Mainstream Culture Quotes

• Look, when I started out, mainstream culture was Sinatra, Perry Como, Andy Williams, Sound of Music. There was no fitting into it then and of course, there's no fitting into it now.

  Bob Dylan

  Sound, Looks, Fitting

  "Bob Dylan Exclusive Interview: Reveals His Favorite Songwriters, Thoughts On His Own Cult Figure Status". Interview with Bill Flanagan, www.huffingtonpost.com. May 16, 2009.

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• Since the 1960s, mainstream media has searched out and co-opted the most authentic things it could find in youth culture, whether that was psychedelic culture, anti-war culture, blue jeans culture. Eventually heavy metal culture, rap culture, electronica - they'll look for it and then market it back to kids at the mall.

  Douglas Rushkoff

  War, Rap, Kids

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• The 'medium' is unaware of its attractiveness, that's all. Everyone loves comics. I've proven this to my own satisfaction by handing them out to acountants, insurance brokers, hairdressers, mothers of children, black belts, pop stars, taxi drivers, painters, lesbians, doctors etc. etc. The X-Files, Buffy, the Matrix, X-Men - mainstream culture is not what it once was when science fiction and comics fans huddled in cellars like Gnostic Christians dodging the Romans. We should come up into the light soon before we suffocate.

  Grant Morrison

  Christian, Mother, Stars

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• I have a conflicted relationship with musicals, because I think the music itself can be so horrendous. It's an industry that relies on appealing to a mainstream culture in order to survive.

  Colin Meloy

  Thinking, Order, Rely

  "The Decemberists' Colin Meloy". Interview with Larry Fitzmaurice, pitchfork.com. February 14, 2011.

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• I think [audiences are] more aware now of the contradictions in mainstream culture, the phony piety that permeates society, the inhumane hypocrisy.

  Paul Krassner

  Thinking, Hypocrisy, Contradiction

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• Toronto may be the only city where novels are integral to high art, the alternative scene and mainstream culture all at the same time.

  Stephen Marche

  Art, Cities, Alternatives

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• I like the idea that you would participate in mainstream culture, especially for young girls and young kids who are looking for an alternative. It's not that I'm superior, but I know that my heart is in it more than people who get into music for other reasons.

  Emily Haines

  Girl, Heart, Kids

  "Taking Measurements: An Interview with Metric". Interview With Devon Powers, www.popmatters.com. October 12, 2004.

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• What stands out to me in America was all the police vs. citizens turmoil. It's decades of bad policing, bad schooling, racism, bigotry and other factors finally spilling into mainstream culture. I would like to see America evolve on how the laws are enforced on the streets.

  Henry Rollins

  Law, America, Racism

  Source: eluxemagazine.com

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• A lot of what used to be known as gay culture - broadly speaking, homoeroticism and being camp - has been brought into mainstream culture. I think we should be moving to an era where it's just sex.

  Neil Tennant

  Sex, Moving, Gay

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• I'm not really interested in participating in mainstream culture. Participating in the mainstream music business is, to me, like getting involved in a racket. There's no way you can get involved in a racket and not someway be filthied by it.

  Steve Albini

  Way, Racket, Get Involved

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• Mainstream culture is like your mom: It's always a little late to catch on and gets easily confused by technology, but it means well.

  Chris Hardwick

  Mom, Confused, Mean

  "Chris Hardwick, the King of All Things Nerdist and Host of @Midnight, Drops 20Q Science". Interview with Eric Spitznagel, www.playboy.com. October 8, 2014.

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• I sometimes have the sense that I live my life as a writer with my nose pressed against the wide, shiny plate glass window of the"mainstream" culture. The world seems full of straight, large-circulation, slick periodicals which wouldn't think of reviewing my book and bookstores which will never order it.

  Jan Clausen

  Book, Thinking, Order

  Jan Clausen (1989). “Books & Life”

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• To make an absolutely gross generalization, I think a lot of people feel like if you're mixed, more often than not you're quote unquote white. So if you're mixed, you embrace the mainstream culture more than the African-American culture.

  Keegan-Michael Key

  Thinking, White, People

  "Key & Peele: 'That’s what Obama should say'". Interview with Willa Paskin, www.salon.com. October 7, 2012.

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• The poetry and transgression that was so much of surrealism's anarchic force has been recruited into mainstream culture. It has been made commonplace by television and magazine merchandising, by computer games and Internet visuals, by film and MTV, by the fashion shoot.

  Graham Joyce

  Fashion, Mtv, Games

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• In eras past, mainstream culture was blandly, blindly complacent, so underground music was angry and dissatisfied. But now, mainstream culture isn’t complacent, it’s stupid and angry; underground culture reacts by becoming smarter, more serene. That’s not wimpy—it’s powerful and productive.

  Michael Azerrad

  Powerful, Stupid, Past

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• Noise has taken the place of punk rock. People who play noise have no real aspirations to being part of the mainstream culture. Punk has been co-opted, and this subterranean noise music and the avant-garde folk scene have replaced it

  Thurston Moore

  Real, Taken, Play

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• Here the oppression of women is very subtle. If we take female circumcision, the excision of the clitoris, it is done physically in Egypt. But here it is done psychologically and by education. So even if women have the clitoris, the clitoris was banned; it was removed by Freudian theory and by the mainstream culture.

  Nawal El Saadawi

  Egypt, Female, Circumcision

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• I think I fish, in part, because it's an anti-social, bohemian business that, when gone about properly, puts you forever outside the mainstream culture without actually landing you in an institution.

  John Gierach

  Thinking, Fishing, Forever

  John Gierach (2001). “Death, Taxes, and Leaky Waders: A John Gierach Fly-Fishing Treasury”, p.303, Simon and Schuster

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• I’m glad mainstream culture is starting to catch up to where lesbian-feminism was 30 years ago.

  Alison Bechdel

  Years, Feminism, Starting

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• Rock in the mainstream culture has lost a lot of its mojo.

  Billy Corgan

  Rocks, Mojo, Lost

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