Word: genericism
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...afraid I haven't been a very good Eliot House Secret Santa to you. Stifled by the intensely academic season and the economy of the Square, I gave generic presents--chocolate, pizza, a book...
...discovered that circa 1800 our antecedents in the Jewish pale went by Ben Reb Tzadik (Son of the Master Scholar). Apparently there was an earlier pedagogue in our crowd. For tax purposes or other bureaucratic reasons, the authorities in a few countries around 1810 ordered Jews to give up generic Hebrew titles. Like all Diaspora Jews over the centuries, the first Baratz did what seemed necessary to adapt, adding vowels to the B, R and Tz of Ben Reb Tzadik to produce Baratz. So Harold Baratz, in his own way, adapted. But he lived long enough to understand that...
...advertising world is in a swivet because familiar mass-market brand names such as Pampers and Marlboro are suddenly reeling from low-priced generic competitors. Tiny Tiffany Trump, in contrast, symbolizes the enduring cachet of a certain type of luxurious commercial pedigree. What could be more emblematic of this shopping-obsessed century than a fin-de-siecle vogue for naming children after favored stores? After all, the latest list of the most popular names for girls already veers toward the comically pretentious, with Nicole, Brittany and Ashley far outpacing plain Jane and simple Susan...
...SEED: "The hardest part of this show is coming up with the ideas," says David. A Seinfeld premise is different from that of most other TV comedies; instead of a generic sitcom "problem" (Murphy's mother comes to visit; Roseanne hates Darlene's new boyfriend), Seinfeld typically starts with a small, recognizable life moment that causes outsize anguish. Says David: "I like something tiny that just expands...
...dots. Its flat, posterish colors will read with infrangible aplomb. It will parody other art, as in the past Lichtenstein's work has parodied everything from Art Deco to synthetic Cubism, from Franz Marc's horses to Monet's versions of Rouen Cathedral, from Mondrian's squares to the generic brushstroke of late Abstract Expressionism. It will have a number of concealed jokes for the art-initiated, often genuinely funny ones -- as when, redoing Matisse's Still Life with "Dance" in 1974, Lichtenstein inserted a comic-strip blast of musical notes to give the figures something to jive...