Quotes / The Man Is Sticking It to the Man

Advertising

CEO: With Sprint's new fair and flexible plans no one can tell me what to do. I can talk when and how I want. It's my little way of sticking it to The Man.
Underling: ...but you are The Man.
CEO: I know.
Underling: So you're... sticking it to yourself.
CEO: ...Maybe.

Film—Live-action

"Trouble is, you don't realize you're talking to two people here. As Charles Foster Kane, who owns 82,364 shares of Public Transit preferred—you see, I do have a general idea of my holdings— I sympathize with you. Charles Foster Kane is a scoundrel. His paper should be run out of town. A committee should be formed to boycott him. You may, if you can form such a committee, put me down for a contribution of $1000. On the other hand, I am the publisher of The Inquirer. As such, it is my duty - I'll let you in on a little secret, it is also my pleasure - to see to it that decent, hard working people of this city are not robbed blind by a group of money-mad pirates because, God help them, they have no one to look after their interests!"

—Kane, Citizen Kane

Simon: (talking about shirts) Now, you'll like these, you'll really "dig" them. They're "fab", and all the other pimply hyperboles.

George Harrison: I wouldn't be seen dead in them. They're dead grotty.

Simon: Grotty?

George: Yeah, grotesque.

Simon: (to secretary) Make a note of that word and give it to Susan. (to George) It's rather touching, really. his kid is trying to give me his utterly valueless opinion when I know that within a month, he'll be suffering from a violent inferiority complex and loss of status because he isn't wearing one of these nasty things. Of course they're grotty, you wretched nit! That's why they were designed. But that's what you'll want.

George: I won't.

Simon: You can be replaced, chicky-baby.

George: I don't care.

Simon: And that pose is out too, Sonny Jim. The new thing is to care passionately and be right wing.

— A Hard Day's Night

Brian: Look, you've got it all wrong! You don't need to follow me, You don't need to follow anybody! You've got to think for your selves! You're ALL individuals!
The Crowd: Yes! We're all individuals!
Brian: You're all different!
The Crowd: Yes, we ARE all different!
Man in crowd: I'm not...
The Crowd: Shh!

—Monty Python's Life of Brian

The Songwriter: I created so many of the things that you care about. The songs that give your life purpose and joy. When you were fifteen and rebelling, you were rebelling to my music. [starts playing "Smells Like Teen Spirit" on the piano] Uh-oh! That's one you know! That song was not written on a distorted guitar. Oh, no. I wrote it. Here, on piano, somewhere between a blow job and an omelet. There is no rebellion. There's only me earning a paycheck.

Sam: I don't believe you.

The Songwriter: Well, good! Because the real message was not meant for you. So it's better if you just smile, and you dance, and you enjoy the melody, because this ugly old man, me — I am the voice of your generation, your grandparents', your parents', and all the young people that follow you. […] Everything that you hoped for, that you dreamed about being a part of, is a fabrication. Your art, your writing, your culture is the shell of other men's ambitions, ambitions beyond what you will ever understand.

—Under the Silver Lake

Music

"Step right up folks
Anarchy for sale!
T-shirts only 10 dollars
Badges only 3.50
I nicked the design, never asked the band
I never listen to them either"

— "Anarchy for Sale", The Dead Kennedys

"Who's gonna con you into buying a television set and the revolution they sell?"

—"Powertrip", Monster Magnet

Welcome, my son, welcome to the machine
Where have you been?
It's alright, we know where you've been...
[...]
You bought a guitar to punish your ma
And you didn't like school, and you know you're nobody's fool
So welcome to the machine.

—"Welcome to the Machine", Pink Floyd

Excess ain't rebellion
You drinkin' what they're sellin'
Your self-destruction doesn't hurt them
Your chaos won't convert them
They're so happy to rebuild it
You'll never really kill it
Excess ain't rebellion
You drinkin' what they're sellin?

—"Rock 'N' Roll Lifestyle", Cake

All you know about me is what I've sold you, dumb fuck
I sold out long before you ever heard my name
I sold my soul to make a record, dipshit
And you bought one

So I've got some advice for you, little buddy
Before you point your finger you should know that I'm the man
If I'm the fuckin' man then you're the fuckin' man as well
So you can point that fuckin' finger up your ass.

—"Hooker with a Penis", tool

The music of rebellion
Makes you want to rage
But it's made by millionaires
Who are nearly twice your age.

—"The Sound of Muzak", Porcupine Tree

"Empty ya pockets, son,
they got you thinkin' that
What ya need is what they selling
Make you think that buying is rebelling."

—"No Shelter", Rage Against the Machine

Newspaper Comics

"The problem with rock n' roll is that the generation that created it is now the establishment. Rock pretends it's still rebellious with its video posturing, but who believes it? The stars are 45-year-old zillionaires or they endorse soft drinks! The 'revolution' is a capitalist industry! Give me a break!"

