When is pretention justified?
Here is my paradox. Tonight I dined with my father and some of his friends at the Legal Sea Foods in the Prudential Center. For those who don’t live around Boston, the Prudential Center is an upscale mall at the base of one of Boston’s 2 skyscrapers. It houses stores like Lacoste, Sacks Fifth and a Krisy Kreme outlet. As far as malls go, it’s rather upscale. But eating at Legal within the mall was a great dissapointment. The restaurant was too small, our table was too out in the open, the service was lousy and the food merely average. As I looked around, I realized that this Legal in particular was a postcard version of itself. That is, Legal can go either way in terms of fanciness. The one in Park Plaza is beautiful. The one out on Route 9 in a strip mall is less so. But this Legal, in the fancy mall, was probably the worst I’ve been to in the entire chain. Then I got to thinking about why this was the case, and that lead me back to my musings on malled life. This legal sea foods was in a giant mall, that is connected to another mall and various hotels by above and underground walkways. Here, one could come to Boston and sample some of what Boston had to offer all without leaving the mall. I admit, I brought Johannes here (but I also dragged him to Bunker Hill and took him to the top of the Customs House.)
What solidified my thinking about the problem with this restaurant was the store which occupied the space accross the aisle in the mall. It was a luggage store. Hardly extraordinary. But, the interior of the store was designed to look like an airport terminal. The way the celeing was designed and the particular style of lighting used all screamed, “You’re at the Airport!” And what better a place to think about getting that perfect piece of luggage than in the airport itself. But this was not the airport, rather is was a storefront that could be constructed and destructed within a matter of days. It was the image of the original, but far from it.
So when one buys a Ralph Lauren polo shirt, does that mean that they will be yachting off of the coast of Nantucket, or riding through the Hamptons? Hardly. Every schmuck seems to have a Ralph Lauren polo shirt these days. Yet, despite the fact that there are identical alternatives available (come on folks, a polo shirt is a polo shirt,) it is curious that Ralph gets away with selling his for 5 – 10 times the price. Polo is a good example of people paying a price premium for the image, rather than the original. Having the Polo logo signifies something – what exactaly that is differes from person to person. Now walk into the Ralph Lauren section of your local Macys and you will see that instead of the white walls which host other brands, Polo’s walls are of wood, and there are plaids thrown in for good measure. Now, Polo has been up to this for a while, but now the idea of selling the lifestyle (i.e. schmuck at mall as jet setter) has pervaded into almost every facet of American life.
So how does this relate to Legal Sea Foods? Well, you go to Legal Sea Foods so that you can say you’ve been to Legal Sea Foods. It has cachet with those who have visited Boston. So, the restaurant need not be so much about the best food ever (i.e. a fine Etruscian silk polo shirt vs. a cotton one from Uzbekistan,) as the fact that it is indeed Legal Sea Foods. Therefore quality goes down, but the cachet remains, and an ordinary meal can be explained in conversation down the road as, “yes, I’ve been to Legal in Boston.” This statement, though rather banal, is a form of the Ralph Lauren polo shirt. It attempts to say, “yes, I have taste, and I know what’s the classy thing to do.” It attempts to ask, “have you been as well?” Much as the small but conspicuous polo pony asks where yours is. Thus the pretention value is disproportionately higher than the actual value of the experience. Now, I own a few Ralph Lauren polo shirts, and I fully realize the irony of the fact that they are status item available at the local mall. I could say the same about legal, but though I may buy another Polo shirt, I don’t forsee me chosing to go to Legal again.
So what’s the difference between the two? Well, frankly, maybe it’s just that I’m a Bostonian and therefore Legal is less important to me (I mean, we’ve all been there at least once.) But maybe its something else. Though I’m willing to accept the irony of buying the $80 shirt with horse versus the $14.99 shirt with no horse (both made in the same country a la day) I fail to be amused by the faux ambiance of the Mall Legal Sea Foods. Whereas the Polo shirt indulges my small pretention and does a darn good job keeping me warm, the Legal Sea Foods in the Mall caters to no whim and does not satisfy as a product.
Thus I think we have to ask ourselves:
1. What are the things for which we will give into for pretention’s sake?
followed by
2. Do such indulgences contradict our desire to extract the most comfortable or enjoyable experience from such things?”
If we answer nothing to the first question, we are liars. If we answer yes to the second question, then perhaps the pretention is not justified. If we answer no to the second question, and can answer no to the third question:
3. Does this indulgance harm others?
then, perhaps the indulgance is harmless and not worthy of criticism. So for me the shirt is a legitamate indulgance, just as would be an expensive dinner at one of the best restaurants in town – and best not just in the fact that the name is used to justify outrageous prices for mediocre fare – rather best as in great service and an equally impressive product. Wearing a Polo shirt to such a place? Now that may be venturing towards selfish hedonism, but I’ll leave such decisions to the Republicans.
8^)
Okay, first a rhetorical question: what’s so bad about pretension anyway? People are a self-classifying society – for better or for worse, it’s how we stay organized. You know whom to trust, whom to suck up to, whom to avoid, etc., based on how people look, talk, act, etc. There’s no shortage of details to base your opinion of someone on. What makes one detail (a shirt) more superficial than a more accepted one (skill)? If you meet the most talented writer in the world and she’s a dreadful human being, should you still respect her any more than you’d respect a really nice dumb guy who’s wearing a polo shirt?
Given that we base our opinions of people on a wide variety of factors, I would answer #2 by saying there isn’t a contradiction here – you can buy the same object for two entirely different reasons without being a hypocrite. This is because the function of an object may go far past what that object’s original intended function was. If you want a shirt, you can buy one at Wal-Mart for a few dollars. If you want the status and social appreciation that comes with a shirt that, by popular decree, is special, you buy the $80 polo shirt. It’s no more condemnable than buying a computer and a VCR.
Is this a problem? Depends on what is being bought and the effect it has on the rest of the world.
Until it’s proven that polo shirts harm the ozone layer, I’m not going to care what people wear. Freedom of choice, and all that. But there are instances in which I think personal pretension is very harmful to the rest of the world. I still believe, as I said in my argument below with Tex, that a lot of people buy SUVs so they’ll appear more athletically-oriented, or more dominant, or any number of macho qualities that the car companies peddle in their TV ads featuring physically attractive SUV-driving maniacs tearing up one highway or another. Given that SUVs devour fuel, pollute more, and are less maneuverable than smaller cars, I’d say that this is one pretension that I’d like to see gotten rid of fast. Same for the women who like to wear the remains of endangered species on their heads because they want to look worldly and chic. Not cool at all.
But as for pretentiousness itself, although it may be irritating in large doses, I don’t see the problem at all. Although I think it’s kind of sad when people decide that they aren’t anything more than what they’re wearing, driving, or using.