The way they control a population is by pointing at somebody else - whether they're gay, Mexican, Jewish, black - and saying, 'They are different than you. They're the reason you're in the shape you're in. You're not responsible.' And when they exonerate you through vilifying and demonizing someone else, they control you.
Interpretation
The quote discusses how leaders manipulate populations by creating scapegoats.
Guillermo Del Toro highlights a psychological tactic used by those in power to divert responsibility from the majority by vilifying minority groups. This manipulation not only fosters division and hatred among different social groups but also helps maintain control over the populous by aligning their unity against a common enemy rather than addressing the true issues at hand.
In practice
During a political rally, a speaker could quote Del Toro to emphasize the dangers of scapegoating.
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.
With most men, unbelief in one thing springs from blind belief in another.
Medicine is the keystone of the arch of socialism.
There has always been a strange dissonance between the public and the private in Nigeria.
To me the Bible is not God, but it is God's voice, and I do not hear it without awe
The whole of the 20th century has always put the car at the center. So by putting the pedestrian first, you create these livable places, I think, with more attraction and interest and character.
There is another form of temptation, even more fraught with danger. This is the disease of curiosity. It is this which drives us to try and discover the secrets of nature, those secrets which are beyond our understanding, which can avail us nothing and which man should not wish to learn.
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