Quotes & Sayings About Popular Culture

Basically, Koreans are the Marlboro Men of Asia. — Euny Hong

If you go to Tokyo, I think it becomes very obvious that there's this almost seamless mixture of popular culture and Japanese traditional culture. — Kazuo Ishiguro

Popular culture, on average, has been growing more cognitively challenging over the past thirty years, not less. Despite everything you hear about declining standards and dumbing-down, you have to do more intellectual work to make sense of today's television or games - much less the internet - than you did a few decades ago. — Steven Johnson

I remember the dark days when, thanks to 1966's 'Batman' with Adam West, comics were considered the ugly stepchild of popular culture. — Marc Guggenheim

The popular culture says ... Do what you do, your life is predestined, like the installment plan on your house. There's not much you can do about it. Make your payments, live it, get sick, die, don't make any trouble. It is the Master Charge of destiny. Try to get your high credit rating. — Jerzy Kosinski

Every now and again, the alternative culture is cherished by the mainstream for what it is, rather than how it should be, like the mainstream popular music. — Thurston Moore

The ditties blend Japanese popular culture themes of saccharine, childlike goodness and viciously detached sadism, which Aum drew upon as it tapped the barely suppressed rage of the young against their society. — Robert Jay Lifton

For an academic to launch a public conversation about journalistic integrity, the role of religion in society, scholarship and faith is a dream come true. These are the kinds of things that we sit around talking to each other about in our dusty libraries. To see these conversations take place in popular culture is the best thing that could have ever happened. — Reza Aslan

Many things have changed in our culture here in England as a direct result of the Pistols: the whole street-fashion thing in London, for example, or the coverage of popular culture in the national press, or the fact that the film industry is now about young people making films about young British issues. — Julien Temple

Contemporary fiction is the hardest for me because I am not really in the popular culture - I don't watch TV. — Gail Carson Levine

When artists and philosophers talk only amongst themselves, they ignore the potential of popular culture to become a variety of dialogues with and between everyday people. Its discourse may be productive of desire and pleasure, but popular culture is also a language in which people discuss politics, religion, ethics, and action. — Brenda Laurel

I love the idea of the amateur - that's what popular culture is all about. But what the Internet's doing is professionalizing everyone's amateuristic impulses. — Lee Siegel

And it's not only films, I'm pretty unaware of anything that's going on in popular culture right now. — Brad Bird

Some readers were aware that the novels they loved amounted to a propaganda campaign, that the love stories had a particular agenda that might or might not have anything at all to do with reality. But then as now, being a canny and independent-minded consumer of popular media did not bar one from also enjoying being manipulated by it. — Hanne Blank

With a movie you're creating from the beginning this particular work, let's not call it work of art, because very few movies are works of art, let's just call them bits of popular culture, whatever they are, sometimes very rarely by accident a movie becomes a work of art. — Sydney Pollack

I am one with the popular culture. — Lloyd Blankfein

Now there's a whole generation of filmmakers who grew up making their own films with video cameras, and have dined entirely on a diet of popular culture. It's been reflected in a lot of their work. It's self-reflective, it's quite knowing, but it's very literate. — Simon Pegg

I don't go to movies, I don't own a television, I don't buy magazines and I try not to receive mail, so I'm not really aware of popular culture. — Jesse Eisenberg

Popular culture isn't a freeze-frame; it is images zapping by in rapid-fire succession, which is why collage is such an effective way of representing contemporary life. The blur between images creates a kind of motion in the mind. — James Rosenquist

The truth is, everything we know about America, everything Americans come to know about being American, isn't from the news. I live there. We don't go home at the end of the day and think, "Well, I really know who I am now because the Wall Street Journal says that the Stock Exchange closed at this many points." What we know about how to be who we are comes from stories. It comes from the novels, the movies, the fashion magazines. It comes from popular culture. — Chris Abani

You are all talking a bit too much, said Armando, who had cautioned them from the beginning to stay out of popular culture and in their own interior worlds.
When you are caught up in the world that you did not design as support for your life and the life of earth and people, it is like being caught in someone else's dream or nightmare. Many people exist in their lives in this way. I say exist because it is not really living. It is akin to being suspended in a dream one is having at night, a dream over which one has no control. You are going here and there, seeing this and that person; you do not know or care about them usually, they are just there, on your interior screen. Humankind will not survive if we continue in this way, most of us living lives in which our own life is not the center. — Alice Walker

