Word: utterings
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...difference between a saint and an artist, they say, is that an artist knows he's a liar. Making sense out of existence is a dangerous game: the temptations of Conviction, on the one hand, and utter, shapeless Alienation, on the other, are usually seductive enough to deprive piety of content and realism of form. "Spit in a whore's face and she'll tell you it's raining," goes an old Yiddish proverb. What to do about reality seems to have become a problem of choice, and a film-maker who suspects that both documentary and story are lies...
...tedious entirety," Judge Moore and his colleagues agreed that it was protected by the First Amendment because it fell far short of the Supreme Court's standards for obscenity. The prevailing doctrine requires 1) appeal to prurient interest as a dominant theme, 2) patent offensiveness and 3) utter lack of redeeming social value. Though Moore dryly noted that Language is unlikely to be viewed "primarily by marriage counselors and their patients in a professional setting," he found no predominant prurience in a film that treats intercourse with all the passion of an ag-school lecture on animal husbandry...
...politics of obscenity, it is taken for granted that speakers can jolt audiences with four-letter words. That notion may be premature. At the University of Utah last April, Black Militant Victor Gordon told the audience-students, local citizens, law-enforcement officials-that most Americans are too inhibited to utter the familiar earthy phrase that is a blunt description of a form of incest. Gordon invited the audience to join him in shouting the term at the count of three. With seemingly infantile glee, numerous people shouted away...
...utter disbelief...
When an Asian student attends an art class, for instance, he hears ostensibly sane Aussies discussing painting styles like mon (modern) and airpstrek (abstract). At lunchtime in the campus canteen, the visitor may hear a local student ask: "Gottiny semmitches?" "Air," says the counter girl. "Emeny jiwant?" Student: "Gimme utter martyr and an airman pickle." Thanks to the mare chick of communications, the girl duly produces a tomato and a ham and pickle sandwich...