Word: rage
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...peal. A widowed mother carrying a swaddled child paces despondently, then wheels and, in the accents of old Russia, jeers at the leaders of the new Soviet state: "Liars! Killers! You don't know Christ!" The time is the last day of 1917, and the central object of her rage is V.I. Lenin. His revolution has succeeded, but his nation's economy is failing, its armies are in retreat, its enemies are demanding territory, and its ideology has failed to take hold anywhere beyond the borders of traditional Russia...
...firm rejection of Stalinism." It is also a poignant and at times eerily apt echo of the present -- as when Lenin and his colleagues sadly conclude that the apparent Communist revolution in Germany, where Marx expected his workers' revolt to start, is instead a brief outpouring of rage and envy from a still conservative people. This Lenin says his duty is to feed, clothe, house and employ the Russian people; until this goal is achieved, there is no point in expansionist ambitions. Afghanistan comes to mind...
...makers of the new pop do not ignore this rage. They embrace, exploit and transform it. As the California rap group N.W.A. announces at the start of its album Straight Outta Compton: "You are now about to witness the strength of street knowledge." What they know from the street may not be what the heartland wants to hear. The message may be cleansing or hateful; the lyrics and limericks may expand or debase the language. And if X-rated pop adheres to writer Theodore Sturgeon's useful rule that "90% of everything is crud," most of it may be awful...
...give a joke some taboo oomph, is to talk dirty. Plenty of comics don't; the most popular TV comedian of the '80s is clean (and funny) Jay Leno. But plenty do. Just watch them on HBO or Showtime. Sam Kinison, a kind of defrocked evangelist of red-neck rage (and also, in spurts, funny), provoked the condemnation of gay spokesmen with his jokes about AIDS. On his new album, Leader of the Banned, Kinison declares that his motto is "family entertainment," then proceeds to put the knock on gays, Dr. Ruth, Jerry Lewis' "kids" and the worldwide female dictatorship...
SHOW BUSINESS: Raunch is all the rage in pop culture, and outrage is the reaction of many Americans...