David

“The fable of the Emperor’s New Clothes is brought up time and again, a conspiracy to dupe someone, a pretense designed to make the innocent or gullible look stupid. It’s a narcissistic paranoia; most artists don’t have the time or money to bother playing such a prank and are far more concerned with spending their days pursuing ideas in the studio, however absurd those ideas may appear to others.”
― Dan Fox, Pretentiousness: Why It Matters

“Claims to ordinariness and salt-of-the-earth virtue—“slumming it,” as it’s crudely called—are themselves pretentious. The assumption that dropping your aitches or asserting a love of a cheap beer over a fine wine, or processed cheese over a Parmesan, will make you seem unspoiled or somehow more gritty is classic downwardly mobile play-acting.”
― Dan Fox, Pretentiousness: Why It Matters

“Pretension is a question of optics. The pessimist sees pretension as a sham. The optimist views it as innocent, tragicomic, an excess of effort. Like watching amateur actors in a local village play, a wooden or overambitious performance might not be deliberate, It could be deeply sincere; the am-dram troupe putting everything they’ve got into their production. Pretentiousness resides in someone’s lack of awareness that their ambition might exceed their capability, or inability to laugh about one’s own limitations.”
― Dan Fox, Pretentiousness: Why It Matters

“Try describing a few of the most wildly successful pop albums of the twentieth century without mentioning the artist and title. A concept rock album about a fictional Edwardian military band, featuring musical styles borrowed from Indian classical music, vaudeville, and musique concrete, its sleeve design including images of Karl Marx, Oscar Wilde, Marilyn Monroe, Carl Gustav Jung, Sir Robert Peel, Marlene Dietrich, and Aleister Crowley? That’s Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band by The Beatles, one of the biggest selling records of all time. How about a record exploring the perception of time, mental illness, and alterity? Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon, which has to date sold around 45 million copies worldwide. Ask any of those 45 million who bought a copy of The Dark Side of the Moon if they thought themselves pretentious for listening to an album described by one of the band members as “an expression of political, philosophical, humanitarian empathy,” and the answer would almost certainly be no.”
― Dan Fox, Pretentiousness: Why It Matters