Word: swooning
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...make clear Song's contempt for the fantasies he caters to. One of the film's few decent moments is Song's explication of the appeal of Puccini's Madama Butterfly: would the opera seem so romantic, she asks, if the races of the protagonists were reversed? Would Westerners swoon to see a blond cheerleader kill herself over a doomed love affair with a Japanese businessman...
...week or two in 1977 at the beginning of the Carter Administration). For most, that period covers their entire politically aware lives. Many are too young to have experienced firsthand the euphoria of J.F.K.'s Camelot, but are now too old and world-weary to join the twentysomethings who swoon unselfconsciously without shame for Bill Clinton...
...takes work, in part, because the politicians will constantly disappoint. Believing in a Place Called Hope means something different from what Bill Clinton intended in that brilliantly mawkish convention speech line. Hope is required precisely because Clinton himself is so flawed. Otherwise, we could simply swoon, and hope would be superfluous. But Clinton is a dissembler, like all (successful) politicians. He is a reckless maker of incompatible promises that destine every subgroup of his supporters to feel betrayed about something. He is wrong about some issues, cowardly about others, right on fewer than any individual supporter might wish...
...those who never invested any hope in Ronald Reagan and George Bush, and who now are withholding that investment from Bill Clinton, must start to ask themselves what hope they hold for American democracy. Are they going to spend their entire lives sneering for fear of a mistaken swoon? For liberals especially, Clinton is something of a last chance -- and an unexpected chance at that. Under these circumstances, hope seems almost prudent...
...Leonato, Ben Vilhauer labors under some of the most difficult verse in the play. He makes the most of a drab and demanding part. Leonato's daughter, Hero (Janine Poreba), who keeps a low profile throughout the play, blossoms in the wedding scene. Her maidenly blush and swoon are entirely convincing. The audience can detect a difference in her after her trauma: the demure lass has aged into a deeper, more mature character...