Word: phantasmagoria
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Humbug, responds Dr. Meaden. "Those who like to fantasize that something from outer space is responsible can be excluded," he insists. "What does cause these circles is better than fiction." But with or without government research funding, it may be a while before students of the phantasmagoria come up with a totally convincing explanation. Indeed, some suspect that researchers and the locals may enjoy their novel oddity so much that another ring is more interesting than a conclusive answer...
...film, which Director Abuladze calls a "tragic phantasmagoria," uses allegory, fantasy and surrealism to evoke the terror of a totalitarian system. His central character is Varlam Aravidze, the mayor of a provincial town. Varlam combines Stalin's close-cropped haircut, Hitler's mustache and Mussolini's black shirt to embody the image of a universal tyrant. Although the setting and time are undefined -- secret police appear alternately as medieval knights or spear-wielding Roman centurions -- there is no doubt that the real subject is Stalinism...
...only zealots in sight are willfully credulous European tourists. "You are a people truly young," burbles one foreign girl to the powerless and paralyzed Julio. "Everyone finds happiness in your country." Padilla knows better, and after a chapter or two of this biting phantasmagoria, so do all but the most naive readers...
Last year some 85 million of them were bought in the U.S. for about $900 million. This year (no sunnier than last) the market will grow by 25%, adding up to more than a billion dollars. Never before has there been such a phantasmagoria of shapes, sizes, colors and prices: python, polka-dotted and zebra frames, champagne, vermilion and espresso-colored lenses, asymmetric cat's-eyes and jewelry-bedizened sun helmets that cost thousands of dollars. If price is the object, the glittering Optica shop in Beverly Hills has a pair for $35,000. Foster Grant, the largest...
...designed was the 1975 Glyndebourne version of Stravinsky's The Rake's Progress, its libretto by W.H. Auden and Chester Kallman. Hockney, never embarrassed about paying homage to his aesthetic hearth gods, did the whole thing in the manner of Hogarth's engravings of that moral phantasmagoria set in 18th century England, stylizing the sets into crosshatched black-and-white etchings. Their graphic wit and punch reached a memorable climax in the final scene, where poor Tom Rakewell, insane at last, finds himself in Bedlam. The wall is covered with graffiti, each one a quotation from Hogarth...