The Send up of the Parody of the Exaggeration of the Insult
Or something like that!
http://www.upfromtheunderground.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=183&Itemid=76
Horror fans have a skunk stripe of anti-intellectualism that, like Pepe Le Pew's, does not easily wash off like the poor lady, black cat who squeezed under a freshly-painted white fence at the beginning of the cartoon. This got out of hand on the Shocklines forum with a thread that has (at the moment) stopped at TWENTY-FRICKIN-FOUR PAGES, slamming any lit crit type who would try to analyze or evaluate popular horror fiction. A few of us pointy-headed types jumped in and started criticizing the anti-intellectuals, one of whom retaliated in full melt down fashion by (among many other things) denying that evolution was real, and we were all a bunch of Godless atheists, jealous of the success of hard-working, Christian, conservative writers and their simple, unadorned prose. Then the wag over at Up from the Underground did his spoof of it. That's the background, though the whole debate has been ongoing for a long time.
http://www.upfromtheunderground.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=183&Itemid=76
Horror fans have a skunk stripe of anti-intellectualism that, like Pepe Le Pew's, does not easily wash off like the poor lady, black cat who squeezed under a freshly-painted white fence at the beginning of the cartoon. This got out of hand on the Shocklines forum with a thread that has (at the moment) stopped at TWENTY-FRICKIN-FOUR PAGES, slamming any lit crit type who would try to analyze or evaluate popular horror fiction. A few of us pointy-headed types jumped in and started criticizing the anti-intellectuals, one of whom retaliated in full melt down fashion by (among many other things) denying that evolution was real, and we were all a bunch of Godless atheists, jealous of the success of hard-working, Christian, conservative writers and their simple, unadorned prose. Then the wag over at Up from the Underground did his spoof of it. That's the background, though the whole debate has been ongoing for a long time.
posted by KPaffenroth at
1:14 PM
2 Comments:
Yeah, the 'pseudointellectual' and 'pretentious' words really made me realize what we were dealing with.
The day I got called both of those words for expressing an enjoyment of Philip Glass was the day I realized those were code words for "You think you're smarter than me, don't you?" Once someone feels condescended to, they become defensive and nearly impossibly to reason with.
That's why it's so important NOT to condescend to people, but as your experience points out - there's no helping if someone "feels" they're condescended to. And reading good books or using big words when you talk is not (necessarily) being condescending. In fact, I think if I wanted to condescend to someone, I'd deliberately talk "down" to them by using simple words about simple subjects.
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