When does something become pretentious?

[Korenith]

So this a word I see crop up here quite a lot. Moviebob's dealt with it a few times and there was a thread about poetry a little while ago that people were throwing that accusation at certain works but what I want to know is how do you personally draw the line between pretentious and genuinely clever because it's such a subjective thing.

Also examples are always good so:

I think James Joyce is a genius because he did something which nobody else had ever done yet I could follow the reasoning behind it even if I didn't fully understand everything he wrote. All the crazy literary techniques he used doesn't (to me) make his work pretentious, only willing to push boundaries. Paul Coelho however I think is a pretentious hack of a writer who dresses up fortune cookie new-age hippy motivational poster crap like "live each day like it's your last" and "believe in yourself" as if it's some great cosmic secret which, once you understand, you will be able to achieve anything.

 

[Fappy]

I think it has a lot to do with motivation. I find it hard to label someone as pretentious unless it's clear their primary motivation is to show people how cool, clever, edgy, etc. they are.

 

[Hoplon]

I think it has a lot to do with motivation. I find it hard to label someone as pretentious unless it's clear their primary motivation is to show people how cool, clever, edgy, etc. they are.

Yeah but Paul Coelho books read like that. I believe the phrase is cod philosophy.

Pretentious gets thrown around a lot but mostly about things that people didn't understand rather than are actually pretentious.

 

[Alexi089]

I think the famous Albert Einstein quote: "Everything should be made as simple as possible. But no simpler." can be a very helpful gauge for whether or not something's pretentious (especially for science and engineering presentations, where it's basically the rule).

If you present your idea succinctly, with all the detail needed to explain it's fundamental elements; then people can look at your idea and see if they agree with it. When you shroud the idea in a load of convoluted hot air that people have to wade through to get to your real point; you're being pretentious.

Of, course, it's trickier with art, because sometimes the extra stuff can be a nice detour from the main plot point. Ultimately, it's down to good editing to decide whether your extra detail has enough relevance to your main message(s) to prevent the whole project becoming pretentious.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

Pretentious is a completely subjective designation, so there is no objective point at which something can be declared pretentious. So...when is something pretentious? When you find something pretentious. Just don't expect everyone to agree.

 

[thesilentman]

It's subjective, so I think pretentious when someone tries to be all "NO MY ARTISTIC VISION IS CORRECT AND YOUR'S IS COMPLETE AND UTTER BULLSHIT!!!'

That pisses me off to no end.

Also, how did the OP steal my great thread idea? Must be faster next time...

 

[Gigano]

When what's done isn't done to enhance the artistic merit of the work, but to convene to the audience how artistic the creator of it is. Of course, it's human nature to speculate how something is going to be received, so every piece of art has some degree of pretension to it.

The trick is to determine when there's more pretension than substance. Or when the marketing department rather than any actual artist is behind the work.

 

[The Artificially Prolonged]

I'd say deliberately being overly complex or obtuse on things to sound more intelligent as being pretentious.

In other words saying something in twenty words that could be easily said in five.