Deep vs Pretentious

That's subjective of course but Orwell's Literature/{{1984}} fits the bill for me. I find it boring (and depressing) but I'm still glad I read it.

edited 22nd Mar '15 12:39:54 PM by Antiteilchen

Well, I don't think it's wise to define "well-written" as "enjoyable to read". If being entertaining was never what the work was meant to do, you can't blame it for not succeeding in that department.

But yeah, I don't know. It might very well be a fool's errand to try and define pretentiousness as something objective. Ultimately it's a term that exists only to devalue works, which can be justified or... less so. The most workable definition I can see right now depends on the author of the work in question being way out of their depth for the given subject but convinced that they have all the answers, which I think can be pretty safely said for a young little Paolini or a clinically insane Chick, but the quality of a person isn't exactly any easier to judge objectively than the quality of a work.

>> "Is this sentence pretentious then? It gave an answer instead of asking questions after all.

It isn't. It never "claims to have answers" but instead gives you something and lets you decide whether it is an answer for you or not.

But I'm digressing. And while I don't think that "claiming to have answers" is the go-to definition of a pretentious work, I think it quite likely that a work which claims to "have the answer, and don't you dare think it's not the answer" do come across as rather pretentious (and often annoying), as trying to force people to accept an answer that is not theirs to a question that should have been their to answer, does seem to be not quite right.

Basically, if the work tries to force the views of the author on the readers, it might very well be pretentious. But if it shows them those views and doesn't force them to do anything, thus allowing them to wonder, it might very well not be pretentious. But in the end those are just signs, warning or otherwise, and the whole thing should be analysed on a case-by-case basis.

edited 22nd Mar '15 1:01:31 PM by Kazeto

Actually, that's an excellent example, because I feel the exact same way

edited 22nd Mar '15 1:00:56 PM by nekomoon14

I was going to speak from experience because I've been through a similar debate with one of the things I'm working on right now, but then the discussion started delving into whether the difference is subjective, and I think in a way, it is.

In the end, I think "deep" versus "pretentious" can only truly be differentiated by the author's intentions. Knowing that an author wrote a book as a way to rub things in people's faces might ruin a reader's opinion of what he/she thought was originally a deep piece of literature.

At the same time, I also think that trying too hard to make something seem like a magnum opus might be counterproductive for an author because it might take away from general connection with the work. In the thing I'm working on, I had this idea that I thought I should try to nail hard to the readers, but then I realized I couldn't do that because A) the characters would not come off as very natural and B) it would take away from their interaction, which in the end is the core of the story. So instead I decided to stick to how I was currently developing the story and see how the idea would shape it.

tl;dr: my take on pretentiousness is that it's about trying to force a viewpoint rather than explore a truth. They seem like similar things but the latter involves more observation while the former involves being so busy promoting the viewpoint that it loses sight of the value that it could potentially convey to readers.

tl:dr#2: even if you think your idea is the greatest thing on earth, showing the idea is much greater than telling it

What about this. You have so-and-so topic. For our hypothetical situation let's say ice cream flavors. There are people with different opinions. They give their stances, but then (as the plot goes its course) they find out it doesn't work as smoothly, then they feel doubt. Show that nobody is fully right.

Now, the problem that arises from this is not that the characters but that you (ie the writer) aren't able to get an easy conclusion.

For a work about giving multiple views i can think South Park. Maybe? Well it's more about being Equal-Opportunity Offender. Whatever it is deep or pretentious i can't tell because i didn't watch an episode since quite a time.

edited 23rd Mar '15 5:01:22 PM by dreamofwritting

.....I believe who i want a quicly anwser for this:

Deep: Heero is a Nice Guy who live in a Crapsack World filled with flawed people who make stupid but compresible choices. Heero eventually try to be the best man of he can but he become a Knight Templar and start to worrying his few friends.

Pretentious: Heero start like a Incorruptible Pure Pureness in a Crapsack World in where all the people is tortured by a Dirty Cop in a serial basis and everyone take the Idiot Ball. Then Heero suffer a Trauma Conga Line (he is beated out, tortured and raped in one day) and he become a Knight Templar who kill everyone who meets and eventually kill his friends when they tried to stop him (in a pretty stupid way).

And the blurb for the Pretentious story would probably read like the description for the Deep story.

Heck, a pretentious story can have a Knight Templar that the author (and every character who deserves any sympathy) insists is 'flawed' but otherwise is completely right anyway. Could this count as a Mary Sue, Anti-Sue or Jerk Sue?

edited 6th Nov '15 2:23:08 AM by hellomoto

Jerk Sue, i believe. Just look Miller! Batman

A deep work encourages you to consider the question. A pretentious work tries to spoon-feed you an answer.

A Pretentious work is an Anvilicious work that pretends to be 'deep'?

How is a Pretentious work different from an Anvilicious work?

It's about the way it presents its aesop, I guess. A work that's simply Anvilicious will bash you over the head with its message without trying for depth, while a pretentious work will attempt to dress it in pretty clothes.

To give an example which may not necessarily be correct... Consider the topic "should we support xyz (an Important Thing)".

An Anvilicious work by xyz supporter will tell you at least twice that xyz is the best thing ever, characters will be engaging in long lectures and having wonderous conversations about goodness of xyz and everyone who doesn't support xyz will be a caricature of a human being that will be punished with severity that's on the wrong side of hilarious.

