Pretentiousness - Dan Fox

As you may be aware, I am no stranger to pretention. Conceptual art, difficult novels, cross-dressing, cravats, Electroclash, French cinema, and anything else likely to give Jeremy Clarkson a fit of the vapours, I probably like it. So you could say I was a willing audience for Dan Fox’s essay in defence of pretentiousness. But while there may be an element of preaching to the perverted here, there is also substance to add to the style.

Fox begins by looking at the etymology of pretention. The word comes from the Latin, 'prae' – before, and 'tendre' - to stretch or extend. From this, Fox imagines pretention as a shield, which can be held out in front of the body, offering protection. This conjures up images of the faded Beau Brummel, living in his French exile. Brummel had spent time in debtor’s prison, and cut a shabby figure on his release. In his essay Who Is a Dandy?, George Walden describes Brummel as he appeared in the 1830s, “an imperious Englishman dressed in tattered clothes… held upright by little more, it seemed, than stiff-necked pride”. To survive, he was reliant on the goodwill (and credit) extended to him by shopkeepers; each night, he held grand balls in his hotel room, his imaginary guests announced by a sympathetic porter. In this state, Brummel was being sustained seemingly by the shield of pretention alone.

In his memoir The Naked Civil Servant, the iconic dandy Quentin Crisp supplies a subtly contrasting image, of pretention as ‘something with which you can barter with the outside world’. In this sense, pretention still offers some form of mediation between the self and society, but it also acts as an augmentation, rather than a purely defensive mechanism. I once spoke with an author who had met with a former mistress of Ernest Hemingway, and had been advised by her to develop a ‘figura’, an outward persona distinct from the private self. Key personality traits are foregrounded, exaggerated, until they come to define one in the public eye. Although Hemingway and Crisp make unlikely bedfellows, they both recognised the dual function of protection and promotion; indeed, this is familiar to all social media users, who create an online figura which presents our most saleable qualities whilst hiding away that which we wish to keep private.

Looking beyond the individual, Fox argues that pretention can play an important social role. The public reaction to David Bowie’s death highlighted the impact of his role-play and pretention, which allowed generations of outsiders to find their own identity within the spaces he had explored. Fox also discusses the Harlem drag balls recorded in the film Paris is Burning (1990). At these events, pretention created a carnivalesque atmosphere, a safe space in which lives constrained by racism, homophobia and class could be reshaped as a celebration - an oppressive identity was, at least temporarily, cast off.

This deliberate blurring of fantasy and reality can be troubling, for a culture which prizes ‘authenticity’. Fox accurately locates this obsession with realness within the British class system. When we cannot accurately place someone social status through their appearance or speech, we become confused and indignant. Although the old sumptuary laws no longer apply, we are still distrustful of those whose appearance blurs boundaries of class, race and gender. From Common People to Berlington Bertie from Bow, there is a deep-seated suspicion of swells, snobs and slumming it, which permeates British culture even in an age where we are increasingly encouraged, by shows like Drag Race, X Factor and Big Brother, to look behind the curtain at how entertainment is manufactured.

The main thrust of Fox’s essay concerns the policing of pretention, the use of ‘pretentious’ as a pejorative. Brian Eno talks about pretention as a means of ‘taking psychological risks without physical penalties’, but this is not always the case. Certainly I, and many others, have faced physical and verbal abuse from Shouting Men with a (sometimes literally) vested interest in maintaining the status quo. The strategies used to silence pretention are similar to those used for the policing of female behaviour in public spaces and online – although rarely as organised or explicitly violent as misogynistic intimidation tactics. The physiological risks are worth bearing in mind as well. We become invested in our figuras, to the extent that our IRL existence can appear unsatisfying and mundane. Pretention requires a strong commitment, and if the gap between figura and self becomes too pronounced, it can lead to profound feelings of alienation and depression. Escapism and experimentation have their risks.


A more refined version of the social policing of pretention can be found within the mainstream media. Fox highlights an example of Andrew Marr describing two attendees at the Turner Prize exhibition in 2000. He presents a vicious caricature of the couple (actually the Scottish musician/performance artist Momus and his girlfriend). Momus is a man in his twenties with 'a thin grey jersey and leather trousers, with carefully maintained stubble and wrap-around shades' (it should be noted here that Momus lost the vision in one eye in 1997, which explains the sunglasses). His Japanese girlfriend is apparently childlike and unsmiling. Together, they represent 'a vast nomadic group, mostly young, urban, clever, a little intimidating'. His pitch rising, Marr announces that it is time to 'elbow them aside', before reaching the climactic declaration ‘I hate them’. It is easy to recognise in this description the insecurity of the elite which feels threatened by something it doesn’t understand. Here, ‘pretentious’ acts as an umbrella term, designed to indicate a lack of substance, trustworthiness and authenticity. The near-synonym ‘sophisticated’ has even darker implications due to its association with anti-Semitism.

Whether in the street or in the media, accusations of pretentiousness shut down debate, reinforce a (normally white, middle class, cis) status quo and deny the right of ambition and experimentation. The backlash against public grief following David Bowie’s death is indicative of this attitude. Giles Coren, typing words for The Times, looked to minimise the complexity of Bowie’s figuras, and his impact. With a searing lack of insight, he depicts Bowie as ‘all skinny and sad, obsessed with hair and clothes, desperately shagging everything that moved,’ an artist who ‘appealed to hysterical people’. Anyone who thought that they had been influenced, or somehow liberated by him, was wrong: ‘All that guff about how Bowie liberated gay people, that’s just tosh. That liberation has been far too gradual, tidal and culturally momentous a thing to lay at the feet of one (as I said, excellent) singer.’ In this smug, self-congratulatory world view, experimentation is childish and vacuous: all power must be retained in the centre.

This critique of pretentiousness has been internalised to some extent by the art and music worlds. Fox examines the dynamic which exists between the forms, each of which is plagued by insecurity. For the pop world, there is a desire for intellectual legitimacy, which art can provide; for art, there is a fear of being marginal, which can be assuaged by the crowds which pop music can bring. However, even collaboration between the two worlds can bring further criticism – pop stars are accused of acting above their station when they enter the rarefied surroundings of the art world.

At the same time, pretention faces a more subtle threat in the form of changes to higher education. Fox describes art schools as safe spaces in which generations of British musicians honed their figuras, given time and space to experiment with pretentiousness. Now that universities are increasingly focussed on league tables and student experience surveys, this important, intangible experience is sidelined.

Fox makes a strong argument to say that we can judge a society by the way it treats pretentiousness. A society which values pretention allows young people and marginalised groups the freedom to express themselves, invests in creativity, and fosters tolerance; a society in which pretentiousness is scorned is backward-looking and insular. In an age where collective action and trade unionism seem increasingly passé, pretention is a means of signalling one’s rejection of mass-production and perpetual consumerism, of aiming at something higher. Vive la prétention!