Word: viewer
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...kids through adolescence with reduced turmoil, providing them with a safe, acceptable outlet for their anti-social urges. The stories themselves rely heavily on archetypes, and some of the best films of the genre have an allegorical, fairy-tale quality. In pop psychology terms, the monster emerges from the viewer's id, wreaks havoc for awhile, and is destroyed by the hero, who represents the triumphant super...
...Great Santini is a movie of old-fashioned virtues. It takes its characters, and their place in American life, seriously. It presents the viewer with people he can take home with him, because they were always there. Lewis John Carlino has adapted Pat Conroy's novel without much cinematic grace, but the artlessness serves the subject and showcases three splendid performances: Blythe Banner as the willowy, resilient Lillian Meechum; Michael O'Keefe as 18-year-old Ben, his father's cross and joy; and, above all, Robert Duvall as the raging Bull-sacred monster, gung-ho dinosaur...
Dallas does well what American commercial television does best: present the viewer with a family of characters so appealing in their hopes, their failings, their resilience that they will be invited back into the living room week after week. The Ewings may be scoundrels and wastrels, but they are good company. Socially they carry themselves with the ease of Middle American nobility. Only at the end of each visit, with kisses and thank-yous all around, do you notice that they have made off with the silverware and your teen-age daughter...
...many TV series, characters behave the same way from first episode to last; that is their appeal. Dallas is different. It makes a pact with the viewer: tune in every week and get a jolt. Dallas offers adventure. In most series, characters refine themselves ever so slightly as time goes by, like an outdoor sculpture retouched by nature; the Ewings redefine themselves almost every week. Missing one episode means not only losing track of the plot, but finding that someone has acquired new alliances and enemies. It's flourish or perish with each week's trauma...
...office tower shows a fleecy cloud reflected on the building's façade with the surreal clarity of a painting by Magritte. Dallas realty; Dallas fantasy. The plot is a Rube Goldberg machine of the seven deadly sins, but performed and acted absolutely straight. This gives the viewer options. He can live and die with the Ewings; he can see the show as a satire of Neanderthal capitalism; or he can appreciate Dallas as the most adroitly plotted multigenerational saga since the Corleones moved into the olive oil business...