Word: icon
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...task the writers faced in this issue was not simply telling a story but also bringing special insight. Playwright and screenwriter Paul Rudnick (In & Out, Addams Family Values) stirred up a refreshing appraisal of the iconic appeal of Marilyn Monroe, focusing on the legacy of her celluloid image instead of the tabloid conspiracies that crowd her persona. The jazz singer Diane Schuur made poignant connections between her own blindness and that of Helen Keller. Rita Dove, America's former poet laureate, produced a tightly woven mini-epic in prose of the moment of Rosa Parks' apotheosis from unprepossessing Montgomery...
Betty Friedan, on the other hand, proved a formidable presence. Staff writer Nadya Labi traveled to Friedan's Washington apartment to work with the feminist icon on the brief reminiscence of the women's movement that accompanies our Emmeline Pankhurst story. "I perched cautiously on the sofa," recalls Labi, "and quickly stood when Ms. Friedan entered the room. Her pose was authoritative, and her manner direct." Especially when she expounded on sex and autonomy. Intoned Friedan: "As women move to greater rights, opportunities and control of their destinies, all the measures of sexual satisfaction increase...
...next Sunday morning, Bill Gates went into Stained-Glass Windows, and the Scripture reading was a screechy passage from Jeremiah, and the sermon was very antimoney, antigrowth, antientrepreneurship, and it scrolled on for hours; and when the Confession window opened, Bill clicked twice on the Pride icon and then Continue and saw This program has performed an immoral function and will be shut down, and in that moment he went blind...
...included in our survey another kind of exemplar: the icon, the embodiment of an ideal that affects the way we live or act, for better or worse. Marilyn Monroe, the paramount platinum goddess, became an indelible work of Pop art. The Kennedys gave off an aura in which Americans basked, happy to think that the U.S. had become a place where you could grow up to be royalty. Princess Diana, conversely, became a symbol of Everywoman's search for happiness...
...much deconstruction can one blond bear? Just about everyone has had a go at Marilyn Monroe. There have been more than 300 biographies, learned essays by Steinem and Kael, countless documentaries, drag queens, tattoos, Warhol silk screens and porcelain collector's dolls. Marilyn has gone from actress to icon to licensed brand name; only Elvis and James Dean have rivaled her in market share. At this point, she seems almost beyond comment, like Coca-Cola or Levi's. How did a woman who died a suicide at 36, after starring in only a handful of movies, become such an epic...