randy_byers | Gravitas

I've been meaning for a long time to wish out loud that people would stop using the word "gravitas," but I can't quite pin down what bugs me about it. Is it that I don't like the word, or is that I don't like the concept? Where I see the word used most frequently is in film criticism, and usually it is used to note -- and almost always to decry -- a *lack* of gravitas. Today I saw it used in a review of Be Kind Rewind -- a very positive review that ends, "Good-hearted and intelligent, Be Kind Rewind still lacks for the gravitas of The Science of Sleep." As if that's a bad thing!

"Gravitas" has a sense of "weightiness" that I recoil from instinctively. "Seriousness" and "dignity" are also given as definitions. I dunno, I'm still torn between whether I find it a form of latinate pretentiousness, or if I'm just against dignified weighty seriousness in general. I tend to like words of all kinds, including the latinate, so I'm thinking it's weightiness itself that I object to. Give me the baroque and the absurd, that's what I say. To hell with gravitas.

(Hm, I just googled "lack of gravitas," and the first page is mostly about politics. "Does Obama Lack Gravitas?" Kill me now! Well, later I see a consideration of whether Ovid lacks gravitas. I'm beginning to hope so.)