Word: flatten
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Debasement of the language cannot be blamed on protesters alone. The news media, the advertising agencies, the Government-even President Nixon himself-have all helped flatten and attenuate the English tongue. When radicals misuse language, they are only applying the lesson they have been so well taught by their society. That lesson has been reinforced by philosophers now in fashion-Marshall Mc-Luhan, for instance, who says that pictures are more important than words and contemplates a society of inarticulate tribal emotions based on instant sight and sound. Or Herbert Marcuse, who teaches that protesting words are as empty...
...treasure boards of tin cans? they flatten out for their hut roofs...
...tracking shots are unique. They never try to penetrate a situation, reach an open space, or leave people behind. They all are stopped. They end confronting people. They do not show ways to get free of real dilemmas. But while they move in on people they do not flatten and simplify the situation. Each track's last frame has as much depth as its first. What this signifies is that tracks, single drives pushing in one direction cannot on the one hand reduce the complexity of a situation, and cannot on the other hand salve the situation by leaving...
...anyone who tried to hold onto him. Many of the demonstrators pleaded with the soldiers to drag people out instead of clubbing them. But the soldiers evidently had orders to leave the removal of protestors to the Marshals; they were there only to hold the line and flatten anyone the Marshals decided to pick...
Inevitably a virgin is seduced (twice in fact it's so funny) and a teetotalling bar-smasher gets roaring drunk, but this particular show extends its faithfulness to formula a bit too far. Individual lines like "you boys couldn't flatten out a wrinkled postage stamp" ring a little hollow. I wondered during the first act whether the show would stoop to the Beach Party level of repartee with one character emphatically commenting "You can say that again," and his buddy really saying it again. It was there all right, a little dressed up, but dismally there all the same...