Word: evils
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...traditional melodrama the ostensibly weak must triumph over the seemingly invincible. And that usually means a clash between a good woman and an evil man. But this time Dan is the vulnerable one -- in De Palma's provocative term, a "feminized male" -- partly because of his position as head of the family. And his adversary is scarily strong, a masculinized female even in name -- Alex. She is the stalker, the demon, the sexual adventurer...
...women whose sexuality makes them both super- and subhuman. Vampires. Or, in Hollywood's word, vamps. Since 1915, when Theda Bara starred in A Fool There Was (based on Rudyard Kipling's poem The Vampire), the American movie screen has been pocked with predatory femmes fatales. What made them evil? Usually, that they liked sex as much as men did, if they were decadent Europeans played by the likes of Garbo and Dietrich. Or, if they were homegrown, that sexual frustration twisted them into satanic schemers...
...pinned down and in duress I call for reinforcements, my lawyer, my Harvard Law School Professor from the back seat: "Giiiiiinsburg!"--but it is not the pinstriped one that comes bounding front-seatward over the naugahyde but a flashing purple, orange, and hair between myself and the evil moonface, a poet, a beatnik, a man more sane unconscious than awake, rapping an unmistakable acid/booze rap into the ear of the man who has the power to send 50,000 national guardsmen to drag us to jail in chains, dancing and singing some verbal Mandala, and reaching into his pocket...
...onward we spin once more, glory of youth, until one nosecount later we realize that Ginsburg #1 had jumped out in an acid freak at the moonface's first arrival and, now wandering in the evil endless desert all alone, had missed the whole weird entirety...
...president's remark may appear appropriate to the occasion. Comments like these, however, fuel idealistic expectations that will never be fulfilled. Sadly, arms control is but a tiny step on "the path to peace and safety." Reagan, who has repeatedly stressed his "realistic" outlook on the "Evil Empire" in the past, should of all people be aware of the limitations of arms control...