Can’t say I always agree with him, but he’s always worth reading.
I’ve always found him to be a tad pretentious (never an Iranian art-film he didn’t like), but I usually agree w/ his reviews of the more mainstream fair.
[“Pretentious” implies dishonesty; that he’s just *pretending *to like Iranian film. Personally, as a person with 2 Iranian films in my lifetime top 25 list, I don’t think he’s just pretending to like them. It’s cool, of course, if you don’t, but it’s silly to suggest, simply because you disagree with him about Iranian films, that he’s being dishonest.]
In any case, while Rosenbaum clearly never wrote for the same audience that Roger Ebert or Gene Shalit do, he contributed some capital-G Great writing about movies that will last a long time. Personally, my self-taught film education, such as it is, pretty much began with his anti-AFI list, and tangents therefrom.
Um, lissener, are you saying that your self-taught film education started less than ten years ago (since that column is from 1998)? I was under the impression that you had been a major film fan for twenty or thirty years.
Yeah, pretty much. Before that article, I *liked *movies, but no more than a lot of other people. I didn’t know much about them. In fact, I would’ve told you prior to that article that I didn’t like old movies. Checking off the titles on that list, and following the tangents thus suggested, constitutes about 90% of my film “education.”
Can’t say I’ll miss him.
There’s a place for his style of writing about film, but that place is not a free city paper. A widely read free paper needs a movie reviewer. It can get by with a film critic. It doesn’t need a cinéste. It needs someone to express a reasonably knowledgeable opinion about whether or not a film is any damn good. Rosenbaum’s reviews generally read like a dusty term paper. I’m sure his fans can find examples that are not, but enough were to cause me to avoid bothering to read further reviews.
Personally, I thought it was awesome that it was possible to read such criticism without having to subscribe to Film Comment or Les Cahiers du Cinema. Reviewers are a dime a dozen; every paper has them. *The Reader *has several–you may or may not have noticed, but Rosenbaum’s reviews have never been weekly.
No it does not.
It has nothing to do with “pretending,” and the words are unrelated. Calling Rosenbaum pretentions is merely saying he overestimates the merits of the films. I can’t address that charge (the only review of his I recall was his analysis of Ishtar, which was right on the money), but no one is claiming he’s pretenind to like what he doesn’t like.
The words are related if you go back far enough, but I’m assuming lissener is being willfully obtuse by picking the least-applicable definition for the situation.
THis is simply untrue.
Sorry, I disagree. All of these definitions imply varying levels of dishonest. Look up all the words used to define it:
The first definition, “1. full of pretense or pretension.” “Pretense” is further defined as “pretending or feigning; make-believe.” Even though this first definition–“full of pretension”–is obviously the most applicable in this context, and is clearly defined as dishonest (“pretending, feigning, make-believe”), the secondary definitions also imply various degrees of dishonesty:
“2. characterized by assumption of dignity or importance.” This implies that the dignity or importance is unearned; untrue. Hence, again, an implication of dishonesty. That definition of “pretentious” is used to describe someone who is pretending to be smarter/cooler/whatever than they really are.
“3. making an exaggerated outward show; ostentatious.” To exaggerate is to “to magnify beyond the limits of truth.” Again, implicit dishonesty.
I’ll accept that **HelloNinja **didn’t *mean *to suggest that Rosenbaum was “feigning,” or “making believe,” or that he was “pretending to be smarter/cooler/whatever” than he really is, or even that he was “magnifying beyond the limits of truth.” But if that’s the case, than he/she should use a different word, because I still maintain, after all the dictionary diving I’ve done, that “pretentious” implies dishonesty.
ETA: and here’s the first definition in another dictionary, lower down on the first link above: “1. Claiming or demanding a position of distinction or merit, especially when unjustified.” Again, claiming an unjustified position, to me, implies dishonesty.
Sorry, meant to address this too.
Again, I disagree. Rosenbaum works in opinions, not facts. If he “overestimated” a factual point, there would be room for an honest mistake. But instead, he is sharing his own opinion, which by definition cannot be right or wrong. The only way he can “overestimate” it is to exaggerate or in some other way misrepresent his own opinion; to not, in other words, tell you what he really thinks, but something else. Again, dishonesty.
(I didn’t mean for this to be such a hijack. Only, using the word “pretentious” without acknowledging the accusation of dishonesty that this does, in fact, imply, is a particular pet peeve of mine. Just meant to point it out, not derail the entire discussion.)
Rosenbaum was an amazing critic. I understand his detractors. Some of us, myself included, don’t watch that many movies and like a little spectacle and predictability now and then. But I appreciate someone reminding us that movies can be high art, and who try to get us to think about the things we watch. Especially when they’re great writers themselves.
