It has become a provocation to the Western liberal international order that the United States worked hard to create at the end of the Cold War: An order based on democracy, the rule of law and free markets.
Rylands originally hit the headlines because of his clever, oblique use of the role-playing game, Myst, where he immersed children in its detailed fantasy landscapes so that it became a provocation and a scaffold for their writing.
"So this film has become a provocation, an impetus for Indonesians to go back to the perpetrators and say, 'Tell us exactly what happened.' " Organized killings occurred all across Indonesia, the world's fourth most-populous country, but Mr. Oppenheimer focuses on Medan, a large city in northern Sumatra.
When he signed his first contract, with Stiff Records, in 1977, his then manager, the Stiff co-founder and bluff Svengali Jake Riviera, persuaded him to change his name to Elvis, a bit of cheek that inadvertently became a provocation when the original Elvis died, within months of the release of Costello's début, "My Aim Is True".
Right now, "John Q". is a distinctly bad joke, but the joke could become a flagrant provocation.
American soldiers have become a direct provocation of violence, not only because of the brutality of the occupation in Iraq but also because of US support for Israel's deadly occupation of Palestinian territory.
Welles intended a story of three frontiers: the rancid Mexican-American border; the way a good detective becomes a bad cop; and a provocation on interracial sexuality.
Imagine them back in place, and the gesture becomes a different kind of provocation: a vandalized Fascist salute.
In restrained mood it's sleek and plush as midnight fur – but at the slightest provocation it becomes a yowling, scratching, gnashing thing, ripping into entrails and spitting blood.
