— Northern Exposure
Northern Exposure on movies
— Northern Exposure
Stan Rizzo, Mad Men‘s art director extraordinaire. One of the few characters in the series to chill out over time, and to develop a healthy attitude towards their job as ‘a creative’ in the world of advertising.
A quick snippet from a full length essay written in 1989 on the short-lived television series, Max Headroom:
“The utterly nihilistic world view of both the people in power and the ‘man-in-the-street’ in the U.S. post-capitalist society — a society of rampant Reaganites, supply-side economics, and wheezing rapist-ministers from the PTL Club — has produced one of the most cynical national moods of the past hundred years. And this society finds its reflection in Max Headroom.”
— (via CCCCatching the Wave by Erik MacDonald)
Adelaide: There’s no such thing as forever. Don’t you know that, darling? The voice fades. The memory fades. Things go in and out of fashion. Time goes on, and all of us, eventually, are forgotten.
Emily: …I want to be famous… I write and write poem after poem, and then I stick it in a drawer, and it just sits there in the dark, where no light shines. I mean, that isn’t enough.
Adelaide: Is it?
Emily: Don’t they need to be seen? Don’t I need to be… seen?
Adelaide: I don’t know. If you’re seen, then you’re exposed. Everything that’s exposed, well, it goes stale… The critics, they’ll put you on top for a minute, but then they’ll drag you down.
Emily: Well, who cares what they say? Who cares what people think.
Adelaide: Exactly. Might as well stay in a room by yourself with no one watching. …What is it that you really want? What is the deeper yearning you have? Beneath all of this nonsense about fame, what is it that you crave? You crave meaning. You crave beauty. You crave love.
— Dickinson (S2: E6)
Frederick: Do you feel like you can write again?
Emily: No. It’s an editor. I gave my poem to him. And now it’s like he holds my life in his hands. Like I’m the daisy, and he’s the sun, and without the warmth of his approval, I can’t grow.
Frederick: Opinion is a flitting thing. It’s a hideous distraction from the beauty of your craft.
Emily: Okay. Then maybe I shouldn’t try to have an audience at all. Maybe fame is…dangerous. I mean, I gave one poem to one man and now I have writer’s block.
Frederick: The audience is irrelevant. The work itself is the gift, not the praise for it. Understand that and you’ll understand true mastery.
Emily: You’re right. I know you’re right, but how do I do it?
Frederick: It’s simple. Refuse to be the daisy, and start being the sun.
— Dickinson (S2: E4)
Related: Emily Dickinson on fame as a fickle food, and as a bee