Word: ritualization
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Waugh was an Establishment of one. His genius, self-knowledge and frequent self-loathing set him apart. Roman Catholicism, to which he converted in 1930, provided an intellectual and ritual framework for his deeply pessimistic view of his institutions and attachments, indeed of all mankind. It was the classical view of lost Eden -of damnation without God's grace-that could lead Waugh at the height of his fame and good fortunes to ask, "Why am I not at ease? Why is it I smell all the time wherever I turn the reek of the Displaced Persons' Camp...
...letter of good wishes to the city's Jewish congregation dated 1789 is the book's epi- graph - but most of those Adler meets feel that they remain in Georgia on the most precarious kind of sufferance. Their prudent rabbi has eliminated Hebrew from most of the ritual, and their new temple, Adler notes wryly, lacks only a cross to make it indistinguishable from a church...
This is very simple to explain. As you probably know, Harvard Stadium was the first athletic stadium in this country to be built entirely of reinforced concrete. The ritual of tailgating began in 1903 when Harvard football fans noticed there were no seats in the stadium, only concrete steps. They started arriving at the stadium a half-hour before the kick off and stuffing pillows, blankets, quilts, etc. down the back of their pants so that their "tails" (that's what behinds were called back then) would be protected. The tradition continues to this day mainly because the seats still...
That's the kind of picture it is-everybody wears his world-weariness on his sleeve while gallantly enacting some ritual of self-sacrifice, preferably a futile one. The Legionnaires are a carefully assorted lot, the exotic equivalent of the cross sections found in bomber crews in World War II movies-a soulful French muscian, a what-ho English blueblood, a hulking Russian who once guarded the Czar's family, and so on. Hackman and the chieftain of the hostile desert tribes (Ian Holm) are, naturally, old and respectful friends, although somehow Scriptwriter David Zelag Goodman neglected...
...something of a standard product, it is also rather predictable. When a married bureaucrat (Jean Rochefort) conceives a passion for a flashy Paris model (Anny Duperey), we have no doubt that he is going to bed her in the final reel - after first undergoing a series of ritual humiliations befitting a middle-aged fool who tries to play the swinger...