Social Narrative Quotes

It's not easy for a film to tell a story of the experiences of an entire society. However, from an individual's perspective, it is possible to tell one aspect of an entire society's story.

Now, we're used to thinking of communism as being once-upon-a-time-all-things-were-owned-in-common, maybe-someday-this-will-come-again. And people agree that there is a sort of epic narrative going on here. I think we should just throw this narrative out, it's irrelevant anyway, and who cares who owns things? I don't. You know, we all own the White House. So what? I still can't go in, right?

Social history might be defined negatively as the history of a people with the politics left out.

A lot of artists I like end up being queer. Or maybe it's a subconscious thing that you can identify of, like, 'Oh this person understands the nuances of the romantic narrative of a queer person, or the social narrative of a queer person.' And then you discover, lo and behold that they are a queer person.

The media doesn't create narratives, really. They're not that powerful. What they do is they tap into narratives that are already bubbling amongst their viewership or readership.

Though the rampant racial injustices throughout the criminal justice system were offensive to me and to millions of other people, I've never drawn a tight circle around the black community to define the limits of my moral concern. But that narrative tends to get imposed on you, if you're an African-American activist.

The stories a society tells about itself are a measure of how it values itself, the ideals of democracy, and its future.

Whoever tells the best story shapes the culture.

Our identities really are a constant negotiation between the story we tell about ourselves and the narrative our societies like to recite.

The ninety percent of human experience that does not fit into established narrative patterns falls into oblivion.

To me, it's just that social media is allowing people to be in charge of their own narratives.

I like stories that have a social impact and social attributes to them. That's the whole reason we make films: to broaden our limited view of things and to see how life is evolving elsewhere.

Those who tell the stories rule society.

There's something about that puritanical narrative of progress and upward mobility and work ethic that the glorification of abstinence fits pretty neatly into. That pairs with the fact that 12-step recovery has had too large a monopoly on how treatment is understood in America.

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.

Nothing changes more constantly than the past; for the past that influences our lives does not consist of what actually happened, but of what men believe happened.

History is, of course, a made thing. It does not exist by itself in anything like a recognizable form.

In the Sixties, there was a big resistance to the Vietnam War. People began reinterpreting all American history as a series of misadventures and crimes and oppressions visited upon the innocent, the poor, the defenseless, the minorities, and so on. This created a new narrative in America. Let's call it, "America the inexcusable." And this narrative has been drummed into the minds of our young people. A whole generation of Americans has been taught that theirs is a bad country. And it's then very difficult for them to figure out how one can one be a good citizen in a bad country.

History is a novel whose author is the people.

I sing what society lives in general.

America makes up its own mind about what it wants to see.

Myth must be kept alive. The people who can keep it alive are the artists of one kind or another.

Competition between men is a fuel that's useful to us. We have to be careful that it doesn't tell the same story over too many times, but it's amazing how durable that story is.

I think people don't really actually talk about what their real issue is, which is that white, cis men - not straight men, but cis men - have had their hands on the narrative ever since filmmaking has begun.

Every human society possesses a mythology which is inherited, transmitted and diversified by literature.