Word: smiled
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...SMILE...
...hard to understand why anyone would bother to make Smile at all-let alone with loving, modish, professional care. The movie undertakes to point out that beauty contests-in this case, the California finals of the mythical Young American Miss Pageant-are vulgar and stupid exercises that bring out the worst in everyone: sponsors, contestants, audiences. This is not exactly big news. If it were, Bert Parks would be out of the last of his jobs, since the reason that most people tune in events like the Miss America Contest is to prove their cultural superiority to the few remaining...
...then one remembers that the Kidd character is intended to be a surrogate for the people who made Smile, that his adorableness is a projection of their own self-images. Somehow that seems to be the worst offense...
...today is not the worst of times, it is not often seen as the best either, even by those who wear "Smile" buttons and say "Have a happy day." Perhaps an opinion poll would show that for most Americans, the vintage years may now seem-in the benign middle distance of memory-to have been at the turn of the '60s; Then hope in the direction of events seemed more buoyant and less under challenge than now. If one thinks only of civic well-being and its later decline, that period does indeed seem the best of times...
...living in a country that was generally right, even though their own circumstances could stand improvement, which would come about by their own efforts. Today it is the widespread doubt about the country itself-its political structure, its place in the world, its present drift-that most mocks the "Smile" buttons. The matter with our times is not so much a question of impossibilities but of complexities that can be faced if only public trust and will are restored...