People constantly make pop-culture references. That's why it's called popular culture, because people are aware of it and reference it constantly. — Seth Rogen

I felt that a lot of Viking culture had been caricatured and misconstrued. After all, they were far more democratic than the Saxons and the Francs, who were exercising really hierarchical social structures at that time. The Vikings had popular meetings where everything could be discussed. — Michael Hirst

I myself wouldn't want to read a magazine that focuses solely on a small part of the literary field or of the popular culture - better to smash the borders and look for interesting and important stuff from many different forms of storytelling. — Toni Jerrman

I think rap music is the sole reason for a lot of black acceptance in pop culture; because the music is very popular, it gets our image out in other ways than in movies. — Ice Cube

In popular culture, the term "butterfly effect" is almost always misused. It has become synonymous with "leverage" - the idea of a small thing that has a big impact, with the implication that, like a lever, it can be manipulated to a desired end. This misses the point of Lorenz's insight. The reality is that small things in a complex system may have no effect or a massive one, and it is virtually impossible to know which will turn out to be the case. — Stanley McChrystal

Popular culture is simply a reflection of what the majority seems to want. — Victor Davis Hanson

Q. Which is my favorite country?
A. The United States of America. Not because I'm chauvinistic or xenophobic, but because I believe that we alone have it all, even if not to perfection. The U.S. has the widest possible diversity of spectacular scenery and depth of natural resources; relatively clean air and water; a fascinatingly heterogeneous population living in relative harmony; safe streets; few deadly communicable diseases; a functioning democracy; a superlative Constitution; equal opportunity in most spheres of life; an increasing tolerance of different races, religions, and sexual preferences; equal justice under the law; a free and vibrant press; a world-class culture in books,films, theater, museums, dance, and popular music; the cuisines of every nation; an increasing attention to health and good diet; an abiding entrepreneurial spirit; and peace at home. — Albert Podell

I worry about the culture of celebrity in this country. Personality over performance. Fashion before form. For the popular culture it makes interesting fare, but I think in the long-term the negative consequences are enormous. — B.R. Snow

Nothing is more dead and dated than the book which once caused controversy. — Alec Waugh

The American Type Culture Collection - a nonprofit whose funds go mainly toward maintaining and providing pure cultures for science - has been selling HeLa since the sixties. When this book went to press, their price per vial was $256. The ATCC won't reveal how much money it brings in from HeLa sales each year, but since HeLa is one of the most popular cell lines in the world, that number is surely significant. — Rebecca Skloot

When I was in the middle of the 'Scott Pilgrim' series, and it was slowly becoming more popular, though still not financially solvent, I had this real bratty instinct to turn around and do something super arty and dark. I felt dismissed by comics culture, stuck in between the artcomix world and the nerdcomix world, and I was cranky about it. — Bryan Lee O'Malley

I was delighted to become a popular-culture reference point. I'm still delighted about it actually, and I still find it to be weird. — Colin Firth

The exclusion of true esoteric religion has been the business of the State since ancient times. At first this was done via the establishment of the popular idealism of exoteric religious institutions in league with the State. But in modern times the same process is done by the strategic exclusion of conventional religious cultism, mystical idealism, and higher evolutionary Wisdom from the mechanisms of popular culture. — Adi Da

From sublime affairs of state to the stark and vulgar popular culture of our own contemporary lives, let's make this descent into the lower registers together and recognize the good, nasty fun of 'Gone Girl,' Chicago writer Gillian Flynn's novel about the mysterious disappearance of a clever and deceptive young Midwestern housewife. — Alan Cheuse

I've always wanted to be a journalist, but what am I going to do? Write articles about which movie star had the fat sucked from her ass and injected into her face? Which professional athlete just confessed to shooting steroids? The last celebrity baby names?" Cara lowered both brows in frustration. "Who cares? — Melissa Landers

Most of my ukulele heroes were traditional players from Hawaii, like Eddie Kamae and Ohta-san. There may not be uke stars in popular culture, but there are certainly pop stars that play uke - George Harrison, Eddie Vedder, Taylor Swift, Train, and Paul McCartney. — Jake Shimabukuro

Orwell wrote easily and well about small humane pursuits, such as bird watching, gardening and cooking, and did not despise popular pleasures like pubs and vulgar seaside resorts. In many ways, his investigations into ordinary life and activity prefigure what we now call 'cultural studies. — Christopher Hitchens

