Word: sordidly
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...this side of Kate is hampered by an excess of vitality. Her surprising tenseness at the beginning of the play, while dramatically provocative, undercuts the numbed aloofness that is a necessary counter-balance to the prevailing tensions. Kate's shower in the second act cleanses her of the sordid jealousy displayed by the others, and leads her to the comfortable isolation in which "Everything's softer...There aren't such edges." But Brewster plays this dreamy, solipsistic rejuvenation as a social instinct, a feeling of warmth toward the others, rather than within herself. To get from this point...
...inflation prices. Once in a while, I'd learn something interesting from an animal movie, but I didn't go to the theater to learn--learning was strictly a five-day-a-week job. Most Americans do go to the movies just to have fun, to escape from sordid reality, to see their fantasies played out in Technicolor. We've all been taught that the function of film is to entertain. Films, after all, are the product of an "entertainment industry...
...house where there's no sense of time, where breakfast is Froot Loops and beer, where people "crash" when their "action" cycle runs out, where an aging hooker named Barbara gropes around looking for "The Guide." They're all too exhilirated by the California high to be sordid, and Gould's love of gambling for its own sake undercuts Segal's tortured loser. With these two side by side the film can't have any point of view about gambling--it just shows how it works...
Nonetheless, I returned to Harvard that fall and quickly befriended the resident cynics of Adams House. Our sordid late night discussions about freshman year adjustments curdled my stomach and made me yearn for the complacency of the West coast. We endlessly talked about Harvard's malignant llness and worried that we were especially susceptible to infection of the Harvard germ since we were already suffering from a mild case of Sophomore Slump. The seed of the well-known germ--ambition--could easily generate into a sick and competitive need to achieve, produce, and be known. We were depressed, felt oppressed...
...also disturbed by the discrepancy between what the President was doing and what he was saying. "You take the whole sordid mess and compare it to the public pronouncements of the President, and it just doesn't fit." He talked often with Ray Thorn ton and James Mann, sometimes as they walked together to the House floor, and finally decided. "I felt that if we didn't impeach, we'd just ingrain and stamp in our highest office a stan dard of conduct that's just unacceptable...