“It’s a curse of our culture, this addiction to smartness and knowingness. It’s not just Tarantino. Look at MTV. Look at Spy magazine. Look at the ads in The Sunday Times Magazine. What’s so great about being so knowing, so smug, so cocky? Why do we want to be cool and ironic? Why are we so afraid of emotions? It’s an American disease. Our emotions can help us out of traps. Emotions are the way of truth. We need works of art that defeat our intellectual and emotional habits, that force us to see and feel freshly. We need an education in emotion. That’s why we have artists. They can be our teacher, if we are willing to let them.”

(Ray Carney, “Pulp Affliction: The Sorry State of Contemporary Film,” p. 49 in The Baffler #8, 1996)