Word: ersatz
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...movies and television. This effect existed before, but it is a matter of degree; our simulation differs by being more realistic, more complete.In the aforementioned Postal Service song, “Clark Gable,” the actor simulates an imitation kiss in the context of a movie, with ersatz rain as a backdrop—“the script it called for rain / but it was clear that day / so we faked it.” It’s an apt reflection of existence; like LeRoy, we live in an artificial, constructed reality. It is a world...
...Civil War recreations come back to haunt them. In the eponymous theme-park of his second collection, “Pastoralia,” impatient visitors and their bratty children pay to observe individuals dressed up as Cro-Magnons, who are allowed to speak only in grunts in the ersatz cave that is their workplace. (They can curse at their own misbehaving offspring, fax evaluations of each other’s daily performance, chainsmoke, bicker, flirt, and so on, only after their...
...perhaps the whole week of lamentation was an electronically stimulated hysteria, an ersatz binge catered by press and television barons that will be followed some morning soon by a massive letdown and hangover. Or again, maybe Diana's too brief life and meteoric streak across the world's consciousness enraptured people by its mythic qualities. A ballet shoe tied last week to the railing outside Kensington Palace was inscribed, "You were a Cinderella at the Ball and now you are a Sleeping Beauty...
...such as for their political leaders. Others thought Li and her fellow finalists were insufficiently prim role models. It's also possible that Super Girl--produced by a station in Hunan province--was upstaging CCTV, China's national network, which produces its own more subdued but far less popular ersatz Idol...
...lately about Mom's TV-viewing habits? Does she watch for hours on end, clutching her credit card in one hand and the telephone in the other? Is she smitten with a TV personality named Budget Bob? Has she started getting packages in the mail that contain everything from ersatz diamond rings to brass eagles? And what about Dad? Has he been babbling about someone on TV named Bubblin' Bobbi? Is his workshop suddenly overflowing with tools, gadgets and trinkets that keep arriving via United Parcel Service...