When I first read 'On the Road,' it helped me figure out how to live against the grain. Now I wonder how to be subversive when the subversive has become mainstream.
A whole generation of veteran composers has never taken a stand or provided an example and has produced in the music academies generations of docile workers for the music industry. What can you expect from downtrodden workers who see music as a type of profession, like stenography, and not an act of creation that by its nature is subversive?
The Internet carries the flag of being subversive and possibly rebellious and chaotic, nihilistic.
In the early '60s, it was still a fairly subversive thing, though, to say that you should take a painting, cut it, set it on fire, step on it, hammer nails into it.
Art is maybe a subversive activity. There is a certain rebellion when you are an artist at heart, even if only in the art of living.
That's the privilege of being a grandparent - they can indulge the children while parents have to be the bad guy. Grandparents can also be subversive and naughty with them.
Producers are men who will keep their heads in the noisy presence of writers and directors and not be carried away by art in any of its subversive guises. Their task is to guard against the unusual. They are the trusted loyalists of cliche.
I think the feeling was that 'Venture Brothers' really has something to sell in terms of a feature. 'Aqua Teen' is an element minute cartoon, and its very subversive and non sequitur and weird. We were writing the one show where we were constantly like, 'God, I wish we had another hour to tell this story.' It seemed like a natural fit.
Comedy is inherently subversive because it turns the normal reality on its head. The art form is all about these questions and contradictions. In comedy, we're dealing with language that we all understand, but words can have a dozen other things around them that alter or affect meaning.
I knew from reading about Sarah Grimke that she'd been given a handmaid to be her personal slave and that her name was Hetty. The only other fact I knew about her was that Sarah taught her to read: They conspired in a very subversive way, by locking the door and screening the keyhole.
'Wonder Showzen' is one of my favorite shows of all time. When I first saw it, I thought it was so funny and new and original and edgy and insane and subversive. I didn't know comedy could do that. It redefined what I thought you could do with a TV show.
