David Foster Wallace Quotes

I think TV promulgates the idea that good art is just art which makes people like and depend on the vehicle that brings them the art.

In this age of consumerism film criticism all over the world - in America first but also in Europe - has become something that caters for the movie industry instead of being a counterbalance.

The entertainment industry has an effect on social consciousness.

People continually ask me, "Why does the media do what it does? Why are they so obviously self-destructive? Why are they so obviously predictable? Why is the media so obviously biased? Do they not see how other people see?" No, they don't. But then again, they don't care, folks.

There's such a self-conscious balance that goes into television. Also, these are not people that think things through.

How many more people right now feel connected to Mumbai because of Slumdog Millionaire, or suddenly are interested in the plight of orphans on Mumbai after seeing that film? The same thing with the Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns.

We are hurtling towards self-destruction at an alarming rate thanks chiefly to an advertising and propaganda system that goads people from infancy towards apathy, isolation, passivity, helplessness and separation.

The people responsible for the dollars that will buy the sex and violence so many deplore, don't even know what's going - well, of course they know. But they're comfortably ensconced in their country clubs and churches, and very far removed from the decisions that are made on their behalf.

The faults of advertising are only those common to all human institutions. If advertising speaks to a thousand in order to influence one, so does the church. And if it encourages people to live beyond their means, so does matrimony. Good times, bad times, there will always be advertising. In good times, people want to advertise; in bad times they have to.

American audiences are affected by what the English people think.

I'm not saying that people shouldn't go out to football games and drink beer and have a good time, I do it myself. But, at the same time, people are so apathetic and that shows me that they don't care about themselves. They have no self-image. Their image is projected to them via the television and that is where they make decisions about who they are according to what the public says they ought to be.

Confusion has become a state of mind, more of less; we're trained to be confused. Quite simply, the people in power are keeping us down, keeping us docile and keeping us consuming with this confusion. It's a cultural confusion and it is deliberate.

American culture is no longer created by the people... A free, authentic life is no longer possible in AmericaTM today. We are being manipulated in the most insidious way. Our emotions, personalities and core values are under siege from media and cultural forces too complex to decode. A continuous product message has woven itself into the very fabric of our existence. Most North Americans now live designer lives-sleep, eat, sit in car, work, shop, watch TV, sleep again. I doubt there's more than a handful of free, spontaneous minutes anywhere in that cycle. We ourselves have been branded.

Many, many things are dangerous in our world, commercials and TV are dangerous, and so is the world of sitcoms. But nobody does anything about them because they're turning in alot of money.

I'm not a proponent of people watching a movie, and then going out and doing something bad. People have been doing bad things, well before movies.

For most people, there are only two places in the world. Where they live and their TV set. If a thing happens on television, we have every right to find it fascinating, whatever it is.

You see so many people doing quite nice and respectful work, but nobody like Warhol. Warhol is outstanding. I think he has a value that is far from fully understood. He's very special for younger generations.

[It] is not that television is entertaining but that it has made entertainment itself the natural format for the representation of all experience. […] The problem is not that television presents us with entertaining subject matter but that all subject matter is presented as entertaining. (87)

Art is art. Television has elevated itself, in certain ways, but it's always pushed people's consciousness.

I do feel that movies and music do have the power to slightly influence a person's decision. I believe that if violence is not in a person, then the film is not going to encourage them.

The triumph of advertising in the culture industry is that consumers feel compelled to buy and use its products even though they see through them.

Popular culture as a whole is popular, but in today's fragmented market it's a jostle of competing unpopular popular cultures. As the critic Stanley Crouch likes to say, if you make a movie and 10 million people go see it, you'll gross $100 million - and 96 per cent of the population won't have to be involved. That alone should caution anyone about reading too much into individual examples of popular culture.

People living their lives for you on TV; They say they're better than you, and you agree.

Because of the Prada name, I can do things that people normally would not care about in the culture. I can have an exhibit by some forgotten artist who I love, and because it's Prada, people will come see it.

Every book purchase made from Amazon is a vote for a culture without content and without contentment.