Yes, actually ever since I saw his films and tried to write about them, Sirk's been in everything I've done. Not Sirk himself, but what I've learned from his work.
Rainer Werner FassbinderRead
So certainly, if we can tell evil stories to make people sick, we can also tell good myths that make them well.
Interpretation
Stories can influence our emotions and well-being, just as negative narratives can harm us, positive narratives can heal and uplift.
Rainer Werner Fassbinder's quote reflects the profound impact of storytelling on human experience. Just as negative, harmful tales can disturb and sicken individuals, the power of positive and uplifting myths can inspire and restore. It underscores the responsibility of storytellers and artists to craft narratives that not only entertain but also promote healing and well-being amidst the chaos of life.
In practice
In a speech about mental health, one might cite this quote to illustrate the healing power of positive stories.
Yes, actually ever since I saw his films and tried to write about them, Sirk's been in everything I've done. Not Sirk himself, but what I've learned from his work.
I'd like to be for cinema what Shakespeare was for theatre, Marx for politics and Freud for psychology: someone after whom nothing is as it used to be.
I detest the idea that love between two persons can lead to salvation. All my life I have fought against this oppressive type of relationship. Instead, I believe in searching for a kind of love that somehow involves all of humanity.
It isn't easy to accept that suffering can also be beautiful... it's difficult. It's something you can only understand if you dig deeply into yourself.
The more real things get, the more like myths they become. There have always been myths, but the myths of earlier times were, Im convinced, bad ones, because they made people sick. So certainly, if we can tell evil stories to make people sick, we can also tell good myths that make them well.
Democracy is based upon the conviction that there are extraordinary possibilities in ordinary people.
The honest ratepayer and his healthy family have no doubt often mocked at the dome-like forehead of the philosopher, and laughed over the strange perspective of the landscape that lies beneath him. If they really knew who he was, they would tremble. For Chuang TsΗ spent his life in preaching the great creed of Inaction, and in pointing out the uselessness of all things.
I wake up like this, this sense that I've somehow been transported to an alternate universe where my life took a left instead of a right beacuse of some seeemingly insignificant yet cosmically crucial choice I've made, about a girl or a kiss or a date or a job or which Starbucks I went into...something.
Being a model to the world, eternal virtue will never falter in you, and you return to the boundless.
The envious die not once, but as oft as the envied win applause.
Being stuck in adolescence - that's a hell. 'Peter Pan' is a dystopia, and we forget that. Neverland is a bad place to be.
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