Rape culture is an environment in which rape is prevalent and in which sexual violence against women is normalized and excused in the media and popular culture. Rape culture is perpetuated through the use of misogynistic language, the objectification of women's bodies, and the glamorization of sexual violence, thereby creating a society that disregards women's rights and safety. Rape culture affects every woman. Most women and girls limit their behavior because of the existence of rape. Most women and girls live in fear of rape. Men, in general, do not. That's how rape functions as a powerful means by which the whole female population is held in a subordinate position to the whole male population, even though many men don't rape, and many women are never victims of rape. — Rebecca Solnit

Commerce is considered by classical economists to be a positive-sum
game. The act of selling and buying always benefits both the seller
and the buyer. It is unfortunate that popular culture has propagated
the Marxist myth that one person gains in business at the expense of
another, that capitalism is evil because it is a zero-sum game - somebody
wins while someone else loses. When liberals make the argument
that capitalism is the cause of all of our problems, they are either
speaking out of abject ignorance or being totally disingenuous to
protect their interests. We have not had true free-market capitalism
in this country on any wide scale. Where we have had economic
successes in this nation's history, it has been those times when people
have done something outside of the government's involvement. Every
time the federal government has been involved, it has created chaos,
waste, and corruption. — Ziad K. Abdelnour

A nation lives by its myths and heroes. Many societies have survived defeat and invasion, even political and economic collapse. None has survived the corruption of its picture of itself. High and popular art are not in competition here. Both may help citizens decide what they are and what they admire. In our age, however, high art has given up speaking to the body of its fellow citizens. It devotes itself to technical displays that can appeal only to other technicians. — E. Christian Kopff

Yeah, I was a child of American popular culture. — Robert Crumb

A few words of Hindi appear here or there, but it's all Urdu. I feel that if the popular culture, which is what Hindi films are, uses Urdu, it's not going to diminish. — Ismail Merchant

I've often used the extremes in my work to comment on the mainstream. I think that sometimes a subject that I'm working on, like popular culture, is so present all around us that they're hard to see. It's like: How do you see the air you breathe? How do you see how it affects you? — Lauren Greenfield

Popular culture has become engorged, broadening and thickening until it's the only culture anyone notices. — P. J. O'Rourke

[A] new finding shows that while in the 1940s, three-quarters of those surveyed claimed to dream in black and white, today, three-quarters say the opposite, that they dream in color. This reversal is attributed to a change in the number of people who grew up watching color rather than black and white television ... another hint that our private dreams are intimately linked to our collective mediated experiences. — Katherine A. Fowkes

In secular societies, adherence to God's commands has become a matter of individual conscience, but this has put followers of traditional religions in a quandary. They believe God's blessings or curses are dictated by obedience to his commands, but they are no longer empowered to impose their religious convictions on the entire community. Instead they must pursue cultural crusades using channels in politics and popular culture to impress their values on the masses. — Skye Jethani

Eight Hours For What We Will is a major contribution to modern American working-class history and to the history of a changing American popular and mass culture. — Herbert Gutman

In popular culture, when women compete, it's usually over a man, and it's usually very nasty. And that is just frankly not my experience. That's just some kind of popular mythology, it feels like. I find it insulting. — Kelly Sue DeConnick

I don't hear any of the popular stuff unless it's good 'cause I pay no attention to popular culture, at all. — T Bone Burnett

Popular culture is the new Babylon, into which so much art and intellect now flow. It is our imperial sex theater, supreme temple of the western eye. We live in the age of idols. The pagan past, never dead, flames again in our mystic hierarchies of stardom. — Camille Paglia

is not right that children be dunked headfirst into the vat of garbage we call popular culture. — Ben Shapiro

Okay, the question is, 'What enormously popular novel by William Peter Blatty, set in the posh Washington D.C. suburb of Georgetown, concerned the demonic possesion of a young girl?' '
'Johnny Cash', Henry replied.
'Jesus Christ!' Tricks Postino yelled. 'That's what you say to everythin! Johnny Cash, that's what you say to fuckin everythin!'
'Johnny Cash is everything,' Heny replied gravely... — Stephen King

Songs, to me, were more important than just light entertainment. They were my preceptor and guide into some altered consciousness of reality. Some different republic, some liberated republic ... whatever the case, it wasn't that I was anti-popular culture or anything and I had no ambition to stir things up. I just thought of mainstream culture as lame as hell and a big trick. It was like the unbroken sea of frost that lay outside the window and you had to have awkward footgear to walk with. — Bob Dylan

