Joshua Oppenheimer Quotes

Overall, looking at the stories [Black Mirror], almost every story we've ever done is concerned with authenticity or reality in some way.

There is also an artistic element which is lead by the film maker. Issues of what is reality and objectivity are as always relevant as someone is going to edit the film.

Today we live in a society in which spurious realities are manufactured by the media, by governments, by big corporations, by religious groups, political groups...So I ask, in my writing, What is real? Because unceasingly we are bombarded with pseudo-realities manufactured by very sophisticated people using very sophisticated electronic mechanisms. I do not distrust their motives; I distrust their power. They have a lot of it. And it is an astonishing power: that of creating whole universes, universes of the mind. I ought to know. I do the same thing.

We know that reality was a well known liberal bias.

Fear does not have to be real to be powerful.

Is Michael Moore an honest documentarian? Honestly? I don't think he is... The real discussion gets left behind the entertainment value.

There's a difference between reality TV and reality. There's a big difference.

In terms of so-called fly-on-the-wall documentaries, there's a claim that the camera is a transparent window into a pre-existing reality. What really is happening is that the film crew and the subjects are collaborating to simulate a reality in which they pretend the camera is not present.

The reality in which a camera turns up is always posed, e.g., the moon landing.

There is a slovenly disrespect for truth and reality that has infected and cross-infected the arts; the values of entertainment are relentlessly in the ascendant, to the extent that it becomes virtually impossible to write a naturalistic fictional sentence without feeling that the fabric of that sentence is already compromised.

Steve has a reality distortion field.” When Hertzfeld looked puzzled, Tribble elaborated. “In his presence, reality is malleable. He can convince anyone of practically anything. It wears off when he’s not around, but it makes it hard to have realistic schedules.

You see reality TV and it's not reality TV. It's contrived and everything is plotted and scripted nearly. Documentaries are the same and just as bad.

We are beginning to see the influence of dream upon reality and reality upon dream.

The reality distortion field was a confounding mélange of a charismatic rhetorical style, indomitable will, and eagerness to bend any fact to fit the purpose at hand.

Men are apt to be much more influenced by words than by the actual facts of the surrounding reality

Fabricating reality was criminal; editing it, commonplace.

From such a young age, I was raised and have raised myself on film to such an extent, that it has sometimes bled into my reality. There are times I've felt very Mulholland Drive, where people's dream worlds overlap with each other.

We are drowning in images. Photography is used as a propaganda tool, which serves to sell products and ideas. I use the same approach to show aspects of reality.

My wife, Amanda, is terribly good at warping reality. She is like a bowling ball on a rubber sheet, and you find yourself living in her universe, doing things that are completely unexpected or unimaginable for you, but you blink and you're up on a stage singing, or wearing a peculiar wig, or writing a book filled with feelings and emotion, or doing something equally as unlikely.

Propaganda analysis can contribute to world peace by exposing those techniques that lead to armed conflict by creating misapprehension of reality.

The goal is to keep the bewildered herd bewildered. It's unnecessary for them to trouble themselves with what's happening in the world. In fact, it's undesirable - if they see too much of reality they may set themselves to change it.

In a social media age, it seems that everyone lives in their own reality and that when you give consideration to Newt Gingrich, he exists in an alternate reality, at some level, where the things he says are so diametrically opposed to the record.

American media seem to color events by refracting them through a sickeningly sentimental prism. Their efforts to create reality on the ground — instead of reporting on it — notwithstanding, here's what we know about the inchoate Egyptian uprising: the movement's members hated their ruler and did what was necessary to be rid of him.

Of course, the toxic bullshit of incessant advertising and show biz for nearly a century has stripped us of cognitive abilities for dealing with reality that used to be part of the normal equipment of adulthood - for instance, knowing the difference between wishing for stuff and making stuff happen. We bamboozled ourselves with too much magic.

If deliberate distortion of reality by corporate media could be effectively prosecuted in the United States, the entire industry would be behind bars.