pretentious: C or D, S and D?

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What does pretentious mean? Does it mean showing off that you're well read, a la Tony Wilson? Does it mean the bombast of Jim Steinman? Or the daft use of punctuation and diacritics of Gary Numan and other New-Romantics? Is someone like Celine Dion - A New Day Has Come (indeed!) - actually terribly pretentious for her new world vacuity? This all occured to me when I heard someone use the word 'pretentious' the other day for the first time in absolutely ages. I wondered if it was a word that had actually fallen into disuse and disrepute. Is it still a valid pejorative term? Do you use it? Have you ever been slagged off as pretentious for your music or views on music? If so, how did it make you feel?

― Daniel, Sunday, 5 May 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

I get slagged off for being pretentious all the time. Mainly because I read The Guardian and like foreign films.

― Nick Southall, Sunday, 5 May 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Well, last time I read NME pretentiousness is used to slag people off if they decide, all of a sudden that they want to be 'experimental' when before they were not (Radiohead is an example of this) or it can mean that said person/act has 'ambition'.

If put in the context of pop then radihead are ambitious (it worked)/pretentious (it sucks). If put in the context of all other music then, say, in radiohead's case you just have to laugh at them.

― Julio Desouza, Sunday, 5 May 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Pretentious: Search Greil Marcus! ;-) I have been slagged off for being pretentious. The ones saying it were just dumb fekkers so I took it as a compliment. (joke!)

― Nathalie, Sunday, 5 May 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

See, I've always associated it with the word "pretend", as in pretending to be something you're not--for example a good chunk of goth rock (are these people really members of the undead?)--but by dictionary def'n, it's "making claim to distinction or importantance, esp. undeservedly". So if you're going on about how important your own material is, like if the listeners don't get it then they're just not mentally capable: pretentious. Especially if the music is really just a load of crap.

I was slagged as pretentious, yes, and I probably was at the time when I was called it to my face, and I felt shocked and then humbled: I decided grounding was definitely in order. Perhaps I'm still considered pretentious, I don't know, but I think I'm probably more elitist these days if I have to tar myself with something of the sort. Oh well.

― Sean Carruthers, Sunday, 5 May 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Pretentious::meaningless? I always thought it was. I had a big argument about it and I decided it was meaningless. can't remember my reasons. But you can still use it. It's like you would struggle to define 'good' but you can still say what is good and what is not. Thus, I don't feel contradictory in saying: all art = inherently pretentious (ALL).

― david h, Sunday, 5 May 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

"shaun ryder is the greatest poet since w. b. yeats": yes yes tony but why YEATS of all people? i mean wtf?

― mark s, Sunday, 5 May 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

"importantance" = way more pseudy than mere "importance" heh

― mark s, Sunday, 5 May 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Wtf?

― david h, Sunday, 5 May 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

"importantance" = my early-morning typing fingers. My fingers are pretentious. Or is that pretententious?

― Sean Carruthers, Sunday, 5 May 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

So, David, is it a good thing that all art is pretentious? (wtf = what the fuck, by the way)

― Daniel, Monday, 6 May 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

I'll go with Sean's definition - and as for the people who call you pretentious for participating in high culture, tell the rubes that the word is "Erudite" - not "Pretentious."

― Dave225, Monday, 6 May 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

isn't the PRETENSE the thing about preteniousness that bothers people the - the idea that the artist is being dishonest by purposefully associating themselves with ideas beyond their own comprehension in order to appear to be more interesting or deep than they actually are?

as a slag though it really reveals the reviewers self-importance - eg "I don't get what this artist is doing so there's no way that this artist could understand what he's doing so he must be faking being smarter than me grrrrr"

― fritz, Monday, 6 May 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Celine Dion is not pretentious.

― dave q, Monday, 6 May 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

The trouble with 'pretentious' is telling the difference between it representing an astute assessment of people pretending to greater importance, depth or meaning, say, and a writer who just doesn't get it and is not even close enough to see that he/she hasn't understood.

Back in the days when I produced a fanzine about comics, someone would accuse me of this every time I'd suggest that Krazy Kat or Robert Crumb or Daniel Clowes might have more substance to them than the latest issue of Wonder Woman or whatever. Or even that there was something beyond the simple action-adventure story in a superhero comic. Actually, I got it on another list the other day for saying negative things about Star Wars, along with its common bedfellow 'elitist'. I wasn't comparing SW to Solaris or anything like that but to Aliens and Terminator II, weirdly.

― Martin Skidmore, Monday, 6 May 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

b-but stars is better than aliens martin!! and solaris too!!!

― moi?, Monday, 6 May 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Dave q, the point I was making about Celine Dion was that she and other mainstream singers like to attach themselves to half-baked philosophies which sound grandiose and evocative, but which they (appear to) know little about. I was merely using her to express the idea that pretentiousness - having ideas above one's station - is just as likely to apply to Celine Dion (OK not a great example maybe) as it is to an artist who goes on in interviews or lyrics about Derrida or Saussure.

― daniel, Monday, 6 May 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

New Age philosophy is beneath EVERYBODY's station. It's not pretention, more like pandering. But then, Celine can point to her own success as proof of this philosophy's effectiveness

― dave q, Tuesday, 7 May 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Of course, the ironic thing is that if "pretentious" means making undeserved claims of importance, then the NME is the most pretentious magazine in the WORLD!

― jamesmichaelward, Tuesday, 7 May 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

dave q: "'Pretentious' = completely stupid and nebulous word with no meaning whatever, and should be excised from the language. English people use it when they don't understand a concept, Americans use it when they don't understand the big words."

Amen.

― david h, Tuesday, 7 May 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

and French people use it when they admire something.

― Tracer Hand, Tuesday, 7 May 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

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