I think that popular culture takes a long time to catch up to what's actually happening in the world. Women have had to take care of themselves for quite a while. Actually, not had to take of themselves, but have wanted to take care of themselves, so I think it's a big transition that our country and our society has been going through a long time. — Lisa Edelstein

I really think that movies are the most popular form of story telling ever and have such a huge impact on culture when they do. So I really want to be a part of those movies that say something good to a lot of people. — Alden Ehrenreich

The media-contamination hypothesis usually focuses on the book Michelle Remembers (Smith and Pazder, 1980) and the movie Rosemary's Baby;. These images were in the popular culture for centuries before survivor memories started to surface in therapy; therefore, the media-contamination hypothesis fails to account for the time lag and cannot provide a full account of the phenomenona. — Colin A. Ross

I'm somebody who's really contributed to culture. Popular culture. — Steve Guttenberg

Purely formal integrity is just about the only kind of integrity our popular culture celebrates anymore — Anonymous

Popular culture bombards us with examples of animals being humanized for all sorts of purposes, ranging from education to entertainment to satire to propaganda. Walt Disney, for example, made us forget that Mickey is a mouse, and Donald a duck. George Orwell laid a cover of human societal ills over a population of livestock. — Frans De Waal

While the patriarchal boys in hip-hop crew may talk about keeping it real, there has been no musical culture with black men at the forefront of its creation that has been steeped in the politics of fantasy and denial as the more popular strands of hip-hop. — Bell Hooks

For all of its well-deserved reputation for pragmatism, American popular culture frequently nurtures or at least tolerates preposterous views and theories. Witness the 9/11 'truthers' who, lacking any evidence whatsoever, claim that 9/11 was a Bush administration plot. — Michael Hayden

I want to make movies that people see. I really think that movies are the most popular form of story telling ever and have such a huge impact on culture when they do. — Alden Ehrenreich

The distortions and insults about organized religion will continue unabated as long as our popular culture continues its overall campaign against judgment and values. A war against standards leads logically and inevitably to hostility to religion because it is religious faith that provides the ultimate basis for all standards. — Michael Medved

Our whole culture is based on the appetite for buying, on the idea of a mutually favorable exchange ... For the man an attractive girl - and for the woman an attractive man - are the prizes they are after. 'attractive' usually means a nice package of qualities which are popular and sought after on the personality market. What specifically makes a person attractive depends on the fashion of the time, physically as well as mentally ... Two persons thus fall in love when they feel they have found the best object available on the market, considering the limitations of their own exchange values. — Erich Fromm

Women's liberation and empowerment are terms feminists started using to talk about casting off the limitations imposed upon women and demanding equality. We have perverted these words. The freedom to be sexually provocative or promiscuous is not enough freedom; it is not the only 'women's issue' worth paying attention to. And we are not even free in the sexual arena. We have simply adopted a new norm, a new role to play: lusty, busty exhibitionist. There are other choices. If we are really going to be sexually liberated, we need to make room for a range of options as wide as the variety of human desire. We need to allow ourselves the freedom to figure out what we internally want from sex instead of mimicking whatever popular culture holds up to us as sexy. That would be liberation. — Ariel Levy

the portrayal of reality in the state-controlled press and popular entertainment is harmonious and pleasant. Justice, in the narratives approved for public consumption, is always served. Goodness always triumphs. Goals are always attained. This dichotomy, although not on the level of Stalin's Soviet Union or Hitler's Nazi Germany, is nevertheless present in American culture and getting worse. The gap between who we are and who we think we are is steadily expanding. — Chris Hedges

Today we hear a great deal about Organizational Men, Mass Culture, Conformity, the Lonely Crowd, the Power Elite and its Conspiracy of Mediocrity. We forget that the very volume of this criticism is an indication that our society is still radically pluralistic. Not only are there plenty of exceptionalists who take exception to the stereotyping of the mass culture but that very string of epithets comes from a series of books that have been recent best-sellers, symptoms of a popular, living tradition of dissent from things as they are. — Kenneth Rexroth

There was a time when I kept track of it all; when my mind worked like a giant lint brush being swept over the fuzzy surface of popular culture. But these days, pop culture seems to have gotten fuzzier and fuzzier; notoriety comes and goes in the snap of a finger. — Susan Orlean

