Word: bafflement
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...would-be actor, he began writing plays when a therapist suggested he compose an imaginary letter of forgiveness to his mother. Among his best works: The Modern Ladies of Guanabacoa, an evocation of the complex caste system in Cuba six decades ago, and Once Removed, which captures the bafflement and determination of a family uprooted by the Castro revolution and exiled in the U.S. "I was the first Hispanic playwright in America to write about upper- class people," says Machado. As a result, he believes, "I don't get performed much by Hispanic theaters. I find that odd -- they still...
...when it happens, it happens big. And there are earlier, subtler pleasures: the understated idealizing of the Gallaghers' homelife, the funny- horny touches in the sex scene. Douglas and Close are nicely cast, attractive opposites. His all-American-boy bafflement suggests a Gary Cooper stripped of moral authority and ill at ease in a grown-up dilemma. Her intimidating energy recalls the young Katharine Hepburn but with a voracious libido. And behind them both stands another more portly silhouette: the ghost of Alfred Hitchcock. Dan is the basic Hitchcock protagonist, a fairly decent man in a horribly compromised position...
Nonetheless, this single-minded force is waging its campaign for social retrenchment at what may be a propitious time. Fundamentalists detect a widespread feeling in America of spiritual bafflement and dissatisfaction. Many commentators outside the movement agree. Sociologist Rodney Stark of the University of Washington, no Fundamentalist himself, thinks that the religious right makes quite accurate assessments. Antireligion and amorality have in fact been spreading in the public schools, he asserts, and "a majority of Americans are scandalized" by the apparent flouting of traditional values on television and in the press. Similarly, Michael Novak, the neoconservative Roman Catholic, says that...
...Manon Gropius, the beloved daughter of his friend Alma Mahler and the architect Walter Gropius. The girl died at 19 of polio and the composer dedicated the work "to the memory of an angel." Robbins' scenario begins quietly and a bit flatly as Farrell moves with increasing stiffness and bafflement between her lover (tenderly danced by Joseph Duell) and friends. Suddenly they move off and she is left with a gauntly beautiful angel of death (Adam Luders). Their pas de deux is the heart of the ballet. The moves are often slow and arduous, but the great tension and energy...
...reporter's memos of Johnson's nighttime ravings and his daytime remorse and his bafflement about a war that failed to follow his orders are chilling reading, five years compressed into two notebooks with yellowing pages...