Word: genteelness
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...moves you like a pawn across the chessboard of life. Fate..." In Polanski's hands, Hardy's tragedy is like an extravagantly produced episode of Masterpiece Theater, the sauntering tale of a country lass victimized by forces beyond her control in Victorian England, the film oozes refinement; it is genteel to the point of passivity...
Polanski seems to have a fundamental misunderstanding of Thomas Hardy. Hardy rebelled against the genteel tradition in Victorian literature. His novels describe violence, poverty and, particularly, sexuality with startling candor. He scandalized the literary classes with his disdain for repressive society, his grim mockery of propriety. His works were bold, cynical, and for most of his audience, shocking--not unlike the more familiar work of film director Polanski. Perhaps it was their shared obsessions with the impervious force of Evil, the cruelty of the bourgoisie, and the sudden, unpredictable groin-kicks of Fate that initially attracted Polanski to Hardy...
...genteel Southern drawl rises to a high pitch because he knows you are going to come back at him with a contradiction, a challenge, a word about reality. Otherwise, though, he remains calm; no more than a second or two passes before he's ready with a lengthy answer. Recognizing his secular inarticulateness, he nonetheless slides over questions about the nuclear arms race, the state of the economy--ultimately, all the issues of the election. And he knows that this new-right pitch has shocked and disgusted even his fellow ministers: "When the majority of the religious people in this...
...would no longer put up with such antics, which are fast becoming a fixture of soccer matches, the European Football Union levied the penultimate penalty: West Ham would have to play its home game to an empty house. Last week the two teams played an evening match before a genteel throng of 200 or so officials and journalists in Upton Park stadium, which can hold nearly 40,000. "It was a strange experience," said West Ham Forward David Cross. "Whenever I scored, I had to look at the referee to be sure he'd given the goal. Normally...
...limits. On talk shows like Phil Donahue's, ordinary people regularly recount stories of emotional disturbance, marital discord, incest. Men chat about their vasectomies, women about their hysterectomies. The spectacle of Lyndon B. Johnson flashing his surgical scar to the world, so vulgar at the time, seems comparatively genteel in retrospect...