You cannot dictate what people find funny, what people find attractive, or what people find scary. There is not a norm.
Interpretation
This quote highlights the subjectivity of human perception regarding humor, attraction, and fear.
Guillermo Del Toro emphasizes that individual preferences and reactions to humor, beauty, and fear are inherently subjective and cannot be regulated or controlled by societal norms. This understanding encourages acceptance of diverse opinions and experiences, reminding us that everyone perceives the world differently.
In practice
In a discussion about the nature of comedy, one could use this quote to illustrate how humor varies among individuals.
I don't try to sanction other people's joy in monsters. I mean, I think the fact is, humor, fantasy - you know, like fear, desire or laughter - create genres of their own: comedy, melodrama, or erotic films or horror films... The boundaries cannot be defined. It's to each his own.
As a director, I design every movie to be true to itself, and damn it if they like it, and damn it if they don't.
If you ask me, I alternate between truly bizarre, what you would call 'Hollywood' movies and truly bizarre, what you would call 'arthouse' movies.
But I think we are seeing a resurgence of the graphic ghost story like The Others, Devil's Backbone and The Sixth Sense. It is a return to more gothic atmospheric ghost storytelling.
The saddest journey in the world is the one that follows a precise itinerary. Then you're not a traveler. You're a f@@king tourist.
When you start with Super 8, you are everything. You're the DP, the sound man, the effects guy. And what I started understanding, by working for other people, is that the best type of director is someone who rose through the ranks.
It is useful that while mankind are imperfect there should be different opinions, so is it that there should be different experiments of living; that free scope should be given to varieties of character, short of injury to others.
A door that seems to stand open must be of a man's size, or it is not the door that providence means for him.
The time when there is nothing at all in your soul except a cry for help may be just that time when God can't give it: you are like the drowning man who can't be helped because he clutches and grabs. Perhaps your own reiterated cries deafen you to the voice you hoped to hear.
When I'm older I'll understand" said Lucy, " I am older and I don't think I want to understand", replied Edmund
Experience had taught me that innocence seldom utters outraged shrikes. Guilt does. Innocence is a mighty shield, and the man or woman covered by it, is much more likely to answer calmly: 'My life is blameless. Look into it, if you like, for you will find nothing.' That is the tone of innocence.
Bliss is a thing which is always there and is not something which comes and goes. That which comes and goes is a creation of the mind.
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