Word: kabuki
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...plot, like Kabuki, has become stylized. Boy with zits and chutzpah lusts after girl with good complexion. Girl becomes infatuated with Vitalis man, who is dumb but fulfills basic elements of the Eisenhowerera American dream...
...naive young maid who is duped by primo sleazebag Boyer, who wants to steal her family jewels. The ending is so trite and stylized that one half expects a knight in shining armor to stride up the stairs of Bergman's London townhouse. But this is mere Kabuki '40s style, so just lap up Bergman, who hits some real highs during her (and our) two-hour angst-holiday in hell...
Backstage, the models are sitting half naked on the dressing-room floors, painting pink and blue Kabuki stripes on their eyelids. The dressers hover over their racks, rolling pink and yellow and gray pantyhose for instant changes. The hat, jewelry, makeup and music co-ordinators stand ready. "Take it off, it's too white," says Galanos, snatching a rope of beads from the neck of a black-and-white coat. The models line up for the opening parade. Makeup and style have reduced them to pure line and angle. They look like fashion sketches of, say, 1936. They swagger...
...Right this way," the barkers used to murmur softly on the streets of Kabuki-cho, Tokyo's red-light district. "She'll show you everything!" No more. Responding to the cries of outraged citizens' groups and local businesses, the Japanese government cracked down last week on adult or, in the Japanese term, "pink" entertainment. Among the new regulations: all pink neon out by midnight, no more come-ons from bar girls, no new massage parlors in restricted areas, no new love hotels near schools or libraries. And no lewd barkers...
...midnight on P day, pornographic posters had disappeared in Kabuki-cho, love hotels had transformed themselves into business hotels, and some strip joints had become coffee shops. The only neon in sight ornamented conventional pubs and restaurants, sushi shops and fast-food outlets. The first police patrol of the area after the crackdown booked only 27 offenders, mainly for soliciting, keeping a restricted business open after hours or permitting minors on the premises. One barker was unfazed. "Politicians and police think they can stamp out pink," he said, "but it all has to go somewhere --someplace darker and dirtier...