I Had A Random Thought...

[Gormongous]

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

 

To me, Interstellar is pretentious. It uses complex ideas about the nature of space and time as chrome for a simplistic story about a father and daughter whose love overcomes obstacles like time, distance, and misunderstanding. All of its most interesting moments, especially those regarding the grandeur of the cosmos, are in service of aesthetics rather than themes, a disparity that is brought to its greatest extremity by the prolonged deus ex machina of the ending, which discards a lot of the logic in the plot to emphasize emotional resonances that... really aren't there for a lot of the movie, Anne Hathaway's ridiculous second-act speech about love being the most powerful force in the universe aside.

 

Now, I know that people like Interstellar, so they're free to disagree, but that's a place from which I think a judgment of "pretentious" can come, rather than finding an oft-popular work boring and confusing and choosing to blame it for your own lack of interest.

[Patrick R]

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?

 

Nothing is complete.

 

But, to use an example of a work I actually like a lot, Terminator 2 dedicates a lot of it's run-time (including it's final monologue) to ruminations on man's violent nature, the premise of determinism vs. free will, and what defines humanity. None of this is what the film is about. The film is about white-knuckle action sequences and paranoia. Thus Terminator 2 is a pretentious film.

[Patrick R]

ACK! Multi-quote fail! See below! 

[Patrick R]

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

Then I wouldn't call it pretentious? Or rather, I wouldn't use that term because it doesn't describe what my actual problem with the work is. It would be pretentious, but that wouldn't necessarily be it's problem. 

 

Some words are only derogatory in certain contexts. Like, to call Andrei Tarkovsky's Nostalgia "uneventful" isn't necessarily derogatory, because of it's deliberate pace and contemplative nature.

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

 

I don't know what you're saying here.

[Twig]

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.

 

I think popular discourse in general could do with a lot of reduction in rhetoric, to be honest. People love to throw out words that don't actually mean what they really WANT to say, or as a way to avoid saying what they want to say. This word in particular sounds vaguely intelligent, as far as words can, uh, sound intelligent, and so a lot of people use it as shorthand to dismiss a work. Period.

 

But to address your actual point: I don't see the problem in demanding that people treat the language they're using with the same respect and consideration that they ostensibly would like the work they're describing to treat ITS subject. Fuck yeah, I want people to use words correctly!

 

(I also don't agree that "intimate knowledge of a work" requires cited anything, as you surmised.)

[Mangela Lansbury]

when did this thread get so pretentious 

[Mawd]

The same advert for SCII just played 5 times back to back on Twitch. I've whitelisted the entire site to support the content makers but this is the sort of thing that makes me regret that decision. Ugh. Just show me some different ads. Is that so hard?

[SuperBiasedMan]

The same advert for SCII just played 5 times back to back on Twitch. I've whitelisted the entire site to support the content makers but this is the sort of thing that makes me regret that decision. Ugh. Just show me some different ads. Is that so hard?

 

I know exactly what you mean, it's a huge pain and totally pretentious.

[Mawd]

Why you do this to meeeee?

[Ben X]

Can the mods delete this thread, please? The  repeated pretentious jokes are ruining the forum.

 

when did this thread get so pretentious 

 

Check out e e cummings with the lack of capitalisation and grammar. Soooo pretentious.

[SuperBiasedMan]

Can the mods delete this thread, please? The  repeated pretentious jokes are ruining the forum.

 

If you want terrible jokes, Edgar Allan Go to the slack to check out our puns based on the name of famous author Edgar Allan Poe.

[Twig]

If you want terrible jokes, Edgar Allan Go to the slack to check out our puns based on the name of famous author Edgar Allan Poe.

 

those were amazing edgar allan tho

[Cordeos]

The same advert for SCII just played 5 times back to back on Twitch. I've whitelisted the entire site to support the content makers but this is the sort of thing that makes me regret that decision. Ugh. Just show me some different ads. Is that so hard?

The early days of Hulu were like this, if you were binging on a show you would see the same three ads every episode. 

