Word: ritualization
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...believe that the Nixon Administration, acutely sensitive to charges of election-eve opportunism, had deliberately postponed taking any hasty action on the proposed settlement until the voting was out of the way. Washington's stalling led to a certain amount of blustery but predictable rhetoric from Hanoi, a ritual that one West European diplomat described as "the dance around the fire." But there was ample evidence that the negotiations were still, as a high Administration official put it, "on the track." Within a matter of days after the election, most observers believed, Presidential Adviser Henry Kissinger and North Vietnamese Negotiator...
...with power needs, most people push themselves through emotional hoops to maintain their claim to innocence. Oliver, another patient with rotten parents, had to get out of bed and dress according to a precise procedure. He believed that if he missed a step, God would punish his family. This ritual gave him a feeling of power, while allowing him to blame God for any mishap that might befall his parents...
...Abraham Lincoln once admitted, "by the overwhelming conviction that I had nowhere else to go." Jonathan Livingston Seagull clearly speaks to some kind of need in America for words of inspiration that do not instantly turn to ashes on the tongue. The Catholic Mass has been largely shriven of ritual mystery. Protestant sermons are soggy with sociology. Occultism, though thriving (TIME, June 19), comes on too much like fraternity rites staged by the devil's disciple. The old maxims ("This above all: To thine own self be true"; "I thank whatever gods may be/For my unconquerable soul," etc.) embarrass. Still...
...Sophocles to the myth from which he borrowed. Here they find the king a primitive hero who lifts one evil spell-the Sphinx's-only to bring down a worse spell by violating the ultimate taboo: incest. On the Guthrie stage, dark as the predawn of civilization, this ritual circle of plot is made to stand out like an elemental curse: by solving its riddle,* Oedipus destroys the Sphinx; by failing to solve soon enough the mystery of his own identity-whose son he is-Oedipus destroys himself...
...Nijinsky (Jorge Donn) for daring to marry Woman (Suzanne Farrell). Diaghilev symbolizes a false God who is at once greedy, arrogant and possessive. If Béjart's whole dramatic concept is embarrassingly commonplace, it obviously appealed to him as a chance to fashion the kind of mass ritual he likes best...