Word: rite
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...moviegoers could not only hear, say, Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring, conducted by Maestro Leopold Stokowski and recorded in stereophonic sound (then a rarity in film exhibition), but also see it brought to life as a titanic dinosaur duel. A man of artistic ambitions--pretensions, if you will--Disney had a missionary fervor to bring fine music, mediated by his own exquisite middle-brow instincts, to the masses. "Gee," he gushed when he saw one segment of Fantasia, "this'll make Beethoven...
...influence also extended to casting: "I told Lauren Bacall there was a perfect part for her," he recalls. "When I said she'd play the madam of a whorehouse, she uttered some expletives, then agreed." Now Douglas is embarking on his eighth book, a new movie and an adolescent rite of passage: next week he will be bar mitzvahed for the second time. "In Judaism you can be re-bar mitzvahed at 83," he says. "I've asked guests to donate to charity in lieu of gifts, but I do expect a lot of fountain pens...
...past 15 years, says that "every fall, a fresh batch of freshmen come in," many with the assumption that a Harvard man smokes a pipe. (Not all of his customers are male, of course, though his female customers are mostly European women.) Macdonald sees it as a rite of passage, one that is often quickly discarded due to the amount of patience and work one must put into his or her pipe. It's amusingly easy, after all, to spot a novice pipe-smoker from their frustration in keeping the durn thing lit. For neophytes frustrated by packing, cleaning...
...reasons for doing it, moreover, are largely the same. Traditionally, body art has served to attract the opposite sex, boost self-esteem, ward off or invoke spirits, indicate social position or marital status, identify with a particular age or gender group or mark a rite of passage, such as puberty or marriage. It's this sort of strictly prescribed, highly ritualistic decoration that Beckwith and Fisher depict in African Ceremonies. "We've tried to show how body art is relevant to every stage of development, from birth to death," says Fisher...
Shaun Fernando, a junior at Texas A&M University, embarked this fall on a rite of passage that began in 1909. Alongside 5,000 of his classmates, he helped construct a massive tower of wood that would be torched before the Thanksgiving-week football game against rival University of Texas. In October, Fernando pitched in for "the Cut," early-morning trips to nearby fields to fell some 5,000 oaks. Afterward students broke ground on the edifice, pounding two thick pine trunks end on end 10 ft. into the earth to serve as a central support. Last week came...