Word: hysteria
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Ionesco described the play as an anti-Nazi drama. But, more broadly, it exposes the collective hysteria that lies beneath the thin veneer of reason covering modern society. The play is still more complex than a simple attack on mindless conformity. It questions what resistance to conformity really means. Because he resists rhinoceritis, Stanley appears to be a hero at the end. But there is an ambiguous quality to his heroism. When he realizes he is the only human left in the town, his resistance to the disease momentarily weakens. He begins to think it might be nice...
...satins, conks and greaser crowns, bouffants and bubbles and blond-wigged blacks and silver-sprayed Afros, tranvestites and Amazons. The action is not in getting into the movie as much as it is in getting off on the movie together, in concert. And the getting off means a wisecracky hysteria, a grab your neighbor and howl with a mad mock raspy relief, as if coming down off some wild nightmare ride of your midnight hour. There isn't a quiet minute of the movie. You hear waves of "Jeesus, man, I can't believe that action. I mean...
...Father Richard Woods, a young expert on occultism at Chicago's Loyola University who recently published a book called The Devil (Thomas More Press). Woods encountered 23 cases of people who thought they were possessed by the devil after reading The Exorcist; he now fears another wave of hysteria from moviegoers. "The movie is going to cause so many pastoral problems I wish they had never made it." Beyond that, argues Woods, the film never really grapples with the problem of evil. "The devil's true work is temptation. He leads us into sin. Evil as we know...
...drama unfolds with undistracted simplicity, eloquence and force. In Act I, Julian reveals the anguish and hysteria to which he was driven by Alan's abandonment. The two are reconciled and go to bed together. In Act II, Alan's wife Jacqueline makes a touching plea for Alan's return, but he refuses. In Act III, Alan discovers the seamy side of Julian: that he has been the most indiscriminate sort of male prostitute. Yet the two men finally agree that to deny their love for each other would be to make life not worth living...
...keep. He lacked Coward's dry crystal tone, Porter's slyly sexy urban ennui, Fitzgerald's tender romantic imagination and Shaw's intellect. Barry's plays are a little like cocktail parties that have begun to wind down, leaving the guests more prone to hysteria than hilarity...