A pretentious work by the same group will have a character wondering whether they should support xyz. They will go and ask people about it and people for xyz will be nice and friendly while people against xyz will, long story short, be straw. No serious point against xyz will be brought up, and those that are will be easily dismantled. The hero will ultimately choose to support xyz, which will bring them ire of the (overbearing) antagnists, probably isolate them from their peers and generally turn their life for the worse, but it doesn't matter! Because they have made a Right Moral Choice and have other xyz supporters to lean on.

A deep work will have two characters who must choose whether or not to support xyz. They will go and ask people about it and they will meet all sorts of people, both nice and awful, on both sides on the conflict. Serious arguments for and against will be brought up and discussed, with holes being pointed out on both sides. In the end, there will be no overbearingly "good" or "bad" choice. One character will settle on being for xyz while another against, and we'll get to see consequences of both choices. Or it will be just one character and we'll either see full consequences of their choice, or will end with the matter unresolved.

I hope this clears it up (and is correct, for that matter).

edited 9th Nov '15 8:07:39 AM by Kakai

That IS a brilliant way to put it.

And that makes me realize that a lot of my stories with strong morals were actually quite pretentious. XP

Not necesarilly, you can write something really mature with a strong moral code. At least in theory, in practique...is a lot harder.

Which is probably why he'd proclaimed that he now thinks them pretentious.

I don't want to be rude, Kazuya Prota, especially since it's fairly evident that English isn't a language you are completely fluent with, but sometimes your answers feel ... not very well thought out; not outright malicious, no, but redundant or nonsensical sometimes.

Thanks for the info, (Everyone say me that. I need learn more)

edited 9th Nov '15 2:10:42 PM by KazuyaProta

Just want to chime in here that certain people tend to accuse things that are very difficult to understand as pretentious under the assumption that the complex and ambiguous language involved in such a work is intended to obfuscate or split hairs rather than to explore a very complex or abstract idea using an intrinsically limited medium, that being language. This is particularly an issue in fields where there is a lot of self-important fiddle-faddle, which to the unacquainted (or the pretentious, conversely) may seem indistinguishable.

Take Deleuze and Guattari's philosophical work, in books like A Thousand Plateaux and Difference and Repetition. It is astoundingly dense, riddled with riddles of the polysemous semantic sort, and about as deep as the Marianas Trench. If you're not acquainted with the theory that they are drawing on or critiquing, at least in passing, you're likely to find most of it baffling, maugre the occasional gem-like aphorism; and even if you are, it's not an easy read.

But there are also loads and loads of postmodernist, post-structuralist and/or deconstructionist critical theory papers and books out there that really are needlessly self-obfuscating, self-congratulatory sermons on nothing. Where the aforementioned write difficult work because writing about things for which there are literally no words and sometimes no real grammar is difficult in itself, there are others who want you to think that they are plumbing new and exciting depths but really are just treading old ground with maybe a new rock or two overturned and writing of their travels in such a way as to make you think they went to the moon in a homemade rocket and it really is made of cheese, they swear!

edited 10th Nov '15 6:07:03 AM by JHM

@Kazeto - Yup, pretty much.

Most of my works have at least one strong moral themes (War is bad, stand up for the weak, extremism is dangerous, etc) but I keep forcing them onto (potential) readers, rather than throwing a question.

I think the trick is to show it through the story and never outright say it in dialogue or narration. Let the reader find out about it themselves. I think that's how a work is deep.

An art teacher for a night class explained it to me: Deep is when the creator just creates something— it becomes its own work. The creator also talks about things no one wants to. The creator is trying to say something, but isn't blatant about it, as you can only see it in what they created. You find their meaning by yourself.

Pretentious is when the creator just creates something. They do it for money, they do it for attention, anything but just to create it. They're the kind of people who make a story about a middle class white boy who falls in love with the Manic Pixie Dream Girl. They make giant steel balloon animal sculptures. They make diamond-studded skulls. There's no meaning to it. It's unnecessary. They try to pass it off for something deep, but it's not.

Is it okay if I don't claim it's deep?

That's just making an Anvilicious work right?

I was thinking of the Lorax movie (the newer one that has the Once-ler). I found it hard to disagree with its environmental message, especially when they even covered sustainable farming, and showed the reasons Once-ler fell into greed.

edited 10th Nov '15 6:01:30 PM by hellomoto

Not claiming something is deep is VERY welcome.

If people don't think a story is deep, and you don't claim it to be so, then you're fine. It's still a usually good story.

If people don't think a story is deep, but you DO literally claim it's deep as opposed to "this story means a lot to me" or "I worked a lot on this," it might not matter how good the story is because now people are going to be laughing/scoffing at how full of yourself you are. They'll be too biased about you to read the work objectively.

If you don't think a story is deep, but somehow it resounds with people anyway, people are going to be fucking amazed.

edited 10th Nov '15 10:18:12 PM by Sharysa

A question I've been thinking of is this: should we HAVE a goal in mind when it comes to revealing things in our fiction? In other words, if what truly matters about a work is its message and/or the characters that work with that message, then why does showing the truth work so much better than telling? If you are going to say the same message either way, why do one versus another?

Potential answers that I have include A) it's much more realistic to show a world where not everyone will agree with that message, and B) people aren't always going to understand what you say unless they have a concrete example/consequence present. I love fiction, so in a way I'm attacking myself and other writers, but I wanted to get other people's thoughts on this. I've been asking myself why I write lately (though that hasn't stopped me from doing so).

Simply put, because stories are more interesting than just stating the truth.

Instead of saying 'environmentalism is important', one can make a movie about how a man slipped into deeper and deeper evil as he cuts down trees to make a name for himself, leading to a wasteland with a everything-is-fake city, followed by a boy who sets out to put things right again.

edited 13th Nov '15 2:50:15 AM by hellomoto