Word: strangers
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...when I return to these children's books with an adult eye, this world becomes a stranger and much more melancholic place. For all his glamor and gumption, Tintin is an emotionally inscrutable character. Like another eternally young character, Peter Pan, Tintin's refusal to grow up (or settle down) betrays an ineffable sadness that clings to his beige trenchcoat...
...sooner does Tintin solve one mystery than he is plunged headlong into the next--a mysterious stranger collapses at his doorstep, a treasure map is discovered, or Professor Calculus is kidnapped (once again) by shady foreign spies. Caught in a world of constant motion, there's hardly a moment for him to catch his breath before setting off again on some new adventure. The last panel of a Tintin book rarely depicts anything other than a scene of departure: we bid farewell to the boy reporter as he steams away on an ocean liner, boards an airplane or blasts...
...find an answer to the scariest question of all: did he make the right choice? Can he really be happy being everything he vowed he never would be? But the main questions are, what makes him happy and is he happy here and now in Metroland? A wise stranger warns the teenage Chris, "Metroland is not a place. It's a state of mind." As the movie artfully demonstrates, it is not very difficult to fall into this state of mind. Of course, it's not too late for him to change course and return to his vague dreams...
...general business of life," what contemporary judges mean when they speak to jurors of moral certainty. The game alerts players to the potentialities of surprise, and especially surprise betrayal, and betrayal is part of the general business of life, even undergraduate life at Harvard. In Assassin, not a stranger but an acquaintance or friend becomes stalker, raptor, assassin, and acquaintance or friend becomes prey, target, probably victim. Maybe the game belongs outside Harvard, but maybe it should endure and prosper here because it teaches that betrayal lurks always within the gates, within any gates...
...Evil sneaks inside, steals laptops, burgles rooms, even rapes. Against such intrusion Harvard deploys police, guards, locks, and awareness, what all of us see as a common and largely successful effort against harm. We glance at the stranger, report the lurker, lock the door. About all that Assassin teaches little. No one calls the game Perimeter Defense or Scotland Yard. Yet our continuous awareness, sometimes great, sometimes less, of external threat frequently deflects our attention from the very real harm now and then occasioned by people inside the gates. Assassin is basic training against date-rape...