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.
The sun too penetrates into privies, but is not polluted by them.
The charm of history and its enigmatic lesson consist in the fact that, from age to age, nothing changes and yet everything is completely different.
Once you experience Third World poverty, you're really changed forever, if you're at all open to it, because we're all united in our common humanity. And we are so made as to feel something for people who are in pain. It's not possible to be human and to be unaffected by what you see in the third world.
Prayer joined to sacrifice constitutes the most powerful force in human history.
A box is more a coffin for the human spirit than an inspiration.
Die gefährlichste Weltanschauung ist die Weltanschauung derer, die die Welt nie angeschaut haben. (The most dangerous worldview is the worldview of those who have not viewed the world)
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