@Tari: yes, precisely - I’m interested in why the breakdown in communication happens. The person who thought Inception was pretentious, for instance, was absolutely convinced Chris Nolan was talking down to the audience by selling his storyline/concept as “deeper” than it actually was, whereas I simply didn’t perceive that at all. What’s more, this wasn’t because we differed otherwise in our assessment of the quality of the work: we both thought it was a pretty good movie, not stupid certainly, but not mind-bogglingly intelligent either.

So where does that come from? What are the cues? (What on earth is “depth” anyway?) And what is it triggering in me, how is it relating to the background context I use to interpret every new thing I see?

The problem is, in order to have this conversation with people, I have to convince them of my analytical framework, namely that “pretension” is something situated in our various responses to the work, and not an objective quality you’re trying to convince me the work/author possesses, and I am trying to convince you the work/author does not. XD;