"However, ironically, I was baptized Presbyterian, and went to a Quaker school for twelve years"
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De Palma slips this offhand biographical detail like a punchline, and it lands because it sounds like an origin story for contradiction. “However, ironically” isn’t just throat-clearing; it’s a signal that identity, for him, is already a kind of edit. Baptized Presbyterian (a marker you don’t choose) then funneled into twelve years of Quaker schooling (a discipline you endure, absorb, and resist): the line stages the tension between imposed script and lived experience. It’s a neat, almost cinematic compression of how a person gets wired to notice systems, rules, surveillance, and the quiet violence of institutions.
The Quaker angle matters. Quaker schools sell calm: reflection, restraint, moral seriousness. De Palma’s movies are often the opposite in temperature but not in method. They’re obsessed with what happens when decorum meets desire, when respectable surfaces hide coercion. That’s the subtext: a childhood trained to value conscience and control can produce an adult artist fascinated by transgression and the mechanics of looking. Quaker culture also carries an implication of watchfulness and self-scrutiny; De Palma turns that inward gaze outward, making the camera a moral test and a weapon.
The phrasing “ironically” suggests he’s not testifying so much as diagnosing. Religion here is less theology than mood: a double inheritance of propriety and skepticism. In one compact sentence, De Palma frames himself as someone formed by seriousness, then liberated by seeing its seams. That’s practically a mission statement for a filmmaker who made career out of making the seams show.
The Quaker angle matters. Quaker schools sell calm: reflection, restraint, moral seriousness. De Palma’s movies are often the opposite in temperature but not in method. They’re obsessed with what happens when decorum meets desire, when respectable surfaces hide coercion. That’s the subtext: a childhood trained to value conscience and control can produce an adult artist fascinated by transgression and the mechanics of looking. Quaker culture also carries an implication of watchfulness and self-scrutiny; De Palma turns that inward gaze outward, making the camera a moral test and a weapon.
The phrasing “ironically” suggests he’s not testifying so much as diagnosing. Religion here is less theology than mood: a double inheritance of propriety and skepticism. In one compact sentence, De Palma frames himself as someone formed by seriousness, then liberated by seeing its seams. That’s practically a mission statement for a filmmaker who made career out of making the seams show.
Quote Details
| Topic | Faith |
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