charmianland because random is good enough for most

BTW, “The Season of Pretension” would be a good title for something, it strikes me. (Refs: Link 1, Link 2) BTW, haven’t read through as carefully as I could, so I could be repeating someone. 1. I tend to believe a person who “fraudulently” puts on airs or pretends to things is most accurately termed a ‘poseur,’ but YMMV. I also often feel that in practice, “pretentious” is used as synonymous for “self-important” or “pompous.” However, for the rest of this entry I shall discuss “pretension” as it applies to works of art.

2. I believe, in practice, that most works widely seen as pretentious are entirely sincere (in that no one is trying to fool anyone; the author is not ‘lying’). [Just as most bad art is sincere.] I think this is possibly because being a poseur is not really sensible when you are communicating with the general public, because the “real thing” is always out there ready to expose you, and in fact there are many people who devote themselves to this kind of activity. If you were going to try it, knowing of your true incompetency, you’d have to be very good… and at that point, might you be the ‘real thing’ anyhow?

2a. Actually I think the opposite is said to more commonly exist. Like people who claim that will.i.am is really a very sophisticated musician who produces drek because he “sold out” and just wants to be rich, such and such pop star produces music in secret just for herself, etc. IIRC this is not said to be true for authors, for whatever reason.

3. I hadn’t realized that most/many people ascribed to the fraudulence/poseur theory of pretension? Or do they? Confused. But why does it matter? Someone can certainly fail to tell the truth without being a liar. So pretension is then the sense that something is false or empty? (if you don’t subscribe to the fraudulence theory, then the such a creator is described best as delusional or foolish, I suppose.) Or unconvincing, if you want to be relativist about it.

4. Once I read a New Yorker (or something) article about the author Jonathan Franzen, where some reader kept on writing in to take him to task for “using words no one knows” or something like that.

5. Is the point of this debate really just that pretentiousness is in the eye of the beholder? Or that it is a relative term depending on one’s background and tastes? So is “bad writing,” (or, “Mary Sue”) and people argue about that as though it were “objective.” These terms are logically speaking more like conventions anyhow, so can’t there be a convention of pretension? Probably the most effective way to do this would be to defend one’s verdict of pretension, but I don’t really see that….[In other words, even if you feel that “pretension” is not a useful word, certainly the phenomenon alluded to must exist, so what are some key examples of when you personally experienced it? And if pretension isn’t a useful word, what is? What are the formal characteristics of this ‘so-called pretension’? ]

5. I guess I don’t tend to identify works as “pretentious” anyhow, because I feel that people should be given points for trying, and I tend to go along with the author on the theory that things are more fun when you take them seriously anyway. I tend to write off such failed works as “not living up to their ambitions.” Also, what does it mean to “occupy a place of seriousness” anyway? Isn’t that just the same as “the reader/viewer can take it seriously”? Could it be the readers fail to find the work’s “meta-claims” about itself convincing? (meta-claims as in the assertions the work makes about how seriously it should be taken, and perhaps other things about how the audience should receive it, but mostly its own significance or value. It may be that the audience misinterprets these claims as well, but there is also a language/convention of ‘meta-claims.’ (there’s probably a correct word for this…))

5a. I often find one reason I can’t take a work entirely seriously is if it seems to be presenting itself as highly original, yet I’ve heard the same message over and over before. Or it seems to be presenting something as a stunning insight, while it seems very obvious, or something not really worthy of being that. Maybe this is like the line between pathos and bathos. Or it relies on impressing the reader, on wowing them, and they just. aren’t. wowed. (For whatever reason; the EXP of the reader also plays a part. )

6. What about ‘obscure’? Is this perhaps a related phenomenon?

7. I thought the author died. Why is there so much talk about the intentions of the author?

8. Adding this on:  Does “to pretend” mean “to dissimulate” or “to put forth a claim”?