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Representation Quotes

Browse 636 quotes about Representation.

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Representation Quotes

“Where does all that leave the cinema? First, we must acknowledge that a film is a photograph of a drama, and that skilful use of the camera can never excuse the paltriness, sentimentality or weakness of the action. What I have said about modernism and its search for an art that will perpetuate the ethical vision, applies as much to the cinema as it does to the other arts. There are directors who have presented dramas that can be compared with the great modern works for the stage – Bergman, for instance, in Wild Strawberries, where an original situation, conveyed through masterly dialogue, is enhanced by dream sequences and flashbacks of a kind that can be managed successfully only through the skilful cutting that is the essential ingredient in cinematic art. Secondly, however, we must remember the distinction between fantasy and imagination, and the inherent tendency of the camera to realise what it shows – to present not a world of imagination, but a substitute reality. This is never more obvious than in the case of sex and violence, and is the root cause of the fact that these now dominate the cine screen, and would dominate television too, were it not for the censor. With the aid of the camera you can realise violence or the sexual act completely, and so minister to the fantasy which has sex or violence as its focus. If fantasy breaks through the tissue of imagination, then the dramatic thought is scattered, and the imaginative emotions along with it: drama then sinks into the background, and all that we have is obscenity – human flesh without the soul. Hence many people are quickly satiated by cinematic representations, and at the same time deeply disturbed and absorbed by features (violence in particular) which, from the dramatic point of view, have little intrinsic meaning. Imagination withers when realisation blooms, and the ethical view of our condition withers along with it. It is a significant fact that most cinema-goers are disposed to see their favourite films only a few times, and that even people whose interest is not in the drama but in the blood, screams, and orgasms have no great interest in revisiting the last occasion of excitement, and will proceed joylessly to the next one without raising the question of the value of what they watch. This contrasts with every other kind of dramatic art – theatre, novel, opera, dramatic poem – in which the perception of beauty brings with it a desire constantly to return to the source, to re-enact in our emotions a drama which never loses its point for us, since it touches the question why we are here.”

ArtImaginationFantasyCinemaRepresentation
Book:An Intelligent Person's Guide to Modern Culture
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“Even in school, children get subtle messages about whose stories matter. Literature classes routinely feature literature written by women and men of color as exceptional (one among many white male writers) or available for study in some schools as elective classes only. A recent global review found that gender bias is also "rife in textbooks." The result of pedagogical choices like these shape self-esteem, empathy, and understanding. They also shape resentment, confusion, and anger.”

SchoolLiteratureRaceBooksGenderRepresentation
Book:Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women's Anger
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“The right-wing culture-war mentality is a political distraction used by the right-wing talking heads to manipulate their voters. But if you wanna truly stop a right-wing ideology you must replace it with a better ideology! Oppressing an ideology makes it stronger. But give people a better option and you can replace it permanently. You don't want respect! You want representation! ...Asking for respect will never get you any respect at all. But seeking and demanding representation will give you self-respect and the true respect you deserve.”

RespectIdeologyProgressiveRepresentationGopProgress QuotesMagaCulture WarDnc
Author:Anonymous @AnonymousLyWise
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“My Pronoun is People (Inclusivity Sonnet, 1266) My pronoun is people, I'm divergent, yet invincible. I am straight, I am queer; I am civilian, I am seer. Spirit of life, I - am universal! Call me disabled or differently able, Call me collective or individual. Fleshly forms I've got plenty, All run by same love and liberty - Culture supreme is inclusion. Each heart is a shelter for another, Each life is sanctuary for another. Blasting all traditions of divide into cinders with knowledge-dynamite, we shall emerge as each other's keeper. You ask, what am I - I say, I am human, Better yet, I'm human's idea of a human. I am but the human absolute - morally unbending 'n divinely cute - ever evolving testament to expansion.”

AcceptanceDiversityEqualityInclusionRepresentationAdvaitaEquityDisabledInclusiveInclusivity
Book:Yaralardan Yangın Doğar: Explorers of Night are Emperors of Dawn
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“My pronoun is people, I'm divergent, yet invincible. I am straight, I am queer; I am civilian, I am seer. Spirit of life, I - am universal! Call me disabled or differently able, Call me collective or individual. Fleshly forms I've got plenty, All run by same love and liberty - Culture supreme is inclusion.”

