Word: veneered
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...Screens, however, lacks the caste v. outcast tensions of The Blacks and the musky eroticism of The Balcony. In a Genetic mutation of Bertolt Brecht, the playwright doubly fails. He tries to apply the epical veneer of The Caucasian Chalk Circle to the theme of little people whipped about in a historical convulsion, in this case France's punitive struggle with Algeria. Brecht succeeded because he had a certain sympathy for the last-ditch valor of his little people even when he portrayed them as cagey sneaks. Genet fails because he regards all people as maggots...
...moment we accept the premise of narcissism, if we relax our distaste for her egocentrism, and make the effort to enjoy her as she ostensibly seems to enjoy herself, we find quickly that the veneer of joy and self-love is thin. It seems that she maintains the external, self-promoting eye in order to convince herself that she is loveable. With her diary, Anais Nin is incessantly licking the wounds of her self-hate...
...copy of the Massachusetts law and a description of fair net operating income," he points out. "There is no information given about appeal rights, and unless you have a specific question rent control will not be explained to you. Most people see rent control through a legalistic veneer; even though they got screwed on a rent increase, they accept it because it seems to be part...
Grunberger thinks that the pre-Hitler Weimar Republic applied the merest veneer of democracy over what remained basically an authoritarian state. Thus the mass of Germans easily accepted dictatorship. Within a year after Hitler became Chancellor, the birth rate, which is normally a sure index of public confidence, rose by 22%. Crime dropped off noticeably after 1933. War preparations and economic recovery did away with joblessness. Living standards improved under the peacetime Third Reich; food shortages did not become severe until 1943, the fourth year...
Most important, Mann's treatment of the unconsummated affair of man and boy was a metaphor for Europe's decaying society. But Visconti takes the veneer and calls it furniture. With infinite tedium, he pores over every facet of Tadzio's Botticelli visage; with stupid distortion, he makes the boy, played by Bjorn Andresen, a flirt whose eyes flash a come-on to his helpless elder, like some midnight cowboy off the Via Veneto. He even concocts an elaborate bordello scene in which Aschenbach is shown as a heterosexual failure-a moment that proves as barren...