One could dismiss the zombie trend as merely feeding a mass public that craves the strange and bizarre. Such an explanation would be only skin-deep. Popular culture often provides a window into the subliminal or unstated fears of citizens, and zombies are no exception. Some cultural commentators argue that the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks are a primary cause for renewed interest in the living dead, and the numbers appear to back up this assertion. — Daniel Drezner

For all the talk about the merging of film and video game, and for all its inevitability, perhaps the secret of true convergence lies not in an external reality , but in an internal truth: What kids seek from video games is what we all seek from our own distractions--be they movies, radio, comic books, literature, or art: an escape from the mundane to the sublime, where our imaginations make of us heroes, lovers, warriors, and gods. — Devin C. Griffiths

Popular culture has made it okay to yell "I want a man!" from the rooftops, so why are we still embarrassed to say, "I want a best friend"? — Rachel Bertsche

In all death penalty cases, spending time with clients is important. Developing the trust of clients is not only necessary to manage the complexities of the litigation & deal with the stress of a potential execution; it's also key to effective advocacy. A client's life often depends on his lawyer's ability to create a mitigation narrative that contextualizes his poor decisions or violent behavior. Uncovering things about someone's background that no one has previously discovered--things that might be hard to discuss but are critically important--requires trust. Getting someone to acknowledge he has been the victim of child sexual abuse, neglect, or abandonment won't happen without the kind of comfort that takes hours and multiple visits to develop. Talking about sports, TV, popular culture, or anything else the client wants to discuss is absolutely appropriate to building a relationship that makes effective work possible. — Bryan Stevenson

Will non-English-speaking students start speaking English because their teachers were fired? Will children come to school ready to learn because their teachers were fired?
It would be good if our nation's education leaders recognized that teachers are not solely responsible for student test scores. Other influences matter, including the students' effort, the family's encouragement, the effects of popular culture, and the influence of poverty. A blogger called "Mrs. Mimi" wrote the other day that we fire teachers because "we can't fire poverty." Since we can't fire poverty, we can't fire students, and we can't fire families, all that is left is to fire teachers.
— Diane Ravitch

If our cultural lives are sick, it is likely to be an impediment to our spiritual lives. Much popular culture promotes a spirit of restlessness. That is likely to be an obstacle to prayer, to concerned reflection, and to attentiveness to the needs of others. Popular culture also has an extremely limited range of sensibilities. I have never heard a work of popular music that has the depth of poignancy of the opening bars of Brahms's 'German Requiem,' for example, with its text, 'Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted.' I learn something about mourning when I hear Brahms; I know of no similar lessons in popular music. — Kenneth A. Myers

The direction in which the culture of an age develops is, humanly speaking, chosen by a few exceptionally intelligent men. The popular authors then pick up some of the main ideas, usually distorting and diluting them considerably, and finally fifty years or a century later the general viewpoint has seeped down to the whole populace. — Gordon H. Clark

Hamilton wanted to lead the electorate and provide expert opinion instead of consulting popular opinion. He took tough, uncompromising stands and gloried in abstruse ideas in a political culture that pined for greater simplicity. Alexander Hamilton triumphed as a doer and thinker, not as a leader of the average voter. He was simply too unashamedly brainy to appeal to the masses. Fisher Ames observed of Hamilton that the common people don't want leaders 'whom they see elevated by nature and education so far above their heads. — Ron Chernow

Take just one well-known event: The Beatles' 1964 appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show. This has been depicted with astonishing regularity as a pivotal cultural moment; in fact an entire movie -- I Wanna Hold Your Hand -- was built around it. And that Sullivan episode was indeed a major event in popular culture. But did you know that in 1961, 26 million people watched a CBS live broadcast of the first performance of a new symphony by classical composer Aaron Copland? Moreover, with all the attention that sixties rock groups receive, it may come as a surprise to learn that My Fair Lady was Columbia Records' biggest-selling album before the 1970s, beating out those of sixties icons Bob Dylan, Janis Joplin and The Byrds. — Jonathan Leaf

There can be no stronger proof of the impoverishment of our contemporary culture than the popular - though profoundly mistaken - definition of myth as falsehood. — Rollo May

I'm a professor of media studies as well as humanities, and I'm an evangelist of popular culture, but when there's only media, then there's going to be a slow debasement of language, and that's what I think we're fighting. — Camille Paglia