—Calvin and Hobbes

Video Games

"Capital has the ability to subsume all critiques into itself. Even those who would *critique* capital end up *reinforcing* it instead..."

—Joyce Messier, Disco Elysium

Web Original

Max Headroom was a stuttering head from the future or something, that became popular in America for advertising New Coke...Someone decided they should make a show about him, but what kind of a show do you make for a wise-cracking corporate shill? That's right, develop a high-concept cyberpunk drama with an anti-establishment theme! It was so mixed-up I think its main sponsors were Black Panther Shoe Polish Remover and George Orwell's Chipotle BBQ 'Tater Skins.

—Seanbaby, "The 5 Worst Decisions Ever Made by TV Executives (Twice)"

In a lot of ways the game industry has paralleled MTV. At first it was a counter-culture thing, and then it got bought and became more corporate. Back in 1983 I don't think anyone thought they'd see US army recruiter commercials wall-to-wall on MTV. And games like Call of Duty, there's so many damned army games.

—"The Life and Games of Jeremy Balustein"

Seriously, it is like Allen wrote a special episode where Al and Peggy get rich and they have to deal with those snooty upper class twits... For one it seems odd that Allen, who is almost a proud intellectual snob himself, is trying to write himself as the hero of the working man. But it all comes off as so weak and poorly written. Oh those rich snobs! All they eat are snails and caviar! Why can’t they eat a burger and watch the game?

—Miles Antwiler on Small Time Crooks

The Tom Friedman of rock and the rest of his band collaborated with Apple to strong-arm their new album into your iTunes library without your consent. You couldn’t even delete it! Apple had to send out specific instructions for how to wipe Songs of Innocence (God, that title) off your computer. The worst part was the way both Apple and U2 treated this, like it was some kind of noble gift to The People; in fact this was a $100 million marketing campaign. Yes, $100 million to turn U2’s socially conscious dad-rock into a piece of direct mail.

—Drew Magary

Shopping at chain stores is not punk. No matter how much you'd like to think so. Buying shit from Hot Topic, K-Mart and other huge chains selling 'punk' products is about the farthest thing from sticking it to the man as you can get. In fact, you're giving 'the man' your money, retard.

—We Are the Mainstream, "Punk: Attitude for Sale"

The one thing that Bowie cannot do as a rock star is attack the system that creates the rock and roll star. The one freedom the Starman cannot grant us is the freedom not to have to look to the stars.

—El Sandifer on "Star"

All corporate advertising has as its subtext the maintenance of the status quo, so when your movement becomes an advertising resource, no matter how loudly you insist otherwise, you’re not a threat to the status quo: you are the status quo.

—John Michael Greer, "The End of the Dream"

Web Video

"It's Breaking Bad-branded rock candy; it's a vaping pen shaped like a crackpipe hawked on QVC by Flava Flav; it's a gentrified neighborhood still trying to look street by putting a Boondocks mural next to the Panera Bread."

—Moviebob on Suicide Squad (2016)

"This game tells a paranoid, conspiracy theory story about the society-changing potential of marketing and PR. I wonder if they're aware of the irony."

— George Weidman on Watch_Dogs gameplay trailer

As a communist, it must really hurt
That your face has been cheapened, weakened, besmirched,
Being plastered on posters, coasters and shirts,
Making capitalists rich off of you on merch!

— Guy Fawkes to Che Guevara, Epic Rap Battles of History

Western Animation

"As far as I can make out, 'edgy' occurs when middle-brow, middle-aged profiteers are looking to suck the energy — not to mention the spending money — out of the "youth culture." So they come up with this fake concept of seeming to be dangerous when every move they make is the result of market research and a corporate master plan."

— Daria

"You know no two people are like each other
So don't be a lookalike copying another
Unless of course you're copying me
'Cause that gives you individuality!"

—"You're Fabulous" - Phineas and Ferb

"How rebellious!... in a conformist sort of way."

—Lisa Simpson, The Simpsons

"Hollywood may be run by big corporations trying to squash people, but they make movies about people standing up to big corporations trying to squash them and winning."

—FBI Agent, The Simpsons

Real Life

"When people are free to do as they please, they usually imitate each other."

—Eric Hoffer

To instill into the Established Order the complacent portrayal of its drawbacks has nowadays become a paradoxical but incontrovertible means of exalting it.

— Roland Barthes, Mythologies

A useful heuristic: Be very suspicious of anyone who is firmly entrenched in power but rails against "elites."

—Dan Gardner

Commercial fantasies of rebellion, liberation, and outright "revolution" against the stultifying demands of mass society are commonplace almost to the point of invisibility in advertising, movies, and television programming... our televisual marketplace is a 24-hour carnival, a showplace of transgression and inversion of values, of humiliated patriarchs and shocked puritans, of screaming guitars and concupiscent youth, of fashions that are uniformly defiant, of cars that violate convention and shoes that let us be us.

—Thomas Frank, The Conquest of Cool

"We're all the Establishment."

— John Cassavetes

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