o'brien

It was as if the fifties had been compelled to execute a tortuous slow-motion exposure of words and deeds and bodies, all snap and timing lost, every blow landing a bit more heavily than intended.  A ponderous heaving and flailing approximated passion. In the midst of the wide-screen carnival arose grotesque parodies of the body: Jayne Mansfield, whose figure cracked men's eyeglasses and made milk boil over, and Jerry Lewis, a demon of hyperactive self-abasement sprung from some terminally inarticulate and uncoordinated netherworld. In them the body became loud.  The movies in which they appeared - like the primary-colored sets that framed their gags - seemed to collapse around them.