Word: humanistic
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...traditional faiths, but with those that have, 500 years after the reconquista, returned to its shores. Islam is in Europe to stay. There will be no more pressing challenge to the next generation of Europeans than to reconcile its practice with the best of the old Continent's humanist tradition...
DIED. Vashti McCollum, 93, Illinois housewife and humanist (a term she preferred to atheist) whose objections to religion classes at her son's school led to a landmark 1948 Supreme Court ruling protecting separation of church and state in public education; in Champaign, Ill. After her son decided he did not want to attend the Protestant-oriented classes--Jews and Catholics went off-campus for instruction--she sued the school board. McCollum, who endured threats to her family and lost her job, later said she fought because "I knew I was right...
...time greats, this World War I saga prefigures many a Great Escape prison-camp movie--it pits a German commandant (Erich von Stroheim) against two captured French officers (Pierre Fresnay and Jean Gabin) in a gradually warming debate on the codes of honor and survival. But Renoir the humanist is no sentimentalist, as the film's French title makes clear: La Grande Illusion translates as The Big Illusion. This was the first Criterion DVD release, and the supplements show that the company was on its game from the start. There is Renoir's filmed reminiscence of the movie...
...Still, this is not Hollywood-humanist tract. It races and shocks like any good Mann melodrama, coiling its tension smartly, filling the screen with vivid tough guys (Howard Da Silva and Charles McGraw as a rancher and his enforcer) and gals (Lynn Whitney as McGraw's surly wife). The movie also has style to spare, especially in the pearly flashes of white amid the dark skies and darker hills. Somebody had seen Que Viva Mexico, Sergei Eisenstein's 1932 paean to peons. We'll tell you who that somebody was in a minute...
...difference is that, in the late '40s and early '50s, mainstream culture was still defined by the standards of good taste, whatever that is. Usually it meant congratulating a work of fiction for its modernist notions and humanist politics. That wouldn't fit Spillane at all; his novels were, arguably, post-humanist. No tastemaker admitted to enjoying the pulps, though they contained some of the most vigorous writing around. Few critics defended Spillane, even to establish their contrarian credentials by going against the genteel grain. (Spillane's one cheerleader among serious novelists was Ayn Rand, a dogmatic right-winger. That...