Word: tropes
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...there is a great irony here: villagery is a trope more applicable to those making the accusation than to those being snarked upon. The left-wing blogosphere, at its worst, is a claustrophobic hamlet of the well educated, less interested in meaningful debate than the "village" it mocks. (At its best, it is a source of clever and well-informed anti-Establishment commentary.) Indeed, it resembles nothing so much as that other, more populous hamlet, the right-wing Fox News and Limbaugh slum. Hilariously, as we stagger from one awful decade into the next, there has been a coagulation...
When Jimi Hendrix smashed his guitar in the 1960s, it was clear he was attacking the Establishment. When a Muslim punk rocker smashes up a guitar outside an American Muslim convention, the now-standard rock 'n' roll trope gains a few new meanings. These young punks are taking on every establishment going: Muslim, American and Muslim American. "In this so-called war of civilizations, we're giving the finger to both sides," says the godfather of the Muslim punk movement, Michael Muhammad Knight, in Taqwacore: The Birth of Punk Islam, a new documentary by Pakistani-Canadian director Omar Majeed...
...trade-off we make for low-priced goods-often cheap simply means cheap. Shell likes to tell the story of how she once bought three blenders in quick succession; the flimsy blades were no match for the ice that goes into smoothies. When "low cost" is the marketing trope we most respond to, quality easily falls by the wayside. And that state of affairs, Shell concludes based on the response to her book, bothers no one as much as the less affluent people who inexpensive goods are supposed to benefit the most. They can't always afford a replacement...
...discomfiting union of sex and mortality is a recurring trope of “The Armies.” So clogged and abortive are Ismael’s desires that his visions of the female form are as morbid as they are irresistible; between every woman’s legs is a “wild darkness,” an “infinity” to which Ismael’s eyes are always drawn. We are reminded of “King Lear,” in which the vagina is, similarly, an entry to an unknowable?...
Thus begins the actual story of “Shrew.” Bensussen manipulates this play-within-a-play trope to great success for the majority of the opening scenes. The actors take on their roles with the delightful awkwardness of children in a school play—scripts in hand, direction shouted at them mid-scene, and endearingly over-the-top line readings. Yet as the show progresses, the actors become more comfortable in their roles, and the production shifts from a clever tongue-in-cheek commentary on social performativity into a relatively normal presentation of Shakespeare?...