Word: wallowers
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Nash Bridges. Mac Swift. Like Thomas Magnum and Tony Baretta, these names imply a benighted sense of macho can do-ness. Not surprisingly, perhaps, both shows wallow in an anachronistic treatment of women. For the most part they are portrayed as victims-either of Bridges' noncommittal ways or of nasty evildoers from whom they need Y-chromosome-enhanced protection. Prostitutes in danger turn up on both shows, looking not at all as they do on the streets of the grittiest precincts in urban America, or even as they do on NYPD Blue. Waifish and fresh-faced, they resemble well-educated...
...anti-ad ads of recent vintage, from former "underground" beat poet/heroin addict William Burroughs flacking for Nike to Sprite's "Image Is Nothing" campaign that attacks advertising as a bunch of lies; from the spot that insists buying an Audi is "a declaration which screams out 'I will not wallow in conformity'" to the bad-boy "Do the Dew" ads for Mountain Dew. These ads are aimed squarely at Carvey's "countercultural" audience, as he's called it--not coincidentally, Mountain Dew is his next title sponsor. Rather than spoof an advertising form that really doesn't exist anymore, Carvey...
Calling attention to the scurrilous elements of the Southern tradition is not merely regional prejudice or a needless rehashing of evils better forgotten. Those who acknowledge that the rebel flag is a detestable symbol but take umbrage when its legacy is discussed seem to prefer to wallow in escapism and denial. And those who still revere this flag have even less grounds to complain when I graphically recount the barbarism associated with it. If the South, and Georgia in particular, wishes to cling to the Confederate flag, then its heritage of shame cannot be glossed over...
...Scarlet Letter--the Cliffs Notes version. Bibliophiles who purchase that slim volume in lieu of dozing over the original will get a much clearer view of Nathaniel Hawthorne's 1850 tale of heroism and hypocrisy than those visiting the new movie adaptation. It's a lugubrious, often ludicrous, wallow...
Would that it were. Hollywood films often wallow in bloodlust and sexual smirking--it's the Kingdom of Leer--but genuine eroticism is hard to find. Maybe Verhoeven is right when he says, "Americans have a problem accepting sexuality. American society is more impregnated with Christian beliefs." And to those who find the very idea of sex unholy, it may be as pointless to prefer the erotic to the lurid as to choose a call girl over a hooker. But Showgirls is cold, antierotic. It just ain't sexy; it's only...