Word: wink
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Fresno boldly disdains a laugh track, and if it were not for the network's tongue-in-cheek promos, a casual viewer might miss the joke. The cast plays it expertly deadpan, with only an occasional wink at the audience. Satiric jabs at specific soaps are few and relatively tame. The California wines of Falcon Crest have puckered into raisins. The Southern accents (in California?) have migrated from Dallas. Garr's drop-dead wardrobe and a female catfight are straight out of Dynasty. And when Tiffany searches for her father at a costume party, she assembles...
...American exuberance, excess and, yes, glitz. Though millions of visitors gawked at her, perhaps no one looked quite closely enough. Let them cavort, she seemed to say with an imperceptible smile. Liberty may be proud, but she isn't haughty. Look again. Was that--could it have been--a wink...
...know the technique behind each matte shot, each jive emotion. Perhaps the audience at some B-minus sci-fi thriller in the 1950s solemnly attended to the stilted dialogue, leaden performances and not-so-special effects. But today's cognoscenti find the dew of nostalgia on these pictures, then wink and say, "They're so bad, they're good." Smart directors stoke the trend with camp updates of the olden turkeys. In Tobe Hooper's remake of the 1953 Invaders from Mars you can see tongues burrowing into cheeks on both sides of the camera. Sometimes, though, directors can outsmart...
...been a very private wink, but it seemed to its one witness to go beyond the walls of the White House, out over the Rose Garden and well outside the Beltway that surrounds the nation's capital. It was as if Ronald Reagan had winked at America, sharing the people's amused disdain for the sort of thing that goes on in Big Government...
Then comes the Day After. You don't just go to class. You stagger in, using Jack Nicholson's patented "Cuckoo Nest" post-electroshock walk. Your section leader takes on the sinister role of Nurse Ratched as you wink, smile and wallow in your rebellious glamour. Better than thumbing your nose at the school principal, blazing through a two week assignment in one night completely destroys your section leader's sense of authority...