Word: villainized
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...remains for fantasy, for risque comedy or high melodrama? Do big-screen heroines engage in safe sex? Bisexuality was a popular metaphor in '70s entertainment, but it is hard to picture a film like Sunday, Bloody Sunday being made now. Its sexually ambivalent central character would clearly be a villain. Five years ago, Beyond Therapy, an amiable stage comedy about bisexuals, was well received in London, but audiences at screenings of the forthcoming movie version are uneasy with it. Even to blase sophisticates, bisexuality is becoming ethically questionable...
Most of the critics cite the 1978 deregulation of airline competition as the villain in this erosion of confidence in the system. While deregulation has reduced fares and opened air travel to enormous numbers of new passengers, the era of do-or-die rate-cutting competition has pressured carriers to slash costs and take risks. No one claims that safety rules have been relaxed. Indeed, the vast majority of controllers, pilots and federal inspectors are working hard and competently to avoid accidents. But, says Jerome Lederer, founder of the private Flight Safety Foundation, "from now on the problem will...
...conflict plays itself out in typical movie fashion, with the villain triumphant and then paying the price. But by the end of the film it doesn't seem to matter. The platoon and its politics are the extent of the universe for these grunts, but amidst all the killing and terror and death, justice, poetic or not, has no meaning...
...falls in love with the moll while they dodge crackers and crocodiles in bayou country. Bullets perforate every bit player in the Vieux Carre, O.C., but keep missing the star. Floorboards creak at propitious moments; tinderbox hotels refuse to go up in flames; heroine watches helplessly as hero and villain fight to the death...
...perpetrator is likely to loom up long before the last page. The detective has become an amiably flawed working stiff rather than a thinking machine. The final chapter is often devoted to the start of a romance for him or his client instead of the laborious untangling of a villain's scheme...