This word.
This word...
...haunts me.
I've never wrestled with this word,
grappled,
dissected, analyzed,
done anything other than...
be it.
I've been called "pretentious".
I've called myself "pretentious". I've mocked the pretentious, I've defended the pretentious.
Can you know at a glance what pretension looks like?
Is it long stares? A slow pace? Black and white? Or awash with colour?
What does pretentious sound like?
Is it classical music?
Odd, unsettling ambient music?
Spoken...
slowly?
Est-cé parlé dans une langue inconnue?-- "Est-cé..."
-"Est-cé parlé dans une langue inconnue?" -"Est-il parlé dans une langue"--"langue"...
-"inconnue"? -"Est-cé parlé dans--"
Or is pretentious...
merely making a youtube video about the concept of pretentiousness?
I see you in the comments writing that very thing, stop it! Nevertheless,
how can one talk about the pretentious without sounding pretentious themselves?
Or would it be how can I talk about the pretentious-- Did I just refer to myself in the abstract? Fuuu--
Merriam-webster cites its first written use in 1832, from the Latin "praetendo",
meaning to stretch out, to extend, to...
pretend,
one might say.
Using etymology and Latin root words in an argument is also...
pretentious, as is the use of the phrase "one might say...".
Pretentious: someone who pretends. I am pretending to be...
something. Pretending to be deep, pretending to know more than you do,
pretending to know everything when, the more you learn, the more you realize your own ignorance.
"Pretentious", a class word,
hierarchical. "Be pretentious" is "to stretch, go beyond your status,
above your class".
Pretending to know what the upper class knows: art, literature, highbrow culture,
pretending to have known the cultural secrets taught to the upper classes,
since the start of their privileged childhood,
instead of having googled it, minutes before jotting it down in a script.
The Internet! Yeah...
Pop to the artsy bubble. Once facts are free, everything the upper classes knew became publicly available,
I guess we all realized that the upper class knew nothing.
That is, they knew art.
Which is nothing.
Art is...
artifice,
artificial,
so what makes an "artist", just another one in a long line of people pretending to be divinely blessed,
or touched by the Muse, or containing a spark of genius,
pretending to be great,
until people agreed with them.
Pretending to be "good" until people agreed...
Pretending to be OK until people agree with them.
Pretending to be worthy.
That's all pretension is.
Every artist you've ragged on, or idolized, or dismissed, or ignored, all these people...
pretenders...
playing make-believe.
A question I get asked a lot is "how can you tell ‘true art’ from someone just ‘being pretentious’?"
And the answer is...
Every artist is pretentious!
Because they're all pretenders. They're all kids in a backyard playing make-believe,
acting like their idols, pretending to be bigger than they are, smarter than they are, deeper than they are,
snatching the words or images of people who came before us, pretending that we can be as big as they are.
Just as those people also pretended.
Like when we were kids, looking to the grown-ups to see who we can become.
That's not so bad, is it?
Using our little fantasies of being a little bit better than ourselves in order to...
become better?
Not better than anyone else, just better than our former selves.
Pretentious.
It's a dream-killing word, "how dare you pretend", "stop pretending", "know your place, rise no higher".
To call a person "pretentious "is to say "I don't believe in you".
To call yourself "pretentious" is to say "I don't believe in me".
To call art "pretentious" is to say ...
"I don't believe in anyone"
So, think about what you call "pretentious", and why.
Us pretentious people...
we're only just playing pretend.
Maybe we just want someone to play along.