DiversityEqualityDisabilityInclusionRepresentationDisabledInclusiveNeurodiversityInclusivityDisability Awareness
Book:Yaralardan Yangın Doğar: Explorers of Night are Emperors of Dawn
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“It may sound like I am making too much out of all this, but the only way you can allow a kid to truly dream is if you expand their idea of what is currently possible. A kid who has nothing, sees nothing, and is taught nothing can only dream of breakfast. They can only hope to get to the next moment successfully. I want more than that for my kids...just like my mom wanted more than that for me. And I want them to want more than that too.”

ChildrenKidsRaceDreamsDiversityPotentialRepresentation
Book:The Awkward Thoughts of W. Kamau Bell: Tales of a 6' 4", African American, Heterosexual, Cisgender, Left-Leaning, Asthmatic, Black and Proud Blerd, Mama's Boy, Dad, and Stand-Up Comedian
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“Why I am Passionate and Dedicated 1000% to producing and bringing my books Loving Summer, Bitter Frost, and other book series to the Screen is because these are the very books that I was cyber-bullied on. When confronted by bullies, you don't shy away, but you Fight Back. Many people have not read the books, but believe fake news and damaging slanders against them and me as a person because it was a marketing strategy used to sell my books' rival books. By bringing these very books to the screen, people can see how different my books are to theirs. Also, most of all, it is pretty darn fun and fierce for me, as a female Asian writer, director, and producer to bring these fan favorite books to screen.”

FilmDiversityBullyingFierceRepresentationAdaptationStrong WomanAsian American
Book:Loving Summer
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“There should be no single representation in the autism world. Think about this if someone got up on stage and talked about having “non-autistic syndrome” and made the assumption every one with this syndrome is the same we would be in big trouble. That applies to autism as well - it isn't one condition, there are profile differences between Autism and AS and all autism "fruits salads" are different. That is how diverse autism is.”

DiversityRepresentationAutism SpectrumAspergers SyndromeAutism PoliticsDonna Williams
Book:Living Through the Haze
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“Whose life matters to you? Who do you speak for? Who do you defend? How large is your vision of the world? How much pain and destruction of others is too much for you to stand? We all must ask ourselves those questions right now. Ask and ponder and ask again. We all must ask each other these questions. And the answers will lead us to what we must do-- individually and collectively, small and large actions-- what we must do.”

ActionPainVisionDestructionRepresentationQuestionsSoul SearchingDefendWhose Life Matters
Author:Shellen Lubin
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“It’s natural that we should fear and be suspicious of representations of us by those who are not like us. Equally rational is the assumption that those who are like us will at least take care with their depictions, and will be motivated by love and intimate knowledge instead of prejudice and phobia. In the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, writing by women, and by oppressed minorities of all kinds, has wondrously expanded the literary landscape, ennobling griefs that had, historically, either passed unnoticed or been brutally suppressed and caricatured. We’re eager to speak for ourselves. But in our justified desire to level or even obliterate the old power structures—to reclaim our agency when it comes to the representation of selves—we can, sometimes, forget the mystery that lies at the heart of all selfhood. Of what a self may contain that is both unseen and ultimately unknowable. Of what invisible griefs we might share, over and above our many manifest and significant differences. We also forget what writers are: people with voices in our heads and a great deal of inappropriate curiosity about the lives of others.”

FictionEmpathyCuriosityRepresentationNovelsCultural AppropriationFascinated To Presume
Author:Zadie Smith
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“I, along with generations of women readers, have wondered: How could a man know so much of us? But the mystery is not so mysterious. Husbands know a great deal about wives, after all, and wives about husbands. Lovers know each other. Brothers know a lot about sisters and vice versa. Muslims and Christians and Jews know one another, or think they do. Our social and personal lives are a process of continual fictionalization, as we internalize the other-we-are-not, dramatize them, imagine them, speak for them and through them. The accuracy of this fictionalization is never guaranteed, but without an ability to at least guess at what the other might be thinking, we could have no social lives at all. One of the things fiction did is make this process explicit—visible. All storytelling is the invitation to enter a parallel space, a hypothetical arena, in which you have imagined access to whatever is not you. And if fiction had a belief about itself, it was that fiction had empathy in its DNA, that it was the product of compassion.”

