Manifesto Movie Quotes

Pundits are always blaming TV for making people stupid, movies for desensitizing the world to violence, and rock music for making kids take drugs and kill themselves. These things should be the least of our worries. The main problem with mass media is that it makes it impossible to fall in love with any acumen of normalcy. There is no 'normal,' because everybody is being twisted by the same sources simultaneously.

Pundits are always blaming TV for making people stupid, movies for desensitizing the world to violence, and rock music for making kids take drugs and kill themselves. These things should be the least of our worries. The main problem with mass media is that it makes it impossible to fall in love with any acumen of normalcy. There is no “normal,” because everybody is being twisted by the same sources simultaneously. You can’t compare your relationship with the playful couple who lives next door, because they’re probably modeling themselves after Chandler Bing and Monica Geller. Real people are actively trying to live like fake people, so real people are no less fake. Every comparison becomes impractical. This is why the impractical has become totally acceptable; impracticality almost seems cool.

Lolita credeva, con una sorta di celestiale fiducia, in tutte le réclame e i consigli che apparivano su “Movie Love” o “Screen Land” – lo Sterasil stermina i foruncoli, o “Niente camicia fuori dai jeans, ragazze: Jill dice che proprio non si deve!”. Se un cartello stradale diceva “VISITATE IL NOSTRO NEGOZIO DI REGALI” dovevamo visitarlo, dovevamo comprare le curiosità indiane, le bambole, la bigotteria di rame, le caramelle a forma di cactus. Le parole “novità e souvenir” l’ipnotizzavano con la loro cadenza anapestica. Se l’insegna di un caffè proclamava Bibite Ghiacciate, automaticamente Lo si eccitava, anche se le bibite erano ghiacciate dappertutto. Erano dedicate a lei, tutte quelle reclamé: la consumatrice ideale, soggetto e oggetto di ogni odioso manifesto.

Imagine the least well-adjusted kid in your school starting a breakaway clique of people whose manifesto includes a ban on the media, dancing, smoking, temperate climates, movies, drinking rock 'n' roll, having sex for fun, swimming, make-up, jewellery, playing pool, going to cities, or staying up past nine o'clock. That was Menno all over. Thanks a lot, Menno.

imagine a written version of the Cinderella story that begins and ends with a simple paraphrase of the Disney movie but contains, in between, a 10,000 word poem called “Cinderella’s Lament”—a brilliantly written feminist manifesto challenging most of the sexist assumptions in the original story. Imagine that the poem is written primarily from Cinderella’s perspective but includes speeches by the stepmother and stepsisters as well. The Cinderella of the poem (let us imagine) is as radical as the Disney version is safe. She questions some of her culture’s deepest values and beliefs that women should marry men, that rich and handsome princes are automatically desirable, that a man can love a woman even if he can’t remember what she looks like. The other characters in the poem are, of course, horrified by her unorthodox views, and they do everything they can to contradict her. Every time she speaks, they rebut everything she says. But Cinderella is a clever debater, and she holds her own. They go on arguing and arguing until the Fairy Godmother shows up and angrily puts an end to the debate. “I spent a lot of time and effort catching you a prince,” she tells Cinderella, “and you had better marry him fast if you don’t want to end up a pumpkin yourself.” Cinderella knows when she has been beaten, and she submits—not to a better argument, but to superior physical force. She marries the prince, and they live happily ever after—except, of course, they don’t, and we know they don’t because we have been made privy to Cinderella’s deepest thoughts.