Word: tableau
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...scene on the podium after the two acceptance speeches was like a wedding | reception where the bride and groom fan out to dance with the rest of the family. It was a Norman Rockwell tableau that could persuade older voters that the first all-baby-boomer ticket won't ignore them, signaling that while they may be the younger generation, they are still the type to bring the grandchildren home for the holidays...
...closing week at London's National Gallery, makes clear. Rembrandt was not a "literary" painter, as his intense devotion to the muck and glow and substance of paint attests. But he was an incomparably theatrical one. In his work, the idea of a figure painting as tableau is exchanged for that of outright drama: deep, dark backgrounds and narrative light picking out the hierarchy of character; turbulent crowd scenes; an eye for all classes, from cobblers to kings; a vast range of expression in the faces and gestures; moments of shock (the blade grinding into the clumsy giant...
...Even with all hands flat on the desk or table, a peculiar kind of sex can be enacted. If our hypothetical - harasser should, hypothetically speaking, memorize the screenplays of porno flicks for the delectation of his female underlings, he is in effect asking them to participate in a sexual tableau of his own devising. Some men pay women for the same service or patronize 900 numbers devoted to dirty talk. To have to listen to a man's sexual fantasies is to be forced, at least for the moment, to share them. (With animals? No kidding.) And that...
Finally, suppose there's no touching, no tableau, no quid pro quo -- just a crude exploratory gambit along the lines of "Hiya, babe, you wanna . . . ?" Here too some moral Rubicon has been crossed. Intimacy in a public setting is not just "inappropriate," in the prissy, yuppie sense. It can be deeply insulting, which is why a misapplied tu in French or du in German can be a fighting word. When we leave our homes to go to work, we assume an impersonal role like "teacher," "secretary" or "judge." We may even don a special costume (black robes, skirted suit...
...fringe players in this netherworld of black rage. Helping open Farrakhan's rally was Congressman Gus Savage, lately reproved by a House committee for the sexual harassment of a Peace Corps officer, which trouble, among others, he blames variously on the racist media and Jews. To complete this chilling tableau, also on stage was Tawana Brawley. Two years ago, she turned New York upside down by charging she'd been raped for four days by six white men. The story turned out to be a fabrication. But she carries on regardless, as does her spiritual adviser through that episode...