"Wow, you guys are really having a deep talk right now, huh?" projects the cognizant and willful roommate, foot on the door between home and abroad. In deference to the repetition of interaction inherent to the roommate relationship, my friend assents with a "sure" -- after all, to fail to capitulate to flatmates is to reap nothing but a Pyrrhic victory. I laughed at the moment, but inside my head, I fucking cringe.
Now, where could this shittiest sort of millennial angst be coming from? I'm sure the roommate (let's call her Chloë) meant nothing more than a well-intentioned delivery of good feeling in framing our conversation as deep -- one that, unfortunately, was haphazardly undercut when her friend from just beyond the frame of vision asked with a voice that was absolutely waterproof to discretion, "Are they high?" In this instance, the two could be conflated with delivering the same, basic message -- "What the fuck are you talking about right now?"
The problem is, I think the term "deep" is innately loaded with a lot of condescension. This condescension is basically based along two places, really: the speaker and the conversation. From a semiotic perspective, what does the phrase "that's so deep" even serve to convey? For the speaker, it tends to communicate the message of "I don't know what you're talking about, and on some fundamental level, I couldn't care less -- but let me say something about it anyway." Basically, the person is giving you a blasé rebuttal, initiating a real-life version of "too long; didn't read"; I'm going to grant myself the permission of participation, of critiquing the topic at hand, precedent to the discussion itself.
Ultimately, the issue with the word "deep" is one of incommensurability. To describe something as deep is to frame it with a certain level of superficiality that will never be appropriate in any conversation that is truly deep. If your best friend is describing her depression in 10th grade, you wouldn't want to respond. "Wow, that's so deep." On the other hand, even if she were to relate to you some story of a personal journey she embarked on in 10th grade, you wouldn't want to respond with "That sounds really deep!" No, she would want you to respond with something befitting the situation, something like "Wow, did this all have to do with school, or family?" or "Would you say you're the same person as before that experience?" Something appropriate. To describe something as deep would be to rob it of the relative significance to which it deserves. Thus, in a paradoxical twist of thought, I think that any situation evocative of the word "deep" is intrinsically inappropriate to the use of the word itself. The word deep is insipid.
When our dear roommate Chloë pitched in to the debate about French New Wave movies, she was hardly concerned about Jean-Luc Godard's films. She didn't even want to talk about the topic of cinema, really. No, when she proffered the claim that our talk was deep, she was in essence saying, "I haven't really thought about this topic, and I'm not really prepared to say something about it." And neither was she willing -- otherwise, she would've inquired about what it is we were talking about exactly, what it is about French New Wave that made it so significant, why it affected and catalyzed the development of movies like "Submarine" today.
In light of this, I think that when you say something is deep, you're at once distancing yourself from the discussion, and immersing yourself in it; you're at once placing yourself in the role of apathetic observer and loaded critic. Those who assign the label of "deepness" are, in my opinion, pundits without passion, detractors of a discussion (wow, that's a really deep thing to say!) who want to say things about it without the means to do so. It is this tension created by the term "deep," created between between passive observation and active engagement, distance and invection, that rubs me the wrong way. When you label something deep, you're simultaneously placing yourself above the speakers, yet passing judgment upon the discussion. If Chloë wanted to join in on the talk, that would be excellent. And if she just wanted to stop by and drop off a hello, that'd be cool too. But when she walked by, weighing in with nothing more than a disingenuous comment of deepness, she was putting herself as both observer and participant, a pontificate dropping down a dismissal on a conversation at once below her and outside her breadth. And that diametric opposition thus begets condescension. And from a person you'd have to live with, that's a fucking jagged little pill to swallow.
