Word: heroicize
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...contest of sorts, but it ended without a score. North arrived in his formfitting Marine uniform, his chest bedecked with medals ("fruit salad," in military parlance). In a voice quavering with suppressed (or feigned) emotion, he took the Fifth Amendment, making his refusal to cooperate somehow seem heroic. "Despite my very strong desire to provide Congress with my recollection of the facts pertaining to this matter, counsel has advised me that I should avail myself of the protections provided by that same Constitution that I have fought to support and defend." Democrat Thomas Lantos pledged to contribute to an Ollie...
...aspect of Orsay's collection that is likely to be controversial -- though not with the general public, which is sure to love it -- is the amount of space given to so-called pompier art of the Third Empire. (Pompier means "fireman," and the allusion is to the heroic nudes with Greek helmets, resembling the casques of the Paris fire brigade, that infested beaux arts academic painting.) Cachin and her colleagues have dredged up an astounding panoply of period kitsch, from 1850s imitators of Ingres through Bouguereau to what must be the most obsessively pederastic elocution in all art history, Jean...
...show 19th century taste as it was, not as it ought, in the eyes of a retrospective modernism, to have been. Orsay, one feels, was right to include the work of these heroic flatterers and contaminated virtuosos. Not only are they better than we once thought, but they help one recognize the true achievement of the avant-garde alternative. The triumph of the avant- garde over the pompiers has been so complete that one can now look at the losers with calm interest and historical understanding. This is not a matter of camp revival, as some moralists insist...
...PITFALLS OF heroic history writing are amply revealed in the Handlins' book. Wood and Bailyn were guided by a brilliant refinement and reinterpretation of American history. But where such an epic approach is not guided by inspiration, the result is often technically satisfying but not terribly original work. The Handlins' book at times simply reads like a well-researched, in-depth look at the same issues that your American history high school textbook covered...
...Sacrifice ends on a note of desperate hope: that every birth means a new genesis. As the ambulance careers by, Little Man waters his father's tree. He relaxes under it and says, "In the beginning was the Word. Why is that, Papa?" It is a poignant query, a heroic response, especially since the speaker is not only this Little Man but also Tarkovsky -- a man who has virtually offered up his life in the sacrifice to make, not good movies, but great films. In The Sacrifice, the cryptic Tarkovsky style helps create a towering cathedral...