Women's liberation is one thing, but the permeation of anti-male sentiment in post-modern popular culture - from our mocking sitcom plots to degrading commercial story lines - stands testament to the ignorance of society. Fair or not, as the lead gender that never requested such a role, the historical male reputation is quite balanced.
For all of their perceived wrongs, over centuries they've moved entire civilizations forward, nurtured the human quest for discovery and industry, and led humankind from inconvenient darkness to convenient modernity. Navigating the chessboard that is human existence is quite a feat, yet one rarely acknowledged in modern academia or media. And yet for those monumental achievements, I love and admire the balanced creation that is man for all his strengths and weaknesses, his gifts and his curses. I would venture to say that most wise women do. — Tiffany Madison

Burroughs was never really that pleased with the way popular culture and society treated his character. He tried to make a few movies of his own as a result, but they weren't very good. — Brendan Fraser

The cacophony of contemporary popular culture makes it hard to discern the call of truth and wisdom. There is no area in which practicing asceticism is more important. — Rod Dreher

On the other hand, there is also the matter of Lovecraft's place in popular culture. — Ross E. Lockhart

I am trying to encourage kids to do something that isn't yet on their mind because it is not in popular culture. Popular culture tells you 'music, music, sports, sports.' It neglects the importance of a STEM education. — Will.i.am

Whenever I hear people clucking about the decline of civilization, what's wrong with young people, how vulgar popular culture is, how confusing and frightening they find the internet, alarms go off. I know I'm around somebody whose hinges are rusting. Death will be bad enough, but for me, this early harbinger is more fearsome, because a part of one's spirit and openness and ability to learn and grow disappears. — Jon Katz

Easy
to be delighted
or dismayed by POPULAR CULTURE
but then one has no other option and even
'God, it's so dreadful we watch it because it can't help
being funny' is
to be delighted. — Jennifer Clarvoe

When there is no news, we will give it to you with the same emphasis as if there were. — David Brinkley

I'll tell you an explanation that I find commonly overrated and speculative in the extreme: the idea that things that succeed in popular culture do that because they hit the temper of the times. — Cass Sunstein

In their heyday, comics were a dominant force in popular culture, but that's over. — Garry Trudeau

I think angels definitely offer all the imaginative possibilities that vampires do, and I think they've actually been popular in Western culture for longer than vampires have been. I hope they become a part of the culture again in a new way. — Danielle Trussoni

For all of her influence on popular culture, and the remarkable performances she left behind, perhaps Farrah Fawcett's greatest legacy was her raw, intimate, honest portrait of a woman fighting for her life - against cancer. — Alana Stewart

Popular culture - above all rock 'n' roll, with its African-American R & B roots - did far more to radicalize us than did any feminist leader. — Camille Paglia

Popular culture has twisted it, but popular culture has twisted madness in general. They make it funny, they romanticize it, or they make it exaggerated. But true mental illness is nothing to laugh at. I stayed in the Birdcage for some time, I've seen scary things, and I've become numb to a great deal, but going mad is perhaps the scariest. — Wildbow

The architect of popular culture is none other than Satan. He is the chief designer and chief marketer, and he has been branding worldliness since the beginning of time. His methods are shifty and constantly in motion, changing fads and trends to keep the world running in circles, trying to keep up with the latest and greatest. — Billy Graham

Avatar is a total nerd thing, and yet our popular culture has somehow made all that stuff acceptable. — Daniel Clowes

When I wrote 'The West Wing,' the juice behind it was that in popular culture, our leaders in government are generally portrayed as Machiavellian, or as idiots. I thought, well, how about writing about a group of hyper-competent people? — Aaron Sorkin

Popular culture tells you that schools and parents don't know what's going on, the police are dogs, politicians are all liars and scum, and any crime that's not committed by the Mafia is done by the CIA. — Stanley Crouch

I think it's always important for academics to study popular culture, even if the thing they are studying is idiotic. If it's successful or made a dent in culture, then it is worthy of study to find out why. — Joss Whedon

In other spheres of Victorian Society the appeal of a young woman dressed in black from head to toe was acknowledged. In Victorian popular culture, widows had two manifestations: the battleaxe and the man-eater, preying upon husbands and bachelors alike. Even today, an attractive, dark-haired person dressed in all black has vampiric connotations, as the novelist Alison Lurie has noted, 'so archetypally terrifying and thrilling, that any black-haired, pale-complexioned man or woman who appears clad in all black formal clothes projects a destructive eroticism, sometimes without concious intention. — Catharine Arnold