Word: idealisms
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...ideal freedom is a struggle toward the light, the U.S. is somewhat closer to it now--in economic freedoms, social freedoms and political freedoms --than it has ever been before. The obituary for the American frontier was pronounced by Frederick Jackson Turner in 1893. But in the American mind, the future itself is the wilderness to be settled. The U.S. still works frontiers, finding new channels, inventing new lives. By its explorations in the realms of individual and social freedoms, America is making what historians may eventually consider its greatest contribution to the modern...
Good cases have been made for locating his origins in the boot steps of the lonesome pioneer. Robert B. Parker, creator of Spenser, a private investigator so sure of himself that he needs only one name, even wrote a Ph.D. thesis on the subject. According to the traditional ideal, to survive with dignity on the American frontier required a touch of ruthlessness and a personal code of honor. "When the wilderness disappeared at the end of the 19th century," says Parker, the hero "became a man, alone, facing an urban wilderness." A more precise definition of the breed came naturally...
...Rings Twice) counterpointed violence with steamy sexuality; Chandler's signature note of sarcastic charm can be heard in the opening of his 1936 story Goldfish: "I wasn't doing any work that day, just catching up on my foot-dangling." Currently, Parker's Spenser sings the best sassy blues: "Ideal options aren't something I have much to do with. Most of the time I'm shuttling between bad and worse." Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer prefers stride (when he's not playing chopsticks), and John D. MacDonald's Travis McGee fuses bebop and rap: "Go get the lady with...
...today's TV reporters, Murrow remains the all but universally acknowledged beau ideal. His fearless and candid World War II reporting taught not only America but Britain that journalism must be more than propaganda. Indeed, the BBC asked him to direct its programming, an honor he reluctantly declined. Later Murrow helped establish, at considerable personal cost, the principle that TV journalism must be as free, as challenging and as crusading as its counterparts in print. And he did so, unlike virtually any of his contemporaries, without ever having worked for a newspaper or having been steeped in print's traditions...
...curiously moved by this harsh film, not least because of Sandrine Bonnaire's astonishing performance as Mona. She personifies youth gripped by a self-destructive ideal (in this case radical individualism), but she projects it without petulance or self-pity. She--and the film--insists only on the unknowability of another human being's choices. We are free to decide if that point is irrelevant to us or tragedy enough to explain, if not life in general, then this particular death...