Word: torpor
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...that they know shows are frequently lousy but don't know how to change things. It's not really fair to generalize like this-- particularly since there are many talented directors, writers, and actors, some of whom have the energy and intelligence to motivate themselves even amid the general torpor--but one's general impressions are sometimes important. Harvard theater is comfortable; many of those involved don't really care about anything as grandiose as Drama or Theater--they care about having an outlet for their extracurricular energy, about making friends and having a good time. Nothing wrong there...
SOMETHING HAPPENS when you stay too long in the suburbs. Those inclined to harshness see it as a kind of dry rot, a slow and dusty torpor of the soul that accommodates itself all tooeasilyto the relentless affluence of Scarsdale and Grosse Pointe, to a world of shopping malls and Little League coaches and bitching at the mailman. Even at its best, suburban life breeds a brand of insularity, an isolated arrogance of comfort, that forces its own visions of itself into small places, like bedrooms and garages. Small places and small horizons--no better way to chronicle this world...
...last Saturday's New York Times, for example, a cursory inspection of the news section revealed several stories bearing menacing portents, directly or otherwise. These items were only connected loosely, in that they add up to one inescapable, and hardly novel, conclusion: America bloats with inertia, and as the torpor grows, rational actions dwindle. Although Fridays in July are supposed to be slow news days, a speculative reader could not help but feel bewildered after reading these seemingly disparate stories...
...film's torpor, it is not incompetent at the technical level. The stunts often look real, and one of them, involving a helicopter, actually jolts us out of our seats. But scare movies are not just technology; to come alive, they must have spirit as well as profession alism. Jaws 2 is only a piece of presold merchandise, untouched by human hands. It spouts buckets and buckets of blood, yet remains, to the bitter end, completely bloodless...
Gaetan: You have suggested several times that the great voices of the dissident authors of Communist countries have taken us out of our torpor. Do you think that the spiritual strength of their testimony can at least retard the expansion of the Soviet system? ...Are you optimistic about the future of the spirit of freedom...