Word: joke
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...civil engineering student at the Groningen technical college, who missed his year-end examinations during the ordeal (his dean ordered him advanced anyway). The Moluccans, he said, had treated him reasonably well, and despite low moments, morale among the passengers had remained surprisingly high. The running joke among the group, he said, was that their endless train "ride" must mean that Holland had become a huge country...
...first guitar; when Kansas itself was already changing, subtly, beneath the surface; when in fact everything was changing, getting ready to change, bursting forward, and only we, the well-meaning inheritors of our time-cube, now joined with our parents--parents always coalescing with parents, another divine joke--were holding things back...
...that, these worthies can consider themselves lucky: they have at least had some running about to accomplish. Poor Gene Hackman is required to play a Polish general as if he were a Polish joke, while Ryan O'Neal, as General James Gavin, looks as if he is about to inquire, "Tennis, anyone?" like a summer-stock juvenile. As a general whose troops are surrounded almost the minute they hit the drop zone, Sean Connery is suitably glum. Liv Ullmann and Laurence Olivier play long-suffering Dutch locals caught up in all this boom-boom in humble, long-suffering style...
Jacob the Liar is a film of confinement: at the end of every street, every glance, every joke, is a German rifle muzzle. Inevitably, the comic absurdity of Jacob's mythical radio turns to tragedy. A man is shot down by guards as he tries to pass the cheering news to a group of Jews bound for a concentration camp. In an attempt to redeem himself, Jacob confesses his deception. The letdown causes his best friend to hang himself. Untruth and truth-both come to seem equally false to Jacob...
Still, it's hard not to see a clue in the fact that demographers, who in the '60s seemed to be saying that the median age of the population was something like seven, now pronounce that the U.S. is middleaged, and counting. Middle age is a sitcom joke no one wants to be the butt of, and the generation now turning 40 is the one that never trusted anyone over 30. Its members, who are among the most fanatical cyclists, joggers, iron-pumpers, lap-swimmers, rope-jumpers and cross-country skiers, were especially hard hit by the society...