Word: fads
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Modern Living story last year on a Detroit-area phenomenon-the playing of tunes on pushbutton telephones-spread the fad across the nation and resulted in the publication by the Los Angeles firm, Price/Stern/Sloan, of The Pushbutton Telephone Songbook, which gives instructions for calling friends and playing for them such pushbutton tunes as Flow Gently, Sweet Afton and Strangers in the Night...
...even a handful of students taking up so silly and risky a fad? Some undergraduates suggest jokingly that the quality of food served in university dining halls might explain the hunger for bulbs. Even Epps admits: "It's clear that something is missing from their diet." Or is the void somewhere else...
Then why the fad? For one thing, smoking pot has become commonplace, even passe, and some people look for new thrills. For another, coke is a powerful stimulant that helps the jaded to forget their ennui. The stimulating effects were discovered by Andean Indians, who for centuries have been chewing coca leaves, the source of cocaine, to help them endure cold and hunger. South America is still the source of most cocaine...
...other hand, 1969-1973 was also a period packed with dishonesty movies, and the dishonesty was heaviest in those geared to youth: Midnight Cowboy, Easy Rider, Getting Straight, or Strawberry Statement, all exploitation "message" movies cashing in on a youth movie fad. They indulge in gratuitous technique, fancy pans, flash forwards and fast cutting; they splurge on a nouveau artistry that distorts our perspectives by filching half the evidence...
Since Kael is so loyal a defender of youth vis-a-vis "the riot movie fad" it seems treacherous to fault her on the subject. Nevertheless, while she treats upper-class enervation as a given, when Antonioni's activist youths (Zabriskie Point) are zombies it means he is alienated. The assumption blights her reasoning. Especially since she insists the America is a better place to live than Antonioni makes it out to be - which puts her on the side of straight liberal anti-radical youth...