Word: plot
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...plot is simple, shocking in the way it unfolds in macabre logic. Fourteen-year-olds Pauline (Melanie Lynsky) and Juliet (Kate Winslet) meet, become friends and grow extremely attached to each other, so attached, in fact, that their parents worry the relationship is "unhealthy" and determine to separate them. In desperation, the girls decide to prevent a separation by any means possible...
Jackson uses Pauline's diaries to conture up the patchwork of reality and fantasy worlds this plot inhabits. The viewer is bombarded by a succession of distorted scenarios--a grainy old film-strip of Christchurch, the Claymation-type animation of Pauline and Juliet's invented alter egos, the "Fourth World" they imagine as their private paradise and the dubious authenticity of mid-century New Zealand. Which world are we supposed to believe in? The extremely exaggerated reaction of Pauline and Juliet to any situation seems to fit the various levels of fantasy existence better than it fits the cramped confines...
...NEWS OF REAGAN'S CONTRACTING Alzheimer's disease came as no news at all to this American expatriate. That this actor President had lost the plot was one of the reasons for my emigration. I can see American lawyers trying to outdo one another with the Reagan defense: My client is not guilty, your honor, because he forgets things and therefore cannot be held responsible for his actions. I've often wondered how revisionist historians would rewrite the Reagan years, and now I know...
...story of American leadership -- and its status now -- owes something to the sagas of great American families. Read the classic plot as an allegory...
These are some of the plot elements of American leadership. The complex maturity of the national success brings with it, paradoxically, a diminution and dispersal. Hierarchies flatten out. Presidents of the U.S. and lesser leaders will be ground down, as the great families were. Scandals, like boll weevils (or special prosecutors), will chew into their administrations. Anyone's 15 minutes of fame is liable to end in a poofing flameout of indignity...