A Quote by Maureen Dowd
We are riveted by the soap operas of public lives. We admire the famous most for what makes them infamous: it reassures us that they are not better and no happier than all the people with their noses pressed hard against the glass.
Related Quotes
All of us, I suspect, imagine that a world exists from which we alone have been excluded; all of us have our noses pressed against the glass. But if we contemplate our own lives, not the phantom life on the other side, we might find things in them to envy-a family that’s intact; a job we like; excellent health (the thing we take for granted and on which all happiness depends). Good fortune is there, however sporadic, however modest, however difficult to achieve. The trick is to recognize it.
I like photographing the people I love, the people I admire, the famous, and especially the infamous. My last infamous subject was the extreme right wing French politician Jean-Marie Le Pen.
I was 11 and watching soap operas with my mom, and I thought it would be cool to be an actor. I thought soap operas was going to be the dream at the time - it's obviously now not the dream, but I think soap operas are really cool. Maybe I'll go back to that.
Soap operas are like boot camps for film actors, so I really learned a lot. It was a masterclass in working for camera. I made myself watch myself every day. I would sort of try and be objective about it and critique myself a little. There's a lot more skill set than people realize in soap operas. They shoot, like, 35 scenes a day.
If you want to do other things, you have to leave soap operas, otherwise you'll be there forever, which is not bad, you know. Some people have made a great living off of being on soap operas. But if you want to branch out you have to leave early, otherwise you'll never get the shot.
Writers are outsiders. Even when we seem like insiders, we're outsiders. We have to be. Our noses pressed to the glass, we notice everything. We mull and interpret. We store away clues, details that may be useful to us later.
As you say, I am honoured and famous and rich. But as I have to do all the hard work, and suffer an increasing multitude of fools gladly, it does not feel any better than being reviled, infamous and poor, as I used to be.
The people who live lives that are the most dangerous don't usually come in twirling a mustache rubbing their hands menacingly saying 'I'm an evil genius.' They're people who are charismatic, charming and appealing, who speak to some part of us that makes us want to follow them, that makes us attracted to them.
The problem for us, as viewers, is that we want famous people who are passionate about the things they're famous for, because that makes them worthy of the attention. But I think many of those famous people just want to be famous.
I don't think there's any better education than learning the intimate details of the lives of people who you most admire.
I worry that our lives are like soap operas. We can go for months and not tune in to them, then six months later we look in and the same stuff is still going on.
I think, on the whole that scientists make slightly better husbands and fathers than most of us, and I admire them for it.
In the realm of pop celebrity, the bar has been lowered so far that there is no bar. People can be famous for being famous, famous for being infamous, famous for having once been famous and, thanks largely to the Internet, famous for not being famous at all.
For all the days of our lives," we finished and I felt a little like a character in one of my grandma's soap operas.
Early on, America took one path and went down the advertising road, and in the UK they founded the BBC and developed a different kind of public broadcasting. There was a point where TV was so beholden to commercial interest that people - civil society - actually rose up and said, "This is ridiculous: we have our soap-selling soap operas, cigarette-sponsored news broadcast; we have our rigged quiz shows - let's put some checks and balances here."
However, I think anything is better than high intellectual pressure. That is the most unbecoming thing there is. It makes the noses of the young girls so particularly large.
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