But with season five of Downtown Abbey now history, I will say that while the characters were still there, the plots were not. A good character in a bad plot is liable to look like an idiot or a bore, and in either case, a major irritant.
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As to how we teach the post-modern student, put simply, we don’t. We are to engage. Now I’m all for a good class discussion, but I also know that students with minds as poorly stocked with the simple facts of history, literature, and politics require teaching and lots of it.
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This moral collapse of one of Hollywood’s most powerful studios brings to mind one of the most famous examples of tyrant-as-minor-star — Ernst’s Lubitsch’s 1942 masterpiece “To Be or Not to Be.” Here Hitler and his slavish goons are savaged satirically from start to finish — although the “great” man himself appears for only a few seconds.
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