The Complete Guide to Faking Sophistication

Visual Arts

You’re out on a date, and for some unholy reason the little devotchka you’ve got your eye on decides to ask you what your favorite painting is. Whatever shall you do? You keep thinking of the Sistine Chapel, which makes you think of Michelangelo, which makes you think of nunchucks.  Here's something you probably like: Magritte’s “The Son of Man”. It’s the one from The Thomas Crown Affair.

Warning: if you try our methods while you're dating an art major, you will sound like a moron.  She’ll think you used to bang your head against the wall for fun. She’ll laugh at you, and then she’ll call her friends and they’ll laugh at you, too.  Then she'll google your mom, and call your mom, and your mom will laugh at you. Don’t try to fake it with someone who knows what they're talking about. In fact, if you’re dating a woman whose major is closely related to any of the areas that we go over, try to find someone else.  It's not worth scorn from your mother.

First, tell her that you’re a huge fan of Magritte. Pronounce it “Ma Greet,” not “Ma Gritty”. Explain that you absolutely love surrealism, and mention Dali in passing.

Second, pretend like you know what you’re talking about.  This is the second step in every one of these tutorials, so I’m only mentioning it once. 

Third, since this piece was made after 1900—1964, according to the Internet—it’s about how modernity alienates man.  (If a painting was made before 1900, it’s about man’s relation to God.)  

What to say: “I’m a big fan of ‘The Son of Man’ by Magritte. It’s an intriguing take on modernity that also alludes to the Biblical heritage of Western civilization. Magritte doesn’t just allude to Adam’s fall in the form of the apple or Christ as the Son of Man, he takes it one step further. The apple can symbolize knowledge, like in the Bible, but it also modernity itself, and that apple/knowledge/modernity  alienates the subject from everyone else by making him faceless, a man apart. Magritte is gesturing towards the idea that modernity acts as an alienating force upon man.” 

Fourth, prepare yourself, because that little devotchka will come back to your place and make sex upon you while wearing a bowler hat.  She's kinky like that. 

Classical Music  

While sitting at a table in a bar, Beethoven comes over the speakers. This, of course, leads to the nice young lady asking, “What’s your favorite piece of classical music?”  

I can't know what everyone's favorite piece is, but let's just go with Pachelbel’s “Canon in D”? It’ll make you seem sensitive, ready to be married, completely unoriginal and slightly pedestrian. How to make the pedestrian high-culture? Fake it.  

First, mention that you like “Canon in D” by Johann Pachelbel. She’ll say something like, “Yeah, my little sister likes that, too.” You will withhold the urge to "accidentally" dump your glass of ice water on her lap.  

Third, explain calmly that “Canon in D” has had an amazing influence on the music we listen to today. 

What to say:  “It might seem slightly middlebrow, but it has stood the test of time so well. Countless pop songs have completely ripped off the melody from the piece.  While that isn't necessarily a determining factor for artistic quality, the fact that so many artists have used its melody does show that Canon has a cultural impact that is still resonant today.  This resonance with the culture is difficult to achieve, especially considering that many classical pieces are only listened to in certain circles.  Canon, on the other hand, is everywhere all the time.” Just ask Rob Paravonian:

Fourth, allow the woman to come back to your apartment and touch your naughty parts because you’re so damn cultured. And call them naughty parts when you talk dirty to her. Women love that. Also, pull out your conductor’s baton.  By "conductor's baton," I mean naughty parts.

Film  

Film is the one area where you might have any sort of knowledge. Remember, though, that just because you saw leaked pics of Heath Ledger as “The Joker” from the next Batman movie (they were fake anyway, you dumb sucker) doesn’t mean you know a damn thing about films. And intelligent, sophisticated women want men who love great films. Foreign films (NOT anime--no matter how good you think Akira is, she'll think it's shit), classic films, experimental movies, etc.  So when she asks you what your favorite movie is, what will you say to impress her?  

Star Wars. Empire Strikes Back. Most of Return of the Jedi.  

Those are great films, but can you sound sophisticated while talking about them? Hell yeah.  

First, make sure you are not wearing a Jedi costume or dressed as an Ewok. If you do this right, she’ll be holding your light saber by the end of the night.  

Third, inform her that the Star Wars Trilogy is just as important as Grimm’s fairy tales or any of Aesop’s Fables in explaining the human condition to future generations.  

What to say: “The trilogy perfectly demonstrates Vladimir Propp and the Russian Formalists’ necessary elements for narrative structure. Lucas’s science fiction epic is actually a fable that follows the heroic narrative in order to teach us more about ourselves. In addition, Luke Skywalker is a shining example of the Jungian hero archetype: His birth is shrouded in mystery; he attempts to rescue the maiden, Leia; he’s guided by the old wise man, Obi-Wan; he has a quest to fulfill that is greater than himself. The trilogy is the best example of both the Jungian heroic archetype and the Russian Formalist approach to narrative that we have, and it’s important that we don’t dismiss it as mere popcorn entertainment.  It is much more than that: it is a cultural event and an epic on par with The Odyssey or The Epic of Gilgamesh.  It will stand the test of time not because of its special effects, but because of the structure.”  

Fourth, dust off that metal bikini you hid in the crawlspace above your closet. She’ll wear it proudly as an example of your aesthetic taste.

Literature  

How are you supposed to keep up with literature when you’re spending all day on the internet? You could go to the library or something, but that would cut into your time putting captions on pictures of kittens that say: “I’M IN YER INTERNETZ, MAKING YOU LOLZ.” But you’ve got an intelligent woman in your apartment, and she sure as hell isn’t going to screw herself. Invariably, she’s going to want to see what books you own. If you don’t have any, say that your apartment was flooded and destroyed all of them; if you have some and they are all Dean Koontz, say they’re your roommates; if you have good books, you will be having heterosexual intercourse tonight. Nothing turns a woman on like a man of letters. 

Once the subject of books has been broached, the “favorite book” question will follow shortly. Since you’re a man, I’m going to assume that your favorite book is Slaughterhouse-Five by the recently departed Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. Many women assume this is a juvenile book with line drawings of a woman’s cleavage in it. Here’s how to inform her that she’s wrong about Vonnegut and wrong about the book:  

First, inform her that Kurt Vonnegut was a prisoner of war during the firebombing of Dresden, if she doesn’t already know that.

Third, explain that, no matter what your feelings on war, Slaughterhouse-Five is the greatest modern anti-war novel. 

What to say: “Vonnegut’s novel is in a class by its own. Slaughterhouse is a metafiction masterpiece, alternately becoming intimate with and alienating the reader in an attempt to explicate the true cost of war. Billy Pilgrim is everyman, and as everyman he is the best of us as well as the worst of us. He’s cowardly, brave, confused, and sex-starved. He elicits a response from the audience because this half-crazy optometrist is so affected by the war that we can’t help but wonder what we would do if faced with the horrors of war that he experiences. Furthermore, Vonnegut’s use of crude humor is present not only to elicit a response from the reader, but also to destabilize the narrative in a way that echoes the destabilization that war brings.  Vonnegut's oeuvre isn't a polemic: it's a dialogue with a culture that had gone momentarily crazy with war.  Instead of writing a philosophical tome, Vonnegut places the text within fissures in the culture that will allow it to instantiate its message into the collective cultural consciousness.”  

Fourth, prepare for some dirty, Tralfamadorian sex.  No Shetland ponies allowed. 

Double Viking makes no promises, but you will definitely get tons and tons of intelligent women using these methods. Intelligent women in no way could see through this clever ruse. It is too clever, and too much of a ruse.