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Any philosophizing in a work at all will be called pretentious, bullshit, or gratuitous
Sometimes it IS but not nearly as often as it gets called that.
It's really annoying when I hear people who probably think Zen and the Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance is a work of great philosophy dissing something I thought was pretty deep.
Comments
When I read the title of this thread I immediately said, "No it won't."
And then I read the first line of the OP and thought, "My, what a useless thread."
And THEN, my friends, I wrote this comment for no reason other than to voice my dissatisfaction. And then Myrmidon was a god.
THE END
And then John was a zombie.
I agree, Myrm. People having different opinions than me is pretty annoying.
Why, they should... they should just die! Drop dead and die!
I should probably just have not made this thread.
Anti-hipsters errywhere.
People dismissing something that is genuinely pretty deep as pretentious is actually really annoying.
I do acknowledge that it comes from a valid source- so many stories have people sprouting off incredibly lame philosophy that it becomes second nature to dismiss most philosophy as pretentious bullshit.
A lot of people take that too far, however, and dismiss all philosophy they don't understand as gratuitous crap, even if it's genuinely interesting and enhances the story.
What if the message works for the story, but is terribly simple? Or does that not count as "philosophizing"?
It's not usually derided as gratuitous philosophy wank in those instances. Most people don't even count that as philosophy.
All of this.
That said, one of the primary advantages of fiction is that it can discuss philosophy through implication. Every work of fiction has themes and those themes form the basis of the work's discussion, be it shallow pulp or a literary masterpiece. In particular, I love how this is done in the Discworld. While it's become fashionable to make human faith a direct power source for gods and deities in speculative fiction as of late, many of Terry Pratchett's imitators don't understand why it works so well in his own books.
In this particular example, we're seeing a direct reflection of reality. Equating faith with power from the perspective of a deity says a lot about how Terry Pratchett observes people to work -- that is, whether or not their faith is well founded, collective faith and belief is what forms the social, political and technological landscapes of our world. Believe hard enough and belief becomes reality. Systems of economy are great examples, particularly those based on gold. Gold has some applications in electronics and looks pretty, but is otherwise completely useless -- yet it's been the foundation of economic worth since ancient times.
Gold doesn't feed people, cure their illnesses or shelter them, but for some reason, it's the terminal station for the value products have in our society. We're all subject to a kind of mass delusion brought on by tradition that places value on something that doesn't really do much of anything. People live and die based on economies -- so in this case, gold. It's all kind of absurd, isn't it?
Terry Pratchett creates similar discussions not through directly speaking to the audience about these things, but placing them in a fictional context alongside very human (and very absurd) reactions to them. I think he's the epitome example of a popular author who does this and does it well.
DEATH APPROVES OF THIS OBSERVATION.
While I agree, there is a problem of perspective there. What, exactly, is "genuinely pretty deep"? I guess the responsible thing to do would be to ask them to elaborate on why they think it isn't deep/it's pretentious, and perhaps give an example of something that meets their standards, but I'm often not invested enough in either the subject or the discussion at hand for that.
That being said, I am often more annoyed when a completely unpretentious piece of work is called pretentious.
Honestly, pretentious is annoying buzzword that I think barely if ever applies to any work that is being used on. Like, if we were talking about Tom Hooper (i.e: Someone who pretends to possess a skill or a higher understanding of a craft* but in practice, demonstrates that his pretentions don't align with the reality)
Honestly, this kind of idea really bothers me. Like, why are we assuming right away that someone who disagrees with you is an idi...oh right. the OP. of course.
Juan, I assure you, I only do this to compensate for my own insecurity.
Well, for example and to elaborate on what I meant about Tom Hooper, the director of Les Miserables and The King's Speech.
The thing about him is that it's clear he loves Kubrick's work to the point that almost all of his movies use Kubrick shots and techniques. But the thing is, Kubrick's artistic choices carried a narrative purpose on top of the merely aesthetical. The same applies to directors like Lynch or Buñuel, who often are brought up as pretentious when they tell stories based on onirical imagery and rather unclear elements. Granted, Lynch is a director who deliberately obfuscates audiences both in his movies and in real life, but the stories in movies like Mulholland Drive and Blue Velvet are relatively clear. It's just that, again, they often follow dream logic, where you talk to penguins and don't really think about it because, again, it's a dream, right?
Compare that to Hooper's work, whose shots and aesthetical choices don't come from a place of "Hey, Kubrick used this shot to convey this feeling or this idea, so I could use it to convey something similar to this or to create an association on the audience's mind that could be used in some form of communication" but instead comes from the fact that he liked this shot so he has to have this shot in the movie.
I'm not sure if that helps, especially considering that it's a very situational example, but it's the sort of thing that comes to my mind when people mean pretentious, really.
I don't think I understand this thread.
2deep4u