Sure, Joel actually says, "Sometimes you just gotta say, 'What the fuck.'" But what he's really saying, desperately, is that "sometimes you just gotta fuck." What do we have for our lucky couple? Well, for the dumb, anxious, ersatz blonde, there's Tom Cruise, the dumb, protohulking, died-brunette--and vice versa (if you haven't lost...
...that cannot be expressed simply, unlike so many cardboard cinema emotions. What really could be more phony than Richard Nixon's claim, straining for the sincerity he would never achieve, that "I am not a crook"? He who doth protest ... dispenses with any chance of conveying more than the ersatz...
Carriol thinks Dr. Christian might be a good ersatz messiah because "the man had coined some very quotable quotes." None happens to be included in the novel, but Christian obviously has some way with words: "Too many people are so busy earning salvation in the next life that they only end by screwing this one up." Listening to such remarks, Judith experiences strange sensations indeed: "Her gut was crawling, shivering horrific tides of joy washed higher and higher up the shores of her mind...
Schuller's critics complain about both his method and his message. Conservative theologians maintain that he is mass-marketing an ersatz, individual-centered gospel that glosses over the troublesome doctrine of sin. Mainstream clergy are disturbed by Schuller's zealous push for conversion and his carnival-barker style. "His success-oriented message," says Congregationalist Browne Barr, former dean of the San Francisco Presbyterian Seminary, "is a happy optimism; it sells nicely, but it is just very shallow...
Betrayal is minimalist self-conscious pseudo-drama at its most lean and mean, a love triangle chopped up, robbed of emotional content, shorn of traditional character relationships, and pasted together in reverse order. What remains (a lot) is 90 minutes of ersatz psychodrama that flip-flops the protagonists' emotions, the concept of the dramatic narrative, and traditional notions of romance, nostalgia, friendship and adultery...