Word: symbolic
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...putative winner, performs songs urging his fellow countrymen to kill all former Tontons Macoutes and dump their corpses on the doorstep of the U.S. special forces. At a recent campaign rally, he suddenly whipped out a .45-caliber pistol from his belt when a disturbance broke out. "His political symbol was a guitar," Drummond says. "He apparently has no platform and no plans for improving the miserable living conditions in the capital city of 1.5 million people. "The first thing he plans to do once elected? Give free concerts for the people...
Alas, director Danny Cannon hasn't the skill to make majestic melodrama plausible. As for the facetiousness, Rob Schneider sweats arsenals of ammunition as Dredd's sarcastic sidekick. But the effect is redundant since Sly is his own comic relief. By now Stallone has become a symbol for all that is goofy and grandiloquent in Hollywood's live-action summer cartoons. The hormone that courses through his movie veins could be called preposterone...
...more often, they would know that some of the most patriotic buns and bosoms on our beaches come wrapped in Old Glory or tiny fragments thereof. Are these bits of fabric also flags? Here we have come up against a deep Postmodernist puzzle. If a flag is a symbol, how can a replica of a flag be anything but another flag? The T at the start of this sentence is not a replica of the letter T, but of course the letter T itself. By the same logic, flag patches, flag bikini bras, underpants and decals are all equally flags...
Aloysius Snuffleupagus is under siege. It's nothing personal against the beloved elephantine creature from Sesame Street, but as a symbol of quality children's television, Snuffy is trying to hold the fort while Rita Repulsa, Newt Gingrich, Tattooed Teenage Alien Fighters from Beverly Hills, Armani-clad copywriters from Madison Avenue, Rupert Murdoch, professional wrestlers, professional lobbyists and Nickelodeon emcees armed with green gook storm the walls...
...armored combat vehicle blocking the entrance to Sarajevo's Marshal Tito Barracks, a 12.7-cal. machine gun points in the direction of Bosnian Serb forces just 220 yds. away. The gun is menacing but can almost never be used, and it serves less as a weapon than as a symbol of the paradox faced by the peacekeepers in Bosnia: they are soldiers forbidden to function as soldiers. "You are not allowed to act like a fighting force and return fire," says Guillaume Grouzelle, a French chief corporal whose job it is to guard the barracks...