Word: stammered
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
What about, for example, the aphasics of the counterculture? The ad writer may dingdong catch phrases like Pavlov's bells in order to produce saliva. The Movement propagandist rings his chimes ("Fascist!" "Pig!" "Honky!" "Male chauvinist!") to produce spit. More stammer than grammar, as Dwight Macdonald put it, the counterculture makes inarticulateness an ideal, debasing words into clenched fists ("Right on!") and exclamation points ("Oh, wow!"). Semantic aphasia on the right, semantic aphasia on the left. Between the excesses of square and hip rhetoric the language is in the way of being torn apart...
Suttler's book, which is probably the closest thing to a how-to-escape-the-draft manual that can be legally published, does not stammer about its purpose. As Suttler says in the Introduction...
Stevens, who directed Taylor in one of her finest performances, in A Place in the Sun, here provides his star with an artificial stammer and some gross closeups. Beatty's hip swagger gives his part some edge, but it is continually blunted by flat, stagy confrontations that border on the claustrophobic. Occasionally the vulgar energy of Vegas makes itself felt, notably at the gambling tables, where the nervous gaiety breaks down into brilliant rhinestone cackles and suicidal moans. But such moments are rare. For the most part, the audience, like the gamblers, gets taken to the cleaners...