Word: pranksterism
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Vicino has erected 50 blow-up billboards, and so far reports few problems. The company says that it has received no complaints from neighbors irritated by the inflated advertising. The only untoward incident was when a prankster in Newport Beach, Calif., stuffed a mannequin's leg into the mouth of a giant killer whale advertising the Los Angeles Marineland amusement park...
...middle-aging enfant terrible from off-Broadway has given the Guthrie's new season its "conversation piece." Director Richard Foreman is a bit of a prankster, but he possesses a painter's eye for shaping scenes and a formidable arsenal of theatricality. He explodes one of his surprises at the very start of this revival. A thunderclap of organ music blasts through the house, sounding as though the seraphic tones of Bach had been mangled in some dungeon of the damned...
Still, changes in the middle section of the play, which seems to be the section most tampered with by others than Marlowe, make little sense and confuse the audience. The main character himself vacillates between the tragic Faustus, oscillating between arrogance and remorse, and the cheerful prankster who flies to Rome to play tricks on the Pope. The pasttimes Faustus chooses in which to exercise his power are inconsistent with the are with which he received them. At one point, Faustus, invisible, enters the Pope's chambers and snatches food and wine from his Holiness's lips, confusing and confounding...
...what it seems to be. Psycho, in 1960, has no moral center at all, and The Birds (1963) shows the natural world itself in revolt against the laws that supposedly govern it. Even so, the public was pleased to take Hitchcock's word for what he was?a merry prankster?almost willfully ignoring the signs on film of his growing disillusionment with conventional morality and the possibilities for even just common decency in human nature...
...audience, even to the point of facial telegraphy with broad smirks, grins and grimaces. It is an attention-getting device for securing the playgoers' sympathy. As a result, the corrupt ambition and awful malignity of Richard are whittled away, and he appears as no more than a roguish prankster...