Musings on the Pretend Theory

“When one is pretending the entire body revolts”- Anais Nin


In pretending, our bodies do kind of revolt, but I believe that this is when we are forcing ourselves to pretend. We are naturally pretending creatures and lying creatures and pretend in order to better ourselves and to find recreation. When I pretended as a little kid to be fighting with my friends, I think it very well could have been a reflection of what was happening over in Iraq and pretending, for children, is a way of coping. For adults and adolescents, it is very different and forms and it hurts us so much that our bodies must revolt.

Kendall Question 2

Is it worthwhile to acknowledge that one is pretending to feel certain emotions about a narrative work or is it better to just feel the “pretend” human emotion and enjoy the work? Is it better living in the darkness about this particular human phenomenon?

I do not think it is worthwhile to think this way but I think that it is important to think about the quality work through literature, music, art, and film. There is good art and bad art, of course, and I think it is more important to think about and analyze the good art which has meaning to human beings. Human beings search for meaning and for knowledge and I believe that they can find that from analysis of good art. Even watching a film for the umpteenth time, one can still feel emotion and while that may be pretending, there is something to be gained from this imaginary emotion, a glimpse into what it really feels like.

I admire when people simply enjoy a great work of literature or a magnificent piece of art, but I think that there is something more to think about with especially profound ideas in literature.

Kendall Question 1

How does one apply Kendall’s “pretend theory” to music and visual art?

These two are not, at first, apparent as narrative art-forms and as artists and musician created art in the 20th century, visual art and music have lost, almost completely, their narrative structure. In a van Gogh painting, there is a story and in a jazz song, there is also a story. But we begin to lose those narratives all too quickly. Paintings become abstract and music becomes extremely experimental and I do not think that it is so easy to characterize music and art in the postmodern world.

So, do we "pretend" with these kinds of works? No, I do not think so. We do not pretend, we simply conceptualize and accept what we see, and we accept the emotions. I see this as the biggest flaw in the "pretend theory" in making music and art narrable. 

Answer to Nicole's Question

Think back to the last time you played make-believe. Compare it to reading a book or enjoying some other narrative art-form. Are they completely the same? What are some similarities? Differences?


The last time I came remember playing make-believe is when I had duels or massive battles with my friends using toy lightsabers or plastic guns. I remember always getting quite a lot of adrenaline from running around the yard and having to fight for my life, since I was usually the one who died first. This form of make-believe was based more or less off of Star Wars and action movies to which America is inured. However, on the turn side, I have read books and seen films depicting violence in such a way that frightens and unhinges my soul. There is a lot more attached to the deaths of soldiers in literature and artistic film. For example, though I have not read War and Peace, I still can see the deterioration of the soldiers' minds and the country's former glory. I never felt anything of the such while playing these backyard games. I never thought about how what I was doing was an ironic juxtaposition to a terrifying war-like nation into which I was being raised and would have to face.


This backyard play-battle is a simulation of what war would be like and it is sick to understand how we are being raised on war and violence only to go away to war because we believe it is right for our country. The biggest difference is that this is even less real than reading about war in a novel or in a movie because in good literature and film, one can see how a director or writer juxtaposes his or her film or novel to the real world and human beings' behavior.This would never be achieved with the simple toiling of children--we cannot even begin to understand what a horribly war-mongering race of people we are even as we fight and simulate backyard battles over and over again, rising up again as some strange, undead product of our battlling America.

Art Auction

Here is the auction which Professor Johnson brought up in class on Wednesday. It is interesting to see how much these paintings go for.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/04/arts/04iht-melikian04.html?_r=2&smid=tu-share