FictionEmpathyRepresentationNovelsCultural AppropriationFascinated To Presume
Author:Zadie Smith
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“English: "Not voting means choosing totality; voting for an empty envelope means choosing democracy, but none of the candidates adequately represent your views." Česky: „Nevolit znamená volit totalitu; volit prázdnou obálku znamená volit demokracii, ale žádný z kandidátů dostatečně nereprezentuje tvé názory.”

PoliticsDecisionOpinionDemocracyRepresentationPolitical ScienceTotalitarianismElectionsAuthoritarianismRepresentative Democracy
Author:Sebastián Wortys
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“People would come up to me on the street and say, 'I just want to thank you for being so brave!' Why am I so fucking brave? I'm not going off to fight in a war! I'm not running into a burning building to save kittens! What are people going on about? I'm brave because I'm just ME?? Because I dare to exist as a plus-size woman in Hollywood?...They wanted me to represent for women of a different body type, and the way they kept going on about being 'brave' made me wonder—gosh, how many negative comments were these women getting about their bodies in their daily life? What was the negative commentary running in their own minds?”

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Book:Rebel Rising
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“No matter the response though, I still and will always believe that representation of all kinds is essential. My work-the memoirs, anthologies, novels, television pilots, magazine articles-is just one long attempt to make sure that people from different backgrounds are seen and heard, especially people who are in some practical way challenging the status quo, and offering different interpretations of what it means to be a human being right now. What it means to be a feminist, for example, what it means to be a man in a culture that demands toxic masculinity. What it means to spend your days challenging the racism coded into artificial intelligence, to be pansexual and polyamorous, to be the third generation in your family to struggle with schizophrenia, to embark on the arduous search for your identity as a transracial adoptee. To have a family member in prison.”

SexRaceEqualityGenderRepresentation
Book:Well-Read Black Girl: Finding Our Stories, Discovering Ourselves
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“I can’t believe you would represent a killer like that Jake. I thought you were one of us. xxx ‘Gotta have a lawyer, Helen. You can’t put the boy in the gas chamber if he doesn’t have a lawyer. Surely, you understand.’ xxx ‘...I can’t imagine doing that for a living, representing killers and child rapists and such.’ ‘How often do you read the Constitution?’ ‘...the Constitution, as interpreted by the Supreme Court, says that a person accused of a serious crime must have a lawyer. And that’s the law of the land.”

LawCrimeConstitutionCourtLawyerRepresentationDeath PenaltyCourtroomJohn Grisham
Book:A Time for Mercy
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“Without acknowledging the variety of the human experience, all you get is the perspective of majority representation, which is mostly white and male and straight and able-bodied and cisgender and "traditionally" attractive. None of those things are inherently negative... but neither are their alternatives. So, all deserve some spotlight.”

RacismRepresentationIntersectionalityAbleismCommunity Dynamics
Book:Love's Not Color Blind: Race and Representation in Polyamorous and Other Alternative Communities
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“Neither was Amber an “everywoman.” She was a Hollywood celebrity with money, an armored truck and driver, a revolving door of lawyers, PR wizards, and media connections at the ready. Her existence was totally alien from the day-to-day lives of most domestic-violence victims. This doesn’t mean she couldn’t also be a victim of abuse—but she wasn’t a stand-in for other survivors. Society tends to use celebrities as vessels to carry every social examination, every social problem, every social ill. But celebrities aren’t the norm they aren’t representative of anything except celebrity. Amber said time and time again that she chose to speak up about Johnny’s abuse for those who don’t have a voice. But Amber hadn’t assumed a central role in the #MeToo movement on her own; she was aided and encouraged by powerful institutions like the ACLU and the Washington Post, which viewed her as an apt representative for the latest cause célèbre, betraying their own detachment from everyday victims. Throughout the trial and its aftermath, many sectors of the media held the line on this narrative, trumpeting Amber as a martyr for the movement and selling her experience as exemplary and relatable. In their analyses of the trial as a systemic failure and “the death of #MeToo,” they failed to see their own complicity in constructing a myopic, unrelatable notion of social justice.”

