Word: reptilian
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...when the knights somehow seem monstrous, killers risen out of a black id, perpetrators of My Lai, then the entire chivalric logic collapses, and masculinity itself becomes a horror--all rage and aggression and reptilian brain. Viet Nam changed American notions about the virtues of masculinity and femininity. In the '60s, during the great violence of the war, masculine power came to be subtly discredited in many circles as oafish and destructive. The heritage of the Enlightenment (the scientific method, progress, that dreamy Jeffersonian clarity of mind that told us all problems could be solved) now seemed drawn into...
...model gave way to a post-World War II demigod. John Wayne, who had none of the old sweet prissiness and was not afraid of the uses of power. Wayne gave way during the Viet Nam era to Clint Eastwood, the high plains drifter with an almost reptilian indifference to death suffered or inflicted. Cowboy: The Enduring Myth of the Wild West (Stewart, Tabori & Chang; 431 pages; $50) is richly shrewd about the actuality and legend of cowboys, doing justice to both in a commentary by Russell Martin and in photographs that are by turns haunting and as garish...
...medical theorist. Dr. Paul D. MacLean, has suggested that when a man lies down on a psychiatrist's couch, a horse and a crocodile lie down beside him. People, according to MacLean's theory, have not one but three brains: neomammalian (the human), paleomammalian (the horse) and reptilian (the crocodile). Certain primitive tribesmen make no distinction between human and animal life but assume that all life is roughly the same. It simply takes up residence in different forms, different bodies. Higher cultures do not make that organic assumption; they are haunted by the animal...
...that Eisenhower decade of blandness and paranoia. A spaceship full of E.T.s has come to earth on a 25-year leash; now time is up and, just before the aliens leave, some humans are getting nosy. Which are the victims, which the villains? Hard to tell, since the reptilian aliens have assumed human form - except that they dress, speak and act as if it were still 1958 and they were all featured players on Father Knows Best...
...hero: Prince Colwyn (Ken Marshall), risking his world to save the flame-tressed Lyssa (Lysette Anthony). His hearty crew: a wizened wizard named Ynyr (Freddie Jones), a sad-faced Cyclops (Bernard Bresslaw), the scabrous brigand Torquil (Alun Armstrong) and Ergo, the inept conjurer (David Battley). The villain: a reptilian Beast who looks like the Alien from the Black Lagoon...