I Had A Random Thought...

[Ben X]

If you say that a work is pretentious, you're saying that it's pretending to greater meaning or importance than it is, which is an assessment that can only really be made if you know the work intimately... which virtually no one who uses "pretentious" ever does.

 

I do!

[Twig]

(For the record, yeah, it was a bit. Ben is the most pedantic person I've ever met (this is not a compliment, Ben, you're a monster), so I at least trust him to use it correctly! Or at least to admit fault if he doesn't.)

 

But yep everything you said is exactly how I feel, but more eloquently stated. It's the most frustrating misuse of language to me. It actually literally makes me angry to see it misused. I can't stand it.

 

This is, to be clear, a personal fault. I know I should just get over it. But I find it incredibly dismissive at the best of times, and outright insulting at the worst. ):

[SuperBiasedMan]

Is there a good solid word that just means "this work was too complex for me to fully comprehend it" as a non derogative alternative? I tend to just say "I didn't really get/understand X" but I still feel like that partially implies I'm blaming it when really I could be missing a lot of the necessary cues.

[Gormongous]

Is there a good solid word that just means "this work was too complex for me to fully comprehend it" as a non derogative alternative? I tend to just say "I didn't really get/understand X" but I still feel like that partially implies I'm blaming it when really I could be missing a lot of the necessary cues.

 

Like I said, I think calling something a "difficult" work (if you want to lean towards less pejorative) or an "obscure" work (if you want to lean towards more) is not dismissive or disingenuous in the ways that "pretentious" is. I will readily concede that Neon Genesis Evangelion is a difficult or even obscure work. I don't think it's pretentious, though, because the incredible breadth and depth in its several thematic motifs mean to me that, if it's pretending to complexity or significance, then I don't know a work of media that isn't.

 

I do!

 

I didn't forget you, Ben. That's why I said "virtually." Technically correct, the best kind of correct!

 

Also, I don't think I've ever actually seen you say "pretentious" on the forums, and you've had plenty of chance to do so during your FPS playthrough, so...

[dibs]

Nevermind

[SuperBiasedMan]

Well yeah I guess "difficult" is as good as it gets, thought it can imply the same thing as a "difficult child". I also tend to assume obscure means little known, I rarely hear it used to mean the meaning or intent was obscured.

[Ben X]

Also, I don't think I've ever actually seen you say "pretentious" on the forums, and you've had plenty of chance to do so during your FPS playthrough, so...

 

I don't know if the games I've played so far have lent themselves to fair or disingenuous use of "pretentious"... But yeah, I don't deem it appropriate very often!

[dibs]

I don't know if the games I've played so far have lent themselves to fair or disingenuous use of "pretentious"... But yeah, I don't deem it appropriate very often!

 

I have to wonder if that post is portentous though!

[Patrick R]

I don't understand the reasoning that "Well you ultimately can't know what an art project was trying to do unless you are the artist, so you can't ever use the word pretentious!" One must infer things all the time when criticizing works of art, and if authorial intent isn't your guiding principle then it doesn't even matter. If it feels like a work is trying to bite off more than it can chew, than pretentious is a word that describes that.

 

It's not the be-all end-all, it's not so strong a word that you don't have to back it up. But pretentious is a word that has uses and if it comes up a lot that is probably because a lot of art is pretentious. And if it's used wrong a lot that probably means that human beings often don't say what they mean in simple and clear terms because they think that hiding behind vaguer big words in their statements makes them sound smarter. IF ONLY THERE WAS A WORD I WAS ALLOWED TO USE TO DESCRIBE THIS INSTINCT.

[Ben X]

I'm not sure I'd define "pretentious" as something having bitten off more than it can chew (which I would take to mean something that tackles a subject but doesn't have the skill or time or whatever to tackle it well). I think to fairly describe something as pretentious, you need to decide what it has pretensions towards being or doing and why it is not that thing. I think "intimate knowledge" is a bit much, but you should certainly know the thing well enough to justify the latter point. I think one issue with people using it incorrectly is that they will look at something like Flower or The Forest and call it pretentious simply because it is a video game with pretensions to being art, which they do not believe is possible.

