Word: totem
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...form a "hierarchy of verbal structures." In a quick and hopelessly inadequate phrase, this means some types of stories are "in" in a particular society and others are "out." What's accepted at one point may be unaccepted at another, but always the romance, the lowest form on the totem pole of stories, took over during phases between one set of accepted stories and the next. Even then romance will eventually fade from the scene...
...grunt thrower like Tom Seaver than, say, a Catfish Hunter. (Whom he admires: "He'll give you one pitch to hit and if you miss it, you're gone.") In the past year the style has worked well enough, even though he's at "the bottom of the totem pole" on the best pitching staff on the league. He led the team in ERA last year, gave up one home run in 95 innings, surrendered two earned runs in his last 43 innings. "I know I'm a better strike-out pitcher than a hell of a lot of guys...
...dole out the concession jobs. (It was a lot like the dockside scene from On the Waterfront.) There was a real hierarchy, in the concession business, with the game programs the executive jobs, popcorn your basic white collar affair, and pennants serving as the low man on the totem pole...
Ultraconservative in politics and social values, he looked with great loathing upon his sexual desires. To bolster his selfesteem, he says, he clung to racist views. "I kept thinking that if there was someone lower than me on the totem pole, it was not so bad. It was a defense mechanism...
...Shaky Totem. What is best in this movie version is Ken Russell's attempt to comment upon and satirize a culture where a shaky totem like Tommy could attract such worshipful respect. Tommy shares with traditional operas a foolish libretto, this one having to do with a deaf, dumb and blind boy who becomes a pinball champion, a culture hero and a new messiah. Townshend wavered crazily between satire, science fiction and sanctimony; Russell mocks the very seriousness of the piece itself by focusing on, then extending it. The movie is entirely sung; there is no dialogue. But there...