Word: laughter
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...faithless Joey evokes only audience guffaws as the gun fails to shoot, adds insult to injury; this is the major emotional crisis of Sally's life, and Morrissey turns it into a farce. Likewise, the constant use of the Motel Lady's physical ugliness as a stimulus to laughter is on a level with the playground viciousness young children often direct towards the physically "different...
...Nixon, a theater piece by Gore Vidal. These "comedies" do more than avoid disentangling the real Nixon from his popular caricature--the self-repressed, ambitious, and self-righteous liar. They construct a semi-comic figure entirely from Nixon's own words. In this sense, they are black comedy. Our laughter barely hides our disgust. It is the President of the United States, not an impersonator, who seems ludicrous. Our sense of his ineptitude only underscores our disbelief at his complete lack of honesty and dignity...
Like the other works, Roth's story evokes laughter which is sadistic, even self-righteous, but he helps us to understand the roots of liberal hatred for the image of Nixon. Trick E. Dixon epitomizes the most evil, calculating and self-serving ambition. He is totally amoral. When he is assassinated, thousands pour into Washington, each hoping to be arrested as the one who accomplished the feat...
...amount of laughter evoked by such satire is hardly a satisfactory criterion for measuring its success. After all, a man responsible for dropping, on the average, the equivalent of two-and-a-half Hiroshimas in bomb tonnage over Vietnam every week for four years is not the sort of figure to provoke unmitigated hilarity. Rather, one must ask if these works are persuasive, whether they are aware of their own aims and capable of achieving them. In this sense, all three works succeed overwhelmingly, though only Roth's has the universality to endure as more than a dated artifact...
President Nixon is opposed to liberalized abortion laws, and Senator McGovern is somewhat less than an advocate. Whom, then, should a committed feminist support? When challenged at a women's caucus in Manhattan for backing McGovern, Committed Feminist Gloria Steinem drew laughter and applause by answering: "If McGovern were a woman and he got pregnant, he would make an honest decision whether or not to have an abortion. If Nixon got pregnant, he'd have an abortion but he'd go around afterward telling everybody that he was still a virgin...