Word: ritualization
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Traditional ritual could have been observed-if modified-had the official torch bearer put the torch to the entire Barbaric Village before it was vacated...
Like a samurai warrior, Costello is obsessed by ritual, whether it is pulling on a pair of white gloves before he uses his revolver or standing in front of a mirror adjusting the brim of his hat until it is just so. The hat, unfortunately, looks like a felt pie pan, and Delon moves mechanically through the action. Melville means to pay sober hom age to all the Hollywood films that did all this but better. It is a pity that for all its virtues, The Godson's patina of high seriousness renders every scene forced and selfconscious...
...Lords, raise their glasses in solemn salute. Later, at home, his manservant Tucker (Arthur Lowe) offers the earl (Harry Andrews) his evening whisky and a selection of nooses on a silver salver. "May I suggest the silk, sir?" Tucker says respectfully. The earl accepts, and begins his evening ritual, first stripping to his long underwear, then donning a regimental uniform jacket and a white ballet skirt, and finally stringing himself up for a harmless little swing. The earl, however, mucks up on this particular occasion, and Tucker discovers him dangling from the proper silk rope, neck twisted like a child...
Weaving was partly a religious ritual, accompanied by solemn chants. "Spider Woman instructed the Navajo women how to weave on a loom that Spider Man told them how to make," according to a Navajo legend. "The crosspoles were made of sky and earth cords, the warp sticks of sun rays, the healds of crystal and lightning...
Abrams arrived in Washington on July 16 and began Pentagon briefings meant to prepare him for the normally amiable question-and-answer ritual that usually precedes confirmation of presidential military appointees. But furor over the Lavelle affair has made the issue politically sticky, and a final date for Abrams' hearing has been repeatedly pushed back. Democrats would like to have the Lavelle-Abrams issue argued before the Senate and the public later in the campaign, preferably in October; Republicans want to get the case out of the way well before the election, but also wished to avoid conflict with...