Quote:
Originally Posted by Neapolitan
That is not what I said. I didn't say Frank just deemed them "pretentious." Zappa had a decent amount of self-awareness and often express reasonable and legitimate critism against those things mentioned. Frank Zappa didn't "deem" those things "pretentious" willy nilly and in the deeming of those thing "pretentious" thus made them so.
Then you reduce the meaning of "pretentiousness" to something not being liked. Frank Zappa doesn't like "X, Y, and Z" and ironically there are people who don't like Frank Zappa. Who's to say who is more disliked? ... err "pretentious?"
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Seems like the source of our disagreement is that you implicitly view ideas as reified essences, as independent entities; whereas I view them as sites of contestation, definitionally tied to a certain perspective that puts down a stake contra other perspectives.
I indeed don't particularly care for the term "pretentious" - the perspectives it's tied to are usually not ones I'm impressed with.
As opposed to Zappa. What a talent.
I'm a Beefheart guy, not a Zappa guy, but there's so much to admire about Frank. My "unpopular opinion" about him would be that his very finest hour was his very last release, the orchestral Yellow Shark.