Word: undercutting
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...second problem with adaptation is that the values of the play are not timeless. The sense of glory the play exudes depends on the director's faithful recreation of the romantic atmosphere of an earlier century. Love songs which accentuate the martial metaphors for love and sentimental ditties which undercut Cyrano's depth of feeling erode the play's force as a triumph of the heart...
...choice of a dean is the President's prerogative, but Bok can only undercut student and Faculty respect for the new dean by secretly soliciting suggestions from a few in the University. If not even consulted on the selection of the dean, students are unlikely to welcome the final choice eagerly. The Faculty, if it remembers the turmoil of 1968 and 1969, should also recognize the danger of a dean lacking the support of all factions of the Faculty, a dean who is more the President's henchman than their effective representative...
...that walks out; the hilarious surprise duet with Buster Keaton at the piano and Chaplin peering over a tall starched collar and playing the violin. More common, and more painful, though, are the promising fragments and glances that are refused their chance to build up any impact, or are undercut by the dialogue of a film in which Chaplin denies the elementals...
...notion that only students should judge other students is a precise, logical statement. It makes good sense: after all, judgment by peers is ingrained in American jurisprudence. But the catch is that this logical precision is undercut by an academic hierarchy in which Faculty assume intellectual and extracurricular ascendancy over students. The logic of outside institutions is lost to it, along with what another editor of this newspaper has called "University democracy...
...long as the fedayeen are kept in check, Hussein would agree to the re-establishment of the Eastern Front, a largely meaningless unification of Arab armies under Egyptian command on Israel's border with Jordan. The King also got Syria and Egypt to agree that neither would undercut him if he suggested in Washington that the Arabs might finally recognize Israel in return for their occupied territories...