Word: ritualized
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...would hold a snapshot delicately out in front of them between the index finger and the thumb, presenting unassailable proof to anyone who cared to look that the subject of the picture did, at one time, exist. Every Thursday the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo performed their half-hour ritual across the street from the presidential Pink House, and then dispersed for a week. But they would not go away. In many of the photographs the children posed formally, in dresses and coats and ties. In several, they looked saucy before the camera. That was in better days, before...
...hailed as an anniversary of popular triumph, but the subdued ritual that took place last week in the eastern city of Santiago de Cuba looked more like an exercise in lonely defiance. As a chilly evening rain fell on the tiny colonial plaza of Cuba's second-largest city (pop. 360,000), a crowd of 5,000 carefully selected guests waited patiently as the country's aging revolutionary leadership filed into place on the carved wooden balconies of the venerable city hall. Soaked to the skin, the audience heard Army Chief Raúl Castro declare...
Television taboos are made to be broken. Violating them is a venerated tradition, a familiar ritual preceded by elaborate puffery: solemn sermons or titillating teasers aimed at increasing curiosity and ratings. Though often a mindless come-on rather than a thoughtful coming out, the "breakthrough" can sometimes mirror changing cultural mores and set the stage for bolder TV sequels...
...dolls have actually been around for years. Back in 1977 a Georgia artist named Xavier Roberts, now 28, began to turn out handmade cloth models that he insisted on calling "little people," each different from all others. Roberts invented a syrupy ritual for selling the dolls. They were not made but "delivered" and "adopted" at a former medical clinic in Cleveland, Ga. His employees had to wear nurse's white uniforms, and each prospective "parent" had to raise a right hand and vow undying love. Roberts has sold 250,000 dolls, many to adults for themselves, at prices ranging...
...explanations. One theory is that the very homeliness of the dolls is appealing. "It is comforting," wrote Dr. Joyce Brothers, "to feel the Cabbage Patch doll can be loved with all your might-even though it isn't pretty." Still another theory emphasizes the doll's adoption ritual. The computers have given each doll a mellifluous name like Cornela Lenora or Clarissa Sadie, and each comes with its own birth certificate and adoption papers, ready to be signed. "Most children between the ages of six and twelve fantasize that they were really adopted," says Dr. Bruce Axelrod, director...