MediaPrivilegeRepresentationDomestic AbuseTrialJohnny DeppAmber HeardDepp V HeardAclu
Book:Hollywood Vampires: Johnny Depp, Amber Heard, and the Celebrity Exploitation Machine
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“And I tried to remember any case in the course of my reading where two women are represented as friends. (...) almost without exception they are shown in their relation to men. (...) [women in fiction were] not only seen by the other sex, but seen only in relation to the other sex. And how small a part of a woman's life is that”

WomenFeminismRepresentationPatriarchyFemale FriendshipFemale BondingWomen Being Friends
Book:A Room of One’s Own
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“This book does not represent autism, and neither I nor Cassie represent autistic people. We are simply individual voices in a choir of millions of amazing neurodivergent people, all with our own experiences, or own ways of seeing the world, our own ways of existing. I cannot speak for anyone but myself, and I would not want to try. So, whether you enjoyed this book or not, whether you see yourself represented in this story or not, I urge you to seek out other autistic voices. We are beautiful, we are unique, and we are legion.”

AutismRepresentationAutisticNeurodivergentOwn VoicesOwnvoicesAcknowledgments
Book:Cassandra in Reverse
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“Any democratically elected government that listens more to its campaign financiers than its citizens, takes the demands of financial lenders sine qua non and those of its impoverished citizenry non exitus, is a failed government, corrupt and incompetent. It's not a government for the people and by the people, it is a government by the Whores for power!”

LeadershipDemocracyCongressSenateRepresentationParliamentGovernanceThe PeopleWhores For Power
Author:Njau Kihia
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“If society is used to not seeing disabled people in stories, society becomes used to not seeing disabled people in real life. If society is used to not seeing disabled people in real life, society will continue to build a world that makes it exceedingly difficult for disabled people to participate in said world, thus perpetuating the problem.”

DisabilityRepresentationAbleismDisableded
Book:Disfigured: On Fairy Tales, Disability, and Making Space
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“Nie ma postulatu, by każdy tekst odhaczył określoną liczbę okienek z listy „reprezentacja mniejszości”, z czego uwielbiają szydzić ci, którzy empatii nie widzieli nawet w słowniku, bo raz natknęli się na termin „polityczna poprawność” i nie szukali już jakichkolwiek innych. Reprezentacja nie jest obowiązkowa, ale jest potrzebna i pożyteczna. Marzy nam się literatura, która nie wyklucza z powodu arbitralnych cech. Albo inaczej: literatura, która jest pisana z empatią i namysłem, sięgająca po to, co jeszcze nieograne i pomijane, pokazująca coś, co widujemy rzadko, a czego potrzebę odczuwamy głęboko. Bo jeśli nawet gatunek, w którym może istnieć wszystko, udaje, że nie istnieją osoby LGBTQ+, to czy gdziekolwiek jest dla nas miejsce?”

LgbtqRepresentationQueer Representation
Book:Tęczowe i fantastyczne: antologia queerowej fantastyki
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“However, one might ask why you decided to veer from your usual course and make every element so simple---relatively speaking." Elijah had been anticipating some question like this. "You asked me to show myself on a plate. Sometimes things that appear simple are actually quite complex. And sometimes the most complex-seeming things truly have little substance. On occasion, the ingredients must speak for themselves," he replied, feeling for all the world like whatever happened later, he'd done himself proud.”

RepresentationTrue To Oneself
Book:My Fine Fellow
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“I've had my heart broken too many times to think that visibility means everything. I don't think it changes who steps up and who stands back. [...] For some people visibility is about saving a life, and for other people it's about making things more comfortable. But again my dears, it's not about comfort. Safety, yes please. But comfort, comfort is overrated. As far as I'm concerned, life is about being alive and being connected to our fellow creatures. Full stop. And you're generation is making it worse with your serious faces and safe spaces and goddamn trigger warnings... Hello my darlings, loosen up! Live a little. Such a dick. Tell a joke. Fall in love. Show up to start trouble when it's necessary and don't whine when the world doesn't hold your hand.”

RepresentationVisibilityQueer PoliticsQueer Youth
Book:Sasha Masha
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