It is a drama punctuated by comic moments, has no singing or dancing, and exchanges the conspicuous artifice of a hand-drawn animated dragon for a dragon that, despite being a C.G.I. creation, conjures an awe-inspiring physicality.
Many would welcome a wearable device that promised significant benefit without the social stigma of conspicuous consumption or digitally mediated exchanges.
Its most conspicuous expressions are appliances for data exchange -- computers, cell phones, personal organizers, digital cameras -- and the software programs and communications systems to which they are linked.
Like many others, he takes steps to limit his exposure, traveling at irregular times, exchanging his BMW for a less conspicuous car.
The brief exchange was a subtle recognition of the conspicuous presence of 615 Chinese living temporarily in Kawakami, a farming community of about 4,400 Japanese residents about 100 miles west of Tokyo.
"At Berkeley," the documentarian Frederick Wiseman's magisterial examination of the University of California, Berkeley, is conspicuous for not identifying the scores of people shown teaching, studying and exchanging ideas in and out of the classroom.
The middle section uses scripted email exchanges to expose egos and obsessions as they flounder creatively amid the conspicuous consumption of fancy meals and swimming-pool dips.
Hip-hop, meanwhile, continued to shift its criteria for "keeping it real," exchanging narratives of crime and gunplay for boasts about business savvy and conspicuous consumption, or having rappers trade flirtations with rhythm-and-blues singers.
But in what appears to be the most conspicuous deal of all time, two men could be seen approaching one another from afar, briefly exchanging a few items (ostensibly drugs and money), all while a Fox 25 correspondent was reporting on a blizzard in Worcester, Massachusetts.
