Word: excremention
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...film revolves around a middle-class family trapped in modern urban madness. No such setting would be complete these days without Elliott Gould. As Alfred, a photographer who specializes in snapshots of excrement, he is your average apathetic male set upon by a conventionally aggressive female named Patsy (Marcia Rodd). Her pursuit of Alfred is typical Feiffer: overpowering feminity frustrated by Silly Putty masculinity. Her father (Vincent Gardenia) bellows like the urban Babbitt he is while Mom amuses Alfred with pictures of her dead son. Another sibling snivels around the apartment in sexual ambiguity...
...causes and cures. One school holds that an ever-increasing population's demand for higher living standards must also create ever-increasing amounts of pollution. Unchecked population growth is thus the chief villain. Not so, says another, equally vociferous school, blaming runaway technology instead. By dumping its noxious excrement heedlessly, technological society is overwhelming nature's ability to purify itself. Last week, at a Chicago meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, four champions from both camps clashed in direct debate...
...danger. For example, two French scientists, Georges Bellan and Jean-Marie Peres, expressed alarm about the Mediterranean. Not only is human waste soiling beaches from Tel Aviv to Trieste, they said, but the "self-cleansing" power of the sea itself can no longer cope with the volume of untreated excrement and industrial waste now pouring into it. As a result, the scientists told their colleagues, "The Mediterranean is rushing toward complete pollution...
References to sex, booze and excrement, although hardly in the yuletide spirit, are nonetheless used for their Rabelaisian potential. Most do not bear quoting, but here is a mild example: EXTENDING THE SEASON'S GREETINGS AND EXPRESSING THE HOPE THAT OUR CARNAL RELATIONSHIP MAY CONTINUE FOR MANY YEARS TO COME. By buying nonseasonal cards, the frustrated shopper might even be able to vent the hostility that Christmas pressures frequently evoke. LET ME GET ANGRY JUST ONCE WITHOUT APOLOGIZING FOR IT would seem a suitable sentiment for family and loved ones, I DON'T LIKE YOU would...
Playing amateur archaeologist among the Aztec ruins, Brill tries to poke home the author's moral: Look at what becomes of people who worship gold, the "sun's excrement," instead of the sun. Alas, Bourjaily's real message is this: Nobody is likely to become extinct faster than American novelists trying to rework Lost Generation formulas in the age of Aquarius...