Word: subtexts
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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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...
...Democratic caravan hit the asphalt on a two-day tour through Texas. Politically, the message was that the Democrats believe the nation's third most populous state remains a competitive battleground and that they intend to force George Bush to defend his home turf. But the subtext was lifted from a buddy movie: Gore aide Marla Romash likens Bill and Al's excellent adventure to a "male version of Thelma & Louise...
...prejudices. The Republicans are wary about emphasizing race this year. They are sensitive about criticism of the way they used Willie Horton in 1988. And they have been making progress in attracting black middle-class supporters. So they have switched their emphasis to family values with a sexual subtext -- Murphy Brown, out-of-the-closet gay militance, condom distribution in the schools, sexual flamboyance in publicly funded art projects, and so on. Dan Quayle and others working the values circuit like to encourage the feeling that the American id is dangerously seeping up through the floorboards: Clamp down the superego...