Word: vulgarisms
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...deep mystifications that attend most theories about the aesthetics of atrocity. The philosopher T.W. Adorno once claimed that to write poetry after Auschwitz was barbaric. If those who made Holocaust had taken that warning seriously-it amounts to an injunction to silence-they would hardly have dared anything as vulgar as a TV show. But in telling the story as soap opera enlarged to historic proportions, the producers never truly penetrated the tragedy or even permitted themselves to observe its symptoms clearly. Yes: naked men, machine-gunned, topple into a ditch. But the sight, in Holocaust, is weirdly unpersuasive...
...worked on this picture could bear to part with the lumpish likability that all tried so hard to establish at the beginning. In the end they sacrifice everything-insight, morality, a dramatic arc-to preserve intact their star's only known quality, best described as a sort of vulgar affability...
RUDDIGORE, or The Witch's Curse seemed cursed when it premiered in 1887. A vital piece of stage equipment malfunctioned; genteel members of the audience found the title vulgar, objecting to the offensive adjective "bloody;" lower class viewers demanded the revival of The Mikado, which had closed three days earlier. Despite extensive revisions, Ruddigore acquired a reputation for failure, artistically and financially. It was known as "the unlucky opera"--but Harvard is lucky to have it, thanks to a particularly fine Gilbert and Sullivan Players production...
Although a number of the 86 finalists were women, none won awards. Asimov felt confirmed in his thesis concerning women and limericks. "Women tend to be dirtier but less clever than men," he says. "I don't know why, but they can be surprisingly vulgar...
...complete story must be told in 34 to 49 syllables. Asimov likes them to be not only clever but also a bit vulgar. "Clean limericks lack flavor-like vanilla ice cream or pound cake," he claims. "They are perfectly edible but, to my taste, are tame, flat and unsatisfying." Nonetheless, Asimov awarded first prize to this limerick by George Vaill, retired secretary of Yale University...