Word: subtext
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...nature is forever cast in anthropocentric terms, reduced to a prize in the simplistic consume-or-conserve debate. There is nature as the winsome obstacle to development, as the romanticist's favored tableau, even as the butt of ridicule by sophisticates who fault it for a lack of subtext or irony -- contrivances of the human mind. What value nature has, and it is not our place to say, may be that to its dying day it will be oblivious to our attentions...
...stand-up comedy, the two seem to represent different show-business generations. Letterman, with his subversive antics and ironic attitude, does not so much act as host for a talk show as satirize talk shows. He is following a trail blazed by Carson, who introduced a self-parodying subtext. Carson's famous "savers" -- ad-libs to salvage jokes that bombed -- along with his conspiratorial asides to the audience during corny bits like Aunt Blabby and Carnac, were a way of making the comedian himself the butt of the joke...
What may have most roused the normally comatose Met audience was the production's feminist subtext. This Lucia is less a helpless damsel in distress than a strong, sexual woman who chooses death before dishonor -- Elektra's first cousin. Although she had some vocal difficulties on opening night (Donizetti's high notes are best not delivered while the soprano is on her knees or flat on her back), reigning bel canto diva June Anderson's forceful stage presence ensures that the heroine gives as good as she gets. Other notables include a promising American tenor, Richard Leech, as Lucia...
...longest and most ambitious yet, made all the TV news broadcasts and all the papers. Her message was simple: the child who has been hugged and kissed and shown affection is less likely to demand attention by resorting to self-destructive behavior. But the tabloid press, always searching for subtext, heard the princess's remarks as a personal statement about her childhood, scarred by her parents' broken marriage, and her own marriage, marred by the rigid, distinctly unhuggy codes of royal behavior...
That's the itinerary of the ultra-violent gangsters in Reservoir Dogs. When they are not exploring the priapic subtext of lyrics to Madonna songs or debating the efficacy of tipping, they are shooting (or, vividly, torturing) anyone who gets in their way, including themselves. It's Glengarry Glen Ross at gunpoint. The talented Tarantino has devised one bravura sequence in which an undercover detective acts out, for the benefit of the duped hoodlums, a fake story about a close call with the cops; easing from the past tense to the present and then into seductive fantasy, the sequence reveals...