Time & Perspective Quote by Mercedes Ruehl

Ruehl isn’t philosophizing so much as describing the basic plot of how culture defends itself: novelty arrives, comfort panics, and “society” suddenly discovers principles it didn’t know it had. The line works because it frames backlash as reflex, not reason. “Historically” is the quiet tell; it implies we’ve run this scene before, which makes current anxieties feel less like moral emergency and more like reruns with new costumes.

The phrase “new and foreign” is doing double duty. It points to how difference gets coded as threat, but it also hints at a social trick: treating identities as imports rather than realities that have always existed but were pushed offstage. “Shakes up our comfortable views” is gently accusatory. Comfort isn’t neutral; it’s the privilege of not having to examine the stories we’ve been told about gender, desire, and what counts as “normal.”

Then Ruehl narrows the lens: “especially” when the issue is sexual identity, labeled “volatile.” That word is less about inherent chaos than about how quickly people’s feelings combust when the subject touches family, religion, masculinity, and the fear of being implicated. It also nods to the media ecosystem that thrives on heat: controversy sells, and “volatile” becomes a self-fulfilling descriptor.

As an actress, Ruehl’s subtext feels experiential: she’s seen how audiences embrace transgression onstage, then resist it offstage. The intent isn’t to scold individuals; it’s to name the pattern so it loses some of its power. When you can recognize the recoil as habit, you’re closer to choosing something else.