[Professor Video Games]

The early days of Hulu were like this, if you were binging on a show you would see the same three ads every episode. 

 

Still pretty much like that...

[SuperBiasedMan]

I don't know if this is specific to Ireland having a smaller market, but sometimes on Youtube you can tell that somebody's just dumped money all over youtube because the same ad comes up more than 50% of the time, which is especially bad when watching a video with multiple ads.

[undermind9]

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

 

Bleach is pretty important.

 

careful with that, lamasil is generally safer and more effective.  i used to have a prescription strength version when i was in HS athletics and contracted it often from wrestling - be gone in 3 days easy.

 

I've killed ring worm a few times with bleach and left some nasty marks (fortunately didnt scar)...could have been using rope and sand paper to open the skin/pores too.........

[miffy495]

those were amazing edgar allan tho

 

In life related news, I woke up this morning to discover that the roads had been ruined for the next several months by a huge dump of Edgar Allan Snow. My half hour commute to work just turned into 45 minutes minimum. Good times.

[Twig]

you just gotta learn to drive like an edgar allan pro

[syntheticgerbil]

careful with that, lamasil is generally safer and more effective.  i used to have a prescription strength version when i was in HS athletics and contracted it often from wrestling - be gone in 3 days easy.

 

I've killed ring worm a few times with bleach and left some nasty marks (fortunately didnt scar)...could have been using rope and sand paper to open the skin/pores too.........

Haha, yeah I didn't go to the store so I ended up using apple cider vinegar. I remember I just used diluted bleach years ago and it went away within a day almost.

[Griddlelol]

I both love an hate robots in Futurama, and have so many thoughts about them but I really just want to focus on one:

 

What the hell do robots eat?! It seems to be random by every episode. Sometimes they're eating oil or burning fuel. Sometimes they're eating meat and "human food." Bender is even told he doesn't have taste...yet happily eats in plenty of episodes. It's so confusing.

 

Does that mean that when robots are eating human food it's just for show - it tends to be at fine restaurants, but we also know that those fine restaurants serve robot food. 

 

Similarly, if they don't have taste, why do they care what alcohol they drink? It's all so confusing.

[Ben X]

Simply replacing a random author's surname with a rhyming word is not a pun.

 

Sorry to Edgar Allen Police your humour.

[Merus]

Wait I missed a discussion on pretentiousness

 

and I use it correctly and everything 

 

(I wouldn't say Terminator 2 was pretentious because while it vaguely gestures towards larger themes it doesn't really try and engage with, it's also winking at the audience that it's still basically an action film. Pretentiousness involves a front, to my understanding: you have to be putting your grand ideas prominently in the narrative, and disguise the fact that most of what you're saying about it is either surface level or just made up. Less Interstellar, which I felt did take a punt at the idea that wouldn't it be great if we explored, and more Dresden Codak.)

[SecretAsianMan]

I both love an hate robots in Futurama, and have so many thoughts about them but I really just want to focus on one:

 

What the hell do robots eat?! It seems to be random by every episode. Sometimes they're eating oil or burning fuel. Sometimes they're eating meat and "human food." Bender is even told he doesn't have taste...yet happily eats in plenty of episodes. It's so confusing.

 

Does that mean that when robots are eating human food it's just for show - it tends to be at fine restaurants, but we also know that those fine restaurants serve robot food. 

 

Similarly, if they don't have taste, why do they care what alcohol they drink? It's all so confusing.

 

I don't really remember seeing them eat regular food, apart from Hedonism bot but that's part of the joke with him.  Can you give me some specific examples?

[Griddlelol]

I don't really remember seeing them eat regular food, apart from Hedonism bot but that's part of the joke with him.  Can you give me some specific examples?

 

In the episode Bend Her, Bender and Calculon are eating at Elzar's. Bender is clearly eating a leg of something, tearing off the flesh. In the episode Bendless Love, again at Elzar's Bender can be seen with a plate of what looks like salad and an insect. 

[Dewar]

They all have a tiny little Mr. Fusion inside.