Word: ritually
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Repeating a familiar, futile ritual, the U.N. Security Council was called into session last week in response to the Israeli commando attacks on Beirut. Even Arab diplomats acknowledged that they did not expect the meeting to find a solution to the Middle East crisis. In fact, said Algerian Ambassador Abdellatif Rahal, "it is not my intention to propose one." Instead, he and other Middle Eastern emissaries planned to spend the session condemning both Israel and the U.S., which, in the view of Arab leaders, promotes Israel's military aggressiveness...
Despite the ritual assurances in the Guggenheim catalogue that Dubuffet is still a subversive force, the flurry and scandals that once attended his shows have died. Whatever else he may be doing, he is not-as a New York critic claimed in 1948-"debasing and perverting the very nature of art." His crude little turnip-men and personages compounded, apparently, of excrement and butterfly wings, his animals and objects in all their quirkish black humor with (lately) their deadpan repetition of red and blue stripes within the wiggling contours, are only pictures after all. They have altogether lost their shock...
...English send CARE packages to needy sheep dogs in Scotland, yet lead the world in the ritual demolition of foxes. For their sins and sensitivities, they deserve this odd, sporadically charming book, which blends dotty episodes-suitable for framing on The Avengers-with a moral message about the beastliness of man to beast and man alike...
...Washington, waved flags through the streets of Boston, opened our hands for hordes of McCarthy buttons and opened our hearts to the prospects of peace if we had known the fruits of all our efforts would be Godspell. A Jesus movement composed of empty rhetoric of sharing and contrived ritual of love has spawned an equally uninspired film. Godspell is devoid of charm, wit, taste, humor and even a semblance of intelligence. If the film has any interest it's not what is on screen, but in the emotional turmoil that must have antedated its making. What disenchantment and anger...
...also plays the title role) understand that one man's classic is another's cliché−and are anxious to make sure we know they know. Therefore they stress the mythic overtones that pop cultists are always finding in the standard western forms. All the ritual scenes−Eastwood's menacing entrance ride down Main Street, the saloon confrontation and the barbershop Shootout that establish his credentials as a law-and-order man−are handled so that the emphasis is on archetypicality rather than on believable action...