So I guess the OED gets it wrong. :rolleyes:
The words clearly have common roots, but “pretentious” has always meant “ostentatious” and “showy.”
The OED also has only one definition:
So I guess you must be correct and the OED is wrong again. :rolleyes: :rolleyes:
There is no implication of dishonesty with “pretentious.” It means “self-important.” The pretentious person can honestly believe his opinions, but thinks they’re more important than they really are.
Moderator interjects: Such “assumptions” are unwarranted if made privately, and a rules violation when stated publicly in this forum. You may NOT insult other posters, and that includes attributing (or guessing) motives or personality traits. The worlds “being willfully obtuse” fall into that category.
For anyone confused about this, please read Forum Rules, noting especially Post #3 in that thread.
Ferret Herder, you will please refrain from this sort of thing in future.
Understood. It was impolite of me to assume intentional rather than accidental misinterpretation via a variety of possible reasons, and should have been left out of the post.
First I looked at the OED citation from RealityChuck:
Bolding mine. I see three definitions, though closely related. So I look in the OED myself for “affecting” and get this:
My conclusion: both of y’guys are correct, because pretentious has a pretty broad range of meaning. It can mean just “ostentatious” and “showy”, but it can also imply dishonesty.
I would personally recommend against use of the word for the same reason I would recommend against calling other people “ignorant”. Though it’s obviously true that other people are ignorant about something, that’s true for everyone, so there’s a very real connotation of “stupid” that tenaciously clings to most accusations of ignorance, whether that meaning is intended or not. It is my opinion that tossing around the word “pretentious” in art discussions often has a similar effect.
It’s possible, though, that my opinion might just be based on my own defensiveness about the label. I really fucking hate it when people call stuff I like pretentious, and I hate it even more when they call me, personally, pretentious. But maybe I just need to grow a thicker skin.
To the OP, I admit that Rosenbaum has his talents, but he’s either too “pretentious” (in the sense of pretending) or too intellectually lazy for my taste. I mean, Raiders of the Lost Ark is “designed to make us feel better about slaughtering Arabs”, or the Star Wars prequels were “clearly paving the way for the next Gulf War”? Huh? He seems to be either deliberately staking a position against popular flicks to buffer his elite indy-cred (which seems unlikely to me), or he’s unforgivably sloppy with imputing the “intentions” of filmmakers. Either way, he’s too tooth-grindingly frustrating for me to tolerate.
First of all, OED is so exhaustive that you can almost always find an esoteric sub-sub-sub-definition that is at least ambiguous enough not to contradict any given argument. This is why, for purposes of usage rather than esoteric etymology I usually turn to modern American dictionaries, like Webster’s or American Heritage.
But this is irrelevant in this case, because your quoted definitions still imply varying degrees of dishonesty. “Affecting greater importance or merit than is actually possessed” still suggests that you’re putting forth something that isn’t actually true. When you apply that definition to an artistic opinion, the only possible interpretation is dishonesty.
Perhaps words like “esoteric” or “elitist” or even “condescending” would come closer to the meaning you’re trying to put across with “pretentious,” without the implication of *willful *exaggeration that that word carries.
(Also, RC, for the sake of keeping this discussion flowing in a friendly, even exchange, let’s eschew the rolleyes. Deal?)
You may not have meant for the hijack, but it’s happened (again). Essentially, as soon as someone uses the word in any movie/arts thread, I cower in fear on whether you’re going to make another mountain out of a semantic molehill.
Whatever the OED does or doesn’t say about the term, the word “pretentious” has assumed a very common (and commonly understood) usage that is not exclusively confined to your incredibly narrow and stringent reading of the word.
I enjoy engaging in lively debates with you, whether we agree or not, but you have left a field of dead horses in your wake, choosing to beat so mercilessly this non-issue.
Are you right about the word? Are we wrong? Is there some happy medium we can find some agreement on? On the last question, I think we’ve established that we’re at a perpetual impasse.
Wow… all this from one little word. To clarify… I did not mean to suggest that Rosenbaum pretends to enjoy or not enjoy whatever films he writes about. I believe that he is sincere in his writing. Apologies to anyone that I may have offended through my ignorance of the English language.
What I was trying to say, using your words in your last post, is that he is “esoteric,” “elitist,” and even “condescending.”
Also, I have nothing against Iranian films in general. I enjoy all sorts of cinema from art house indies to foreign films to big summer blockbusters. It just seem to me that he tends to trash on mainstream stuff and puts the obscure “not for everybody” stuff on a pedestal more than most. Different strokes to rule the world.
Doesn’t it say something about his writing that this thread has basically just become a hair splitting discussion about a single word, and not of the merit’s of Rosenbaum’s work? He obviously hasn’t made as big as an impression on the world of film as some may think.