Are You Pretentious?
Pretentious, What Does That Even Mean?
If you’ve ever tried to write, make, or do in any capacity then at some point you’ve probably worried about sounding pretentious. It’s a healthy worry for the most part — as it keeps our worst excesses in check — but still one worth investigating. Because, with its current ubiquity, it has become a bit like the term ‘hipster’ in the 2010s: a pejorative used so often and so broadly that its meaning has started to blur. Am I pretentious for using the word ‘ubiquity’? To the more trigger-happy users of the word, I probably am. Well, if I can’t safely use the word ubiquity then things have gone too far, we need to take a deeper look. What does it really mean to be pretentious? And how can we avoid it?
As I would with a wedding speech, I’m going to start out by defining my key term. Google, in lieu of Webster’s dictionary, defines pretentious as: “attempting to impress by affecting greater importance or merit than is actually possessed.” You might already be able to tell from reading this how its meaning has broadened, as it can be employed very subjectively. Anyone can decide for themselves that you’re only doing something as an affectation, and that the merit of what you’re doing doesn’t match up. Unfortunately, you can’t control how people react to what you say or write, but you can still try to give yourself the best possible chance of being understood correctly. So, let’s look at some ideas and examples of pretentiousness, and how we might sidestep them.
Sentence Pretence
Let’s start on a mechanics level, with words and sentences. An example of a pretentious sentence might be: “The ubiquity of grandiloquence offends one such as I, whose raison d’etre is pellucid and diaphanous prose.” This sentence fits our definition perfectly, as it is a sentence with a straightforward meaning: “There is too much extravagance in writing, I prefer things to be simple and clear,” but one that is pretending to be more complicated and intellectual than it really is.
To avoid sounding like this, try not to use too many long and uncommon words in one sentence, check to see if the word you are using is either the clearest, or most appropriate word available. Think long and hard before using archaic phrasing like “such as I,” or borrowed terms like “raison d’etre,” if you find yourself using a phrase because you think it sounds fancy, it might be time to think again. Finally, make sure you fully understand a word before using it. Does “diaphanous” really mean the same thing as clear? Or have you got lost clicking through synonyms to find a more interesting word? None of this is to say that you have to use basic language all the time, a refined attempt at the sentence might sound more like: “I hate purple prose, I prefer to read things that are lucid and unambiguous.” This sentence succeeds more than the other two because it uses specific and appropriate terms that are also distinct and interesting.
You Talking To Me? (Who is Your Audience?)
The next thing you might want to think about is tone, and audience. Let’s pretend you’re a student giving a speech to your film class. If you approached it pretentiously, you might sound like this: “The films of Jean-Luc Godard, though many of you may not be fans, are masterworks of expressionist beauty appreciable only by the truly enlightened.”
Firstly, the tone here is extremely condescending, the speaker presupposing that their audience are simple-minded and that only they are smart enough to understand the films described. It is fine to be knowledgeable, but it very rarely comes across well to flaunt your knowledge, or to attack your audience. Secondly, the speaker hasn’t really considered their audience. They are not a film professor. They are a student reading a presentation to their professor and their peers, one where they should be sharing knowledge. Instead, they are lecturing those who know an equal amount or more than them. Finally, is the topic tonally appropriate, has the student chosen to wax lyrical about Jean-Luc Godard because they are genuinely passionate about French Expressionism, or because they want to be seen to be reverential and understanding of something generally regarded as intellectual and difficult to understand?
Here we can see how the speaker would sound if they changed their tone and register to be more honest and balanced: “As students of film we all have an opinion on Godard. While I found his films unapproachable at first, studying them has given me a strong appreciation for their expressionist beauty.” This time they sound better because they address their audience correctly and adopt an honest and straightforward tone.
Size Matters (When It Comes To Ideas)
Zooming out fully, scope and ambition are also important factors when it comes to avoiding pretentiousness. As our film student above might have been guilty of, many people place too much emphasis on complexity and opaqueness when coming up with an idea. A pretentious idea for a novel might be: “It is the story of the universe, told in reverse-chronological order by a madman who never uses the letter ‘f,’ but the whole thing is really God’s last dream.’
So, why is this idea pretentious? For starters, its scope is trying to lend it undue importance, trying to tell the story of the entire universe and God is a huge undertaking, so it must be an amazing book, right? There are also added layers of unnecessary complication. Why is it told in reverse? Why doesn’t he use the letter ‘f’? Finally, whoever came up with this has also tried to add poeticism and mystery by making the story a dream told by a madman, forcing people to decode their “genius” ambiguities and strange digressions. It’s clear that this person has seen the acclaim given to artists like Thomas Pynchon, David Lynch and Gabriel Garcia Marquez and decided they wanted some of that shine, not understanding that their appeal doesn’t lie solely in how difficult or wacky their work is.
If our author wanted to be unpretentious, they might pull back their scope a little. Maybe it won’t be the story of the entire universe. Maybe it could be simpler and less deadly serious. Perhaps a comical work about a man driven insane by the letter f? This way the story can still be strange and creative, but also manageable and entertaining.
Conclusion
So, we’ve covered the ways to avoid pretentiousness in your writing, and I hope the tips above helped you, but remember, they’re still only half the battle. Pretentiousness most often comes from a place of insecurity, trying to mask a lack of knowledge with the pretence of genius, and from a misunderstanding of why famous works are famous, thinking people like things that are long and complex simply because they are long and complex. The best way to truly avoid pretentiousness is to be secure and confident in your knowledge, in both what you know, and what you don’t know, and also to be a diligent and humble student of the works you admire. Anyhap, for now, I bid you good morrow, perhaps on one of earth’s forthcoming revolutions you can become as modest and unpretentious a scribe as I; though en verité, the very notion is somewhat preposterous.
