Word: tropes
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...speech got little attention when Edwards first tried it out in Des Moines, Iowa, on Dec. 29. Delivered from behind a lectern, the "two Americas" refrain sounded like the familiar trope of class warfare. "One America does the work while another America reaps the reward," Edwards intoned. "One America pays the taxes while another America gets the tax breaks." But as Edwards took it on the road-into living rooms and union halls and diners and high school gyms-it grew and evolved into something much, much bigger, into a cause. "The more I talked about it, the more...
...reason is: they're in a movie, and there wouldn't be one if the characters didn't do implausible things. Hence the creakiest gimmick in all of fiction, the HIBK (Had I But Known) ploy. It worked in Oedipus Rex, but in the intervening 2,500 years the trope has got a bit stale. Here it's applied so that the movie can be 98 mins. instead...
...judge had ordered Spears to submit to twice-weekly drug and alcohol testing, undergo co-counseling with Federline and receive parent coaching. Spears' lawyer, Sorrell Trope, told People magazine the judge revoked custody after Spears failed to take a random drug test and provide a valid California driver's license. "That might do it, but probably not," says Orange County divorce attorney Jeffrey Lalloway. "California policy is to have frequent and continuing contact with both parents." (Trope was unavailable for comment). The ruling came after Spears' former bodyguard told the court and the Today show that he had seen...
...Fans of the Western will say that trope simply proves the purity of the form: that it's a fable, a parable, a chivalric test of manhood. Whatever its historic validity, the notion of the big shootout kept Westerns going strong for the first 70 years of Hollywood cinema. It began with the first smash hit at the nickelodeons, The Great Train Robbery, and continued with Cecil B. De Mille's The Squaw Man and John Ford's The Iron Horse in the silent era. Cimarron, a generational tale from Edna Ferber, was declared Best Picture at the fourth Academy...
...wanted to be most athletic, and 9% wanted to be best looking). But only 0.3% said the reason to be smartest was to gain popularity. We like athletic prodigies like Tiger Woods or young Academy Award winners like Anna Paquin. But the mercurial, aloof, annoying nerd has been a trope of our culture, from Bartleby the Scrivener to the dorky PC guy in the Apple ads. Intellectual precocity fascinates but repels...