Word: prurient
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...film by Thomas Edison, seems strange and haunting at the beginning of "The Celluloid Closet" but even more so at the end, where it is used to great effect, bookending the progress shown in the film, in which such images began as innocuous and then became an object of prurient curiosity and hatred, finally, as the directors hint, a symbol of possibility and hope...
...days? Normally the reasons children are forbidden to see films are explicit sex and spectacular spasms of violence. In the case of Showgirls, though, the list of no-nos might read, "Obscene level of incompetence, excessive inanity in the story line, gross negligence of the viewer's intelligence, a prurient interest in the quick buck...
...days, the press covered up the sexual misconduct of Presidents and Senators because the public was thought to be insufficiently sophisticated to process it. But in fact voters seem quite capable of analyzing human frailties. After the initial wave of prurient interest in the Flowers revelations died down and Clinton made his contrite nondenial on 60 Minutes, a large segment of the public integrated this information into the picture they had of the candidate and decided to vote for him anyway. By contrast, Packwood pursued the Clarence Thomas strategy: deny everything and attack the credibility of your accuser. Worse...
...best, History Laid Bare is novel enough to hold the reader's prurient interest...
...becomes natural for the flock to demand of the preachers an accounting of their private lives, if only to see how the pulpit pounders live up to their own proclaimed standards. And that in turn legitimates our current obsession with what is euphemistically called character but is really a prurient interest in the private lives -- actually, the private vices -- of our leaders. Campaigns turn into spectacles of dueling peccadilloes and mutual muckraking. The end result of this orgy of accusation and intimate revelation is a debased political discourse and a disgusted public...