Word: symbolic
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...aviatrix, played by Candy Buckley, manages the part quite well, given the rather stereotyped "fearless Nadia" role that Shaw created for her. With her contempt for the romantic, her functional masculine clothing and her lithe, muscular body, she is not so much a character as a symbol of Shaw's perfect woman...
Sneakers -- or what some people still call tennis shoes and most everyone now refers to as athletic shoes -- are an American icon. The sneaker is not so much an object as an idea, a symbol of values that America has always taken pride in: social and physical mobility, practicality, informality, even rebellion (such as when Woody Allen wore a pair of Converse high-tops to escort First Lady Betty Ford to the ballet in 1975). It has only been since the 1960s that sneakers have become the shoe of everyday life, the U.S. form of mass transportation. Worn by bums...
Perhaps the most compelling symbol of Camden's role as trash heap is the Camden County Municipal Utilities Authority, which processes 55 million gallons of raw sewage each day. Camden's suburbs used to treat their own sewage, but several years ago they began shutting down their 46 treatment plants and pumping all the waste into Camden instead. Says William Tucker, a professor of psychology at Rutgers who has lived in Camden for 20 years: "The stink is enough to kill...
Strangely, Byrd's little experiment in de-Washingtonization has become the focus of outrage among the very people who are otherwise most critical of Washington and its ways. To these critics, it is the very symbol of congressional arrogance of power, isolation from reality, contempt for the voters, and so on, and demonstrates the need for term limits if not lynching. Bob Byrd, formerly thought to be at worst a courtly, fiddle-playing gasbag, is portrayed as a voracious monster of the pork barrel...
When Barenboim (an Israeli citizen born in Argentina) announced his plans, the most immediate outcry rose from a small but vocal minority of Jews for whom the names of Wagner and Hitler are inextricably linked. "Like it or not, Wagner is a symbol of Nazism, as sure as the swastika is," said Avram Melamed, a violinist with the Israel Philharmonic. Commented Barenboim at a post-cancellation press conference: "I can't help feeling that there are a lot of people in Israel who still think Wagner lived in Berlin in 1942 and was a personal friend of Hitler...