Word: undercuttings
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CLUELESSNESS. Melodrama at its best involves a conflict between intelligent good and cunning evil. But it's easier just to have smart people do dumb things. The noble intentions of The Lost World's team of scientists--trying to protect the dinosaurs from a group of rapacious hunters--are undercut by some laughably inane fieldwork. They take close-up photos of the beasts with incredibly noisy cameras that are bound to startle any dino into a frenzy; they kidnap a T. rex baby to mend its leg while Big Mama prowls closer. It's knaves vs. fools in the Jurassic...
Another disturbing academic trend is the tendency to marginalize ideas or issues which undercut the dominant intellectual trends. For example, in government classes which celebrate the achievements of American democracy, problematic or contradictory issues such as race, gender and class are not considered as narratives which affect the entire course. Instead, an issue like race will be addressed during only one lecture, based on the assumption that a discourse about the tensions between enduring white supremacy and democratic ideals should not affect the entire course...
Other staging effects contribute to the half-serious tone of the play: the Devil rises up from beneath the stage with a fine ominous flourish that is quickly and comically undercut by the revelation of his face, and the strains of Mozart's Don Giovanni are continually succeeded by Shavian reversals of the famous legend. Costumes, too, are magnificent, including a perfect reproduction of the turn-of-the century upper-middle class English motorist's get-up (frock coat, cap and goggles) and the impressively stony garb of the Statue...
DIED. VIRGILIO BARCO, 75, Colombian President whose social reforms were undercut by his unrelenting war against cocaine barons; of stomach cancer; in Bogota. A former mayor, the owlish-eyed, professorial Barco stammered his way to the presidential palace in 1986. With neither flair nor fanfare, he hunkered down to combat poverty and drugs until his administration was overrun by vengeful cartels...
...days of more boredom than terror, of carry-out food and no showers, had undercut the morale of rebels and prisoners alike. But it turned out much worse for the rebels, who had become dispirited and inattentive. "This will never end," one of them complained to a hostage the day before the rescue. "They were most ready for a raid after midnight or at 6 in the morning," says Gumucio. "They never expected something in broad daylight...