Word: vulgarize
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Critic Greil Marcus finds himself defending even dumb pop. "If a Swedish director wanted to make a Rambo," says Marcus, "it wouldn't be very convincing. Only Americans are arrogant, vulgar and moronic enough to make a fantasy like that credible. But I'll put our vulgar moronism versus their refined elitism any day. I'm not saying Chuck Berry is better than Flaubert. But I also don't want to live in a world where there's only one or the other...
...everyone is quite so happy about Harvard publishing the longings of the learned. Reads one advertising message "Devoted alumnus seeks like-minded persons. Object: withholding contributions until trendy, vulgar personal column is deleted...
Much more informal will be the Vulgar Table, a group of foul-mouthed individuals who sit around and spout profanities for one hour each week. This table would, on occasion, double as the Blasphemy Table. Other groups, such as the Apathy Table, which will never meet, and the Stupidity Tables, which have reportedly been congregating for some time, need not be mentioned...
...himself, still worthy of sober interest, maybe even moral admiration, although the headlines now go to younger directorial stars. Certainly he insists on pumping out more of the "Felliniesque," his trademark blend of the grotesque and the surreal, than we need to get his point that TV is vulgar and coarsening. More moving is his presentation of two carefully imagined archetypes of aging. Masina's Amelia is a woman grown more emotionally compact with the years, defending herself against their onslaught with a sort of neat, perky reserve. Mastroianni's Pippo represents the opposite extreme, vulnerable dishevelment. She wins sympathy...
...things--from the excess called prodigality, which is a messier and more full-blooded fault, a form of generosity, almost, but one that has come unhinged. Ideally, world-class plundering should try to pay its way as entertainment. The Romans had a genius for transforming loot into colossally vulgar display, ostentation on an imperial scale. The Emperor Elagabalus, it is said, ordered his slaves to bring him 10,000 lbs. of cobwebs. When they finished the task, Elagabalus observed, "From this, one can understand how great a city is Rome." Louis XIV of France wore a diamond-covered coat that...