Stephen Fry Quotes

The cult of the hero is the absolutely necessary complement of the massification of society. We see the automatic creation of this cult in connection with champion athletes, movie stars, and even such abstractions as Davy Crockett in the United States....

I would say that Mickey Mouse has a greater influence on the American public than Shakespeare, Milton, Dante, Rabelais, Shostakovitch, Lenin, and/or Van Gogh. Which says 'What?' about the American Public. Disneyland remains the central attraction of Southern California, but the graveyard remains our reality.

Sometimes it occurs to me that the job of a serious cultural critic mostly consists in telling the generality of people that their opinions - on films, on books, on all manner of widgets, gadgets and even the latest electronic fidgets - simply aren't up to scratch.

I think that reality TV is so bad. It is a tool by the media to not make people think.

Under popular culture's obsession with a naive inclusion, everything is O.K.

Science fiction has a way of letting you talk about where we are in the world and letting you be a bit of a pop philosopher without being didactic.

If you go back to 'Pretty Fly,' it was a very popish song, but there was a satirical side to it, and I think that's cool. I like the idea that it's making people think just a little bit.

I get most of my news from the Jon Stewart Daily Show. It's the most level commentary you can find. You have to laugh, because it's all so true. It's the closest thing to a counterculture.

Well, I'm a consumer as well. I go to the movies with my popcorn and believe everything I see.

Life doesn't imitate art, it imitates bad television.

Pop culture is great, but it can be bad, at times.

Every generation of children has its private hero.

I'm generally pessimistic about the dumbing down of America - especially with summer movies.

People love Batman, and I would be stupid, I would be a fool if I didn't love Batman.

For years, the defenders of television have argued that the networks are only giving the people what they want. That might be true. But so is the Medellin cartel.

I didn't really have idols growing up, but some of my friends were huge fangirls.

I definitely have fun commenting on the real world and interpreting through the 'Dear White People' lens.

It's not cool to be star-struck.

If a show is wickedly, hugely popular, like 'Mad Men,' I assume that the masses, in their infinite inferiority to me, don't know what good TV is and that everyone is just brainwashed.

Elvis may have been my first hero, but you couldn't relate to him.

I think there's enough TV that makes people feel dumb out there.

Kids and adults alike are having their curiosity drained away by boredom in class or the workplace, and by the unremitting background noise of a dumbed-down pop culture.

I'm a sucker for hero worship.

Our tendency to create heroes rarely jibes with the reality that most nontrivial problems require collective solutions.

Television tells us only the things it wants to. It still feeds us heroes, it still offers villains. And even though we know better than to always trust it, we still watch.