Word: condescending
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...require. You would hope for a great deal more from his best movies--the best, even, of this limited, specialized kind--than Carpenter may be capable of, but Halloween and Assault on Precinct 13 are such neat packages of self-acknowledged hokum that it is difficult to resent or condescend to them. Compared to the slackness and swaggering middlebrow pretension of recent thrillers like The Invasion of the Body Snatchers or The Last wave, they are remarkable for their stringent suspensefulness, their fundamental lack of conceit, the inventiveness of numerous details and situations, and a sharp, reverberant visceral twang...
Joseph Mitchell, whom he calls "the best writer at the New Yorker," Mitchell, he says, can write about people without seeming to examine them or condescend to them. "The sentences seem to have appeared there on magic slates--the whole process looks effortless...
...Concepts," has laid on a score that is only supposed to give the impression of rock 'n' roll. Instead, it will probably put off her fans and cause undue mirth among audience members who know the difference between Paul Williams and Phil Spector. If Streisand and Peters condescend to the music, they graciously allow rock audiences the chance to cheer for true genius. A concert sequence, where the debuting Barbra brings a hostile rocker audience to their feet with the wonder of her funkiness, is a milestone of piquant absurdity, equivalent, perhaps, to having Kate Smith conquer Woodstock...
Television's neutrality is a little less than it seems. As Paul H. Weaver points out, television tends to condescend to politicians. This may be because "neutrality" permits a commentator a great many negative remarks about politicians hungry for office, aiming their speeches at some bloc, making a poor showing or taking desperate measures. But neutrality bars a commentator from saying bluntly "That was a brilliant speech," "I agree with him," or "He acted courageously...
Many readers now expect their slice of life to be served up with a side order of irony or existential razzmatazz.They will not find it in The Easter Parade. Yates does not condescend to his heroines; he refuses to strike attitudes about their failures or mock their limitations. "I'm almost 50 years old," Emily says at the end, "and I've never understood anything in my whole life...