For those whose ganglia were formed pre-TV, the mimetic deployment of pop-culture icons seems at best an annoying tic and at worst a dangerous vapidity that compromises fiction's seriousness by dating it out of the Platonic Always, where it ought to ...
Culture, which makes talent shine, is not completely ours either, nor can we place it solely at our disposal. Rather, it belongs mainly to our country, which gave it to us, and to humanity, from which we receive it as a birthright.
I wrote a novel called 'Blonde,' which is about Norma Jean Baker, who becomes Marilyn Monroe, which I called a fictitious biography. That uses the material as if it were myth - that Marilyn Monroe is like this mythical figure in our culture.
You want a political culture that works to create conditions under which an economy can thrive? Since signing the Oslo Accords with the Palestinians, Israel has spent two decades working to unshackle its economy from its socialist roots, with remarka...
Bad news: Complainers are rewarded for complaining. Indicative of the victim culture in which we live, people have not only come to expect something for nothing, but are then rewarded for how loudly they can ventilate their sense of having been victi...
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 Pa...
The apparent pointlessness of fashion may be just what makes it so strong as a zeitgeist sensor. Even I, a designer, do not know why a certain proportion feels dated or why another one feels exciting at a given moment. I leave that to the cultural hi...
The reality is that a consumer culture which chucks out its iPhones for a new version every nine months is completely unsustainable, because Earth has already reached the tipping point. 'The General Strike' attempts to personalize these issues and en...
Some of us claim that New York City is the capital of the country, indeed the capital of the world. Now, that may be a bit much for those who don't come from New York, but clearly we are an important city for reasons of our cultural advantages.
One of the saddest things I've seen in Amazonian cultures is people who were self-sufficient and happy that now think of themselves as poor and become dissatisfied with their lives. What worries me is outsiders trying to impose their values and mater...
When I graduated, I was going to go to school for law, but had such an affinity for hip-hop. It was like walking into a casino and I decided to bet everything on hip-hop, and I hit! My hit wasn't just a hit for me, it was a hit for everyone in this c...
Today we read books 'extensively,' often without sustained focus, and with rare exceptions we read each book only once. We value quantity of reading over quality of reading. We have no choice, if we want to keep up with the broader culture.
There are people who wish to do us harm in the most heinous way. They want to kill Americans simply because they are Americans. They wish to destroy our culture and Nation because they don't like our freedoms, they don't like the fact that we are pro...
James Taylor may be an all-American boy but he isn't Horatio Alger, and the lionizing of many rock stars by the rock press has as much to do with old fashioned rags-to-riches stories as does the straight culture's deification of its idols.
I described the CEO job as knowing what to do and getting the company to do what you want. Designing a proper company culture will help you get your company to do what you want in certain important areas for a very long time.
The doughy-faced woman has been forced to sit on the sidelines of culture for too long, and it's now time for us to stand up with our big round faces like the moon and say we have things to say, too. We have a round-faced agenda we want to push.
I did all of California from north to south. I did Florida from north to south. I went to the Midwest. I spent time discovering the culture because I thought I was going to stay in America for only two years. Then I decided to come to New York.
France has not only built a bureaucratic barrier against American culture, it has constructed a notorious intellectual case against it as well. The French spend hundreds of millions of dollars subsidizing film production, extend interest-free loans t...
I did work at a mall in college - I think retail/customer service is just one of the most hideous jobs in the world. So I always try to be extra nice when I go into a store. But malls are part of our culture, if you watched any teen comedy in the '80...
Dr. Peter Venkman: [surrounded by excited reporters during the montate sequence, which shows the Ghostbusters as a sudden popular culture craze] Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, no job is too big, no fee is too big!
Old Servant: You Must Remember! Strong as the arrows Of Quing may be; though they will shatter Our Cities and destroy Our Nation, they shall Never Extinguish Zhao's Written Word. Today, I Shall Teach You the True Spirit of Our Culture!
