Word: mythicize
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...rhythms are irresistible, his lyrics like an amalgam of Yeats, Kerouac and Chuck Berry. The Irish tenor John McCormack said what distinguishes an important voice from a good one is the indescribable but crucial quality that he termed "the yarrrrragh." The yarrrrragh, critic Greil Marcus points out, is "a mythic incantation . . . To Morrison ((it is)) the gift of the muse and the muse itself...
Initially, the strategy produced one success after another, contributing to American Express's almost mythic reputation for savviness and invincibility. But a recent chain of misfortunes, miscues and poor managerial decisions is prompting a reappraisal of Amex's sterling reputation. Acquisitions that looked like masterstrokes only a few years ago are now facing criticism; the managerial decision-making process that was once considered fine-tuned and flawless is suddenly being second-guessed; businesses that were thought to be impervious to economic downturns have proved to be vulnerable after all. In short, American Express is showing that it has chinks...
...once a network staple (and the genre has made a modest comeback recently, with such shows as Paradise and The Young Riders), and a small handful of hit series have been set in the past. But these shows were mainly interested in using the past for its symbolic or mythic value. The Minnesota frontier of Little House on the Prairie and the Depression-era South of The Waltons were essentially the same locale: an all-American Everyplace, where ethical issues and family dramas could be worked out against an idealized backdrop, far from the messy moral ambiguities of modern days...
...indicted under the Smith Act on charges of advocating the violent overthrow of the U.S. government. He jumped bail and fled to Mexico, was captured in a border motel, and spent several years in a maximum security cell at Leavenworth, right beside Machine Gun Kelly. Such exploits built a mythic aura around Hall, who, two years after his release in 1957, became general secretary of a party in turmoil. Gone were the halcyon days of 1932 when a communist candidate for President garnered 102,000 votes. Between McCarthy's witch-hunts and Nikita Khrushchev's 1956 denunciation of Stalin...
...suave and gentlemanly. Brando, who grew up middle class, Midwestern and Wasp, radiated pure working-class alienation -- an inarticulate promise of danger, sex and social abrasion. Which is why, as TIME film critic Richard Schickel tells us in BRANDO: A LIFE IN OUR TIMES (Atheneum; $21.95), he was a mythic presence for all the young urban professionals of the '50s. Rude but sensitive, rough but anguished, Brando was their version of pastoral -- a noble-savage counterpoint to the corporate rat race. The myth got lost in the series of unsuccessful movies he made after his greatest, On the Waterfront. Schickel...