garishness

At first, the players’ resistance to the garishness of the Second Symphony’s blaring machine music, Prokofiev’s nod to the fashion for compositions that imitate the sounds of industry, seemed to miss the point.

The haves scold the have-nots for their bad manners, racism, linguistic insensitivity and garishness, while ignoring the root causes of their economic distress.

Yet their garishness gave him an out with irony-blind censors, to whom he could always explain that he was just trying to make the sitters look prettier.

Director of photography Alexander Dynan uses a lighting scheme that can best be described as subtly oppressive, almost shroudlike, pressing down on the casino scenes, muting their garishness.

And there were things in the Harvey Weinstein story that kind of mirrored the garishness and awfulness of “Showgirls,” where you’re like: “Oh. OK. It’s not as cartoonish as I thought.”