[Zeusthecat]

So if you mistakenly call a thing pretentious that does not actually have pretensions towards being or doing a thing that you perceive it is trying to be or do, does that make you pretentious? Can you only not be pretentious when you call something pretentious if it is indeed pretentious?

[Patrick R]

I'm not sure I'd define "pretentious" as something having bitten off more than it can chew (which I would take to mean something that tackles a subject but doesn't have the skill or time or whatever to tackle it well). I think to fairly describe something as pretentious, you need to decide what it has pretensions towards being or doing and why it is not that thing. I think "intimate knowledge" is a bit much, but you should certainly know the thing well enough to justify the latter point. 

 

It has pretensions towards tackling a Big Important Subject. It does not do that thing because it doesn't have the skill or time or whatever to tackle it properly.

 

 

I think one issue with people using it incorrectly is that they will look at something like Flower or The Forest and call it pretentious simply because it is a video game with pretensions to being art, which they do not believe is possible.

 

Yes, dumb people say dumb things often. That doesn't mean we should ban any words they use to say them.

[Twig]

I don't understand the reasoning that "Well you ultimately can't know what an art project was trying to do unless you are the artist, so you can't ever use the word pretentious!"

I don't think anyone said that.

 

It's just that people throw that word around when they're unwilling to actually engage. You can't (I mean, you can, but you shouldn't) just dismiss something in its entirety just because you don't immediately grasp everything it's doing. That's some real dismissive bullshit. And that's how the vast majority of people use that word.

 

I would also agree with what Ben said. "Biting off more than you can chew" is aspiring to be greater than you actually managed. Pretentiousness is more like... thinking you're greater than you've earned the right to be. It's not so simple or cut and dry as that, but there is some distinction between the two. And you can't really accuse a work of art of the latter (or the former, really) without even giving it a chance in the first place. And giving it a chance means more than just doing a surface reading.

 

People loooove to call Braid pretentious, but so very very very few of those people actually bother to even TRY to understand what Braid is saying. Whether or not it succeeds in its goal, or earns the right to present itself in that manner... people shouldn't just dismiss it because they're unwilling to engage.

[Ben X]

@Zeus

 

Well, if you call something pretentious that is not pretentious, what are you having pretensions towards being and why are you not that thing?

[Badfinger]

I don't have the foresight to be pretentious.

 

I'm just tentious, mostly.

[Ben X]

It has pretensions towards tackling a Big Important Subject. It does not do that thing because it doesn't have the skill or time or whatever to tackle it properly.

 

 

Yes, dumb people say dumb things often. That doesn't mean we should ban any words they use to say them.

 

Everyone's posting pretty fast here, but:

 

just because it didn't tackle it properly, doesn't mean it didn't tackle it.

 

And to be clear, I don't think we should ban words either, that was a joke(?) Twig was doing.

[Twig]

(Yes I am not being serious about banning the word. I just want people to use it correctly.)

[Patrick R]

Everyone's posting pretty fast here, but:

 

just because it didn't tackle it properly, doesn't mean it didn't tackle it.

 

 I guess this is where we disagree then. I think if an artist doesn't take the time and thought to address something properly than it is effectively the same thing as not addressing it at all.

 

EDIT: And I think the argument that one must have "intimate knowledge of a work" (which I take to mean actual cited fact as to what the author was intending [and I think it's worth questioning if that is even actually objectively possible], and I understand not everyone is advocating) is effectively banning from popular discourse.

[Gormongous]

I don't understand the reasoning that "Well you ultimately can't know what an art project was trying to do unless you are the artist, so you can't ever use the word pretentious!" One must infer things all the time when criticizing works of art, and if authorial intent isn't your guiding principle then it doesn't even matter. If it feels like a work is trying to bite off more than it can chew, than pretentious is a word that describes that.

