Word: hysteria
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Baba and her friend have a private word-hysteria-for anything of which they disapprove. It is a word they use particularly often in reference to Americans. Yet Baba finds herself entranced by two Americans-Courtney and Alix Nichols, who betray the un-Indian heresy of being in love in the romantic Western pattern. Alix is also a recognizable U.S. type in that when Indian servants place a chair of honor for her, she insists on sitting on the ground. She will love the Indians, if it kills her-and them. Soon, of course, she is an expert on saris...
...freedom appears in Auto de Fe, in which an asthmatic and, presumably, latent homosexual youth faces his intractable mother, who represents social conscience. Playing the young man, Eloi, Glenn Goldburg uses immobile arms to portray his constriction and an extravagant Southern accent to emphasize the wildness of his hysteria. His greatest asset, however, is an extremely expressive face which fully reveals his sensitivity and agitation. In contrast is his mother, who is played by Elaine Gordon with such great stolidity and waspishness that one strongly sympathizes with Eloi's escape, violent...
...because Williams' hysterical females are naturally rich roles. Alma Winemiller, the sexually-repressed daughter of a prurient minister, is certainly a ready-made vehicle for fine acting, and Georgia Boyko fills the part admirably. Simultaneously repulsing and desiring the advances of young Dr. John Buchanan, Miss Boyko portrays her hysteria with a certain delicacy and restraint which make her character both distinctive and convincing. When she is severe with her mother, who has herself been driven insane by an unfulfilled sexual craving, Miss Boyko's high-pitched petulance makes the similarity of their situations apparent. Throughout, she acts, and reacts...
...cliff. Here March seems to indicate his sad beliefs as to the function and fate of the writer who says unwelcome things. As for the short stories, many of them concern madness and abnormality, and are set in a shambling Southern town called Reedyville. They have the sincere hysteria of a man recounting an intolerable experience to indifferent ears. Although his work was something less than first-rate, no reader can fail to see the rictus of terror in the face of a harsh and ironic reality...
According to Gussner, the country is in the grip of a mass hysteria of national pride. "If I went out in the street now and stamped on the American flag," he said, "I would be instantly mobbed. But if instead, I went out and yelled 'Down with the Jews!' people would just say that I was crazy and walk away." He explained that such actions would show the popular interest in a national symbol and not in people themselves...