Word: merchanted
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...their primary task is to help us escape our trials of the moment, one of their secondary goals is to ease the burdens of the past. These days, history in the movies is essentially set decoration, something shimmering and elegant to place behind the well- spoken characters of a Merchant-Ivory film once a year, a Martin Scorsese film once a lifetime. The past is almost never seen as a tragic force. Or as something that contains a certain few shattering, shaping occurrences with which each generation must come to terms anew if it is to retain its moral footing...
...might say that patheticism stands to notions of high culture (an ever imperiled growth in the United States) rather as the antics of Ren, Stimpy, Beavis, Butt-head and their pals do to those Edwardian gents in four-button ecru linen jackets who are seen contemplating San Miniato in Merchant-Ivory movies. To be a patheticist is to have more or less given up. It is to have made the discovery, always startling to the young, that parents lie, that politicians cheat, that moral authorities are hypocritical, that human society is one big sucking morass of dreck, and that...
...same principles often lead to strictures on content. When the Guthrie Theater revived The Front Page, it debated whether to edit out racist language. Jewish leaders told the Oregon Shakespearean Festival, albeit unsuccessfully, that The Merchant of Venice was irredeemably anti-Semitic and should never be produced...
...like to scorn this new trend, it's hard with the music that's coming out of the MTV studios. These 14 songs hold up well in an acoustic format, and it's nice to get some of the intimacy that comes from a live recording, especially with Natalie Merchant. Her attraction has always been the ethereal realness she emanates, not her vocal range, and this sense of closeness is only amplified in this setting...
...throughout every song. The musicians all know that Natalie is the star, so there is no need for anyone else to try and steal the spotlight; instead, they focus on playing well together. Track after track features subtly lyrical arrangements. "It's true that you are touched by something," Merchant sings in the album's opener, "These Are Days," and this sums up the feeling the listener gets from this album, It leaves you with a warm feeling inside, and makes you want to twirl around in that childish way that Merchant does in concert. The audience at MTV seems...