 

It's not the be-all end-all, it's not so strong a word that you don't have to back it up. But pretentious is a word that has uses and if it comes up a lot that is probably because a lot of art is pretentious. And if it's used wrong a lot that probably means that human beings often don't say what they mean in simple and clear terms because they think that hiding behind vaguer big words in their statements makes them sound smarter. IF ONLY THERE WAS A WORD I WAS ALLOWED TO USE TO DESCRIBE THIS INSTINCT.

 

I'm not making an argument from authorial intent, I'm making an article from basic familiarity with the work. Maybe you run in different circles of the internet, but I almost never hear "pretentious" used in the context of "I watched the entirety of this series and its themes were shallow despite being presented as deep." I almost always hear it in the context of "I started watching this series, but it used big words or talked about religion too much or had a really intricate visual style, so I quit." Almost universally, it's not a critique, it's a thought-terminating cliche that sounds like a critique.

 

Pretension, in its commonly identified form, seems to condemn a work's divergence from the accepted potentials of a genre or medium, regardless of what success it meets via that divergence. It implicitly asserts that there are limits to the artistic achievement of a given genre or medium, easily identifiable to the audience, and that transgressing them automatically excludes a work from serious critical consideration. It almost seems classist, in a way, like... I don't know, list off five works that are commonly accepted as "pretentious" and, at worst, you'll be giving me five works that are better and more interesting than the latest Transformers or Hunger Games movies, which have no pretensions whatsoever.

 

 

EDIT: Wow. Really, doing it incompletely is the same as not doing it at all? What about the holistic experience of the work, which usually uses some motifs as themes and some simply as aesthetics?

[Zeusthecat]

Remember when we had this same argument but about hipsters? I feel like there's some kind of connection...

[Twig]

i wish i was as smart as gorm cause yeah all of that

[syntheticgerbil]

Somehow I got ringworm and I don't have any bleach.

 

Bleach is pretty important.

[SecretAsianMan]

I don't really disagree with Twig/Ben/Gormongous but I'm gonna play devil's advocate a bit here.

 

What is a suitable use of pretentious?  Like can you tell me something that is appropriate to call pretentious?  And why that's so?

[Patrick R]

I'm not making an argument from authorial intent, I'm making an article from basic familiarity with the work. Maybe you run in different circles of the internet, but I almost never hear "pretentious" used in the context of "I watched the entirety of this series and its themes were shallow despite being presented as deep." I almost always hear it in the context of "I started watching this series, but it used big words or talked about religion too much or had a really intricate visual style, so I quit." Almost universally, it's not a critique, it's a thought-terminating cliche that sounds like a critique.

 

Pretension, in its commonly identified form, seems to condemn a work's divergence from the accepted potentials of a genre or medium, regardless of what success it meets via that divergence. It implicitly asserts that there are limits to the artistic achievement of a given genre or medium, easily identifiable to the audience, and that transgressing them automatically excludes a work from serious critical consideration. It almost seems classist, in a way, and that squicks me out.

 

Bolded for emphasis, because yes, we must. I basically never see pretentious used in that context. If this is what you guys actually experience regularly, then I completely understand why you hate the word. I guess I am #blessed, because I have a very small social media circle and I don't really ever interact with people like that.

 

Remember when we had this same argument but about hipsters? I feel like there's some kind of connection...

 

Yeah, I think when people misuse pretentious they often mean "This made me feel dumb" the way the word hipster usually means "person who made me feel uncool".

[Badfinger]

 I guess this is where we disagree then. I think if an artist doesn't take the time and thought to address something properly than it is effectively the same thing as not addressing it at all.

 

EDIT: And I think the argument that one must have "intimate knowledge of a work" (which I take to mean actual cited fact as to what the author was intending [and I think it's worth questioning if that is even actually objectively possible], and I understand not everyone is advocating) is effectively banning from popular discourse.

What if they took the time and put in the effort, but didn't get it right? Same outcome, different method.

 

Yeah, I think when people misuse pretentious they often mean "This made me feel dumb" the way the word hipster usually means "person who made me feel uncool".

Nope. Definitely not true. They're pretentious, though!