A Quote by Jonathan Lethem

For those whose ganglia were formed pre-TV, the mimetic deployment of pop-culture icons seems at best an annoying tic and at worst a dangerous vapidity that compromises fiction's seriousness by dating it out of the Platonic Always, where it ought to reside.

Jonathan Lethem

Quote Topics

Always Annoying Best Compromises Culture Dangerous Dating Deployment Fiction Formed Icons Ought Out Platonic Pop Seems Seriousness Those TV Were Whose Worst

Quote Author

Jonathan Lethem
American - Novelist
Born: February 19, 1964

I’ve always thought that if comics are a part of pop culture [then] they should reflect pop culture, but a lot of the time comics, superhero comics especially, just feed on themselves. For me, comics should take from every bit of pop culture that they can; they’ve got the same DNA as music and film and TV and fashion and all of these things.

Kieron Gillen

The DC Universe has the best villains in fiction, right? I don't think there's any group of villains collectively or anywhere else that come close to DC's. Joker, Cat Woman, Lex Luthor, are all staples. A lot of the comic book icons are fiction icons.

Geoff Johns

When one gets reports from scientists, engineers and technicians whose credibility by all common standards is high and whose moral caliber seems to preclude a hoax, one can do no less than hear them out, in all seriousness.

J. Allen Hynek

Observe that noses were made to wear spectacles; and so we have spectacles. Legs were visibly instituted to be breeched, and we have breeches. Stones were formed to be quarried and to build castles; and My Lord has a very noble castle; the greatest Baron in the province should have the best house; and as pigs were made to be eaten, we eat pork all year round; consequently, those who have asserted all is well talk nonsense; they ought to have said that all is for the best.

Voltaire

I wanted to tell a dream-come-true story about going from a closeted gay kid who loved pop culture to an out adult man making pop culture. I went from being told when I was 21 that I should never go on TV because of my crossed eyes to winding up being a 'Housewives' whisperer and talk-show host.

Andy Cohen

There's a rich history at Westboro of parodying pop culture. The thing about pop culture is that it gives us a shared language. We were constantly trying to co-opt things that were popular to deliver our own message.

Megan Phelps-Roper

Lasting solutions are always difficult to come to. But they will have to persevere. I've been repeating ad nauseam that we in Burma we are weak with regard to the culture of negotiated compromises, that we have to develop the ability to achieve such compromises.

Aung San Suu Kyi

I'm a staunch believer in the effect of pop culture - including advertising and the internet - on the young. Pop culture in its narrowest sense - mass-produced film, TV, and music - either truly reflects what's up in youth culture, or it reflects what youth-filled focus groups have told marketing companies that they want to consume.

Vanessa Grigoriadis

Being a musician has actually surrounded and immersed me in pop culture and youth culture from a very young age. But even before I was singing in bands and creating any kind of art, I was always fascinated by pop culture.

Davey Havok

I find people who prejudge reality TV to be annoying. Art comes from anywhere. Culture can ooze out of any crack. Prejudging is the death of creativity.

Douglas Coupland

And the visible world seems formed in love, the invisible spheres were formed in fright.

Herman Melville

It may well be, of course, that America's pop culture is on balance better than our high art. I don't think so, but you can certainly make a case that the best of it aspires to a degree of aesthetic and emotional seriousness that is directly comparable to all but the very greatest works of high art.

Terry Teachout

For TV you also get those pre-interviews when researchers ask you what you're going to say. The pre-interview drives me insane. If they've already decided the outcome, why don't I just hand in an essay? Maybe if we talk we'll find something out. I'd rather just have an awkward pause.

Jarvis Cocker

The best intentions (of respect and tolerance) can often be annoying to those whose cultures are not in dominance: we feel that we are often zoological specimens.

Vijay Prashad

We're into this barrage of pop culture - you know, TV, movies, the Internet. We become creatures that we've made up, made of certain different flotsam from pop culture and certain different personas that are in style.