Pauline kael Should Have Been A Pop Star

In “A Gift For Effrontery” Ken Tucker, critic-at-large for “Entertainment Weekly” says of Pauline Kael, “Kael is the only writer about whom I can say that being condescended by her felt like an honor.” In the same article Kael is quoted as saying, “Not many reviewers have a real gift for effrontery … I think that may be my best talent.” What is it about such a perfected offensive, condescending personality that draws devoted followers? Image? Controversy?

It seems that the thing that Pauline Kael was most successful at was not reviewing, but controversy: she cultivated an image so volatile and unwavering that it struck a chord in the totality of her readership. Kael basked in attention, and used movie reviews to glean more of it more often than she used them to provide insightful, credible evaluation. She was good at getting talked about, fought over, and argued with. Pauline Kael would have been an excellent pop star.

In her essay “House critic” Renata Adler calls that single and powerful attracting quality “Liveliness”:

I think what has happened is this: an extreme case of what can go wrong with a staff critic. Prose events that would, under ordinary circumstances and on any subject other than movies, have been regarded as lapses –the sadism, slurs, inaccuracies, banalities, intrusions—came to be regarded as Ms. Kael's strong suit. Ms. Kael grew proud of them. Her cult got hooked on them … There was always the impression … of liveliness.

The perceived liveliness is a product of how out of place Kael's 'common' language, material, and exaggerated approach were to her contemporaries in the field. Tucker puts it this way in “A Gift For Effrontery”,

Film criticism in the present day is dominated by careerists whose primary frames of reference are other examples of their chosen art plus the desired opinions, real or imagined, of their editors.

Kael avoided that, but at the expense of credibility. In “House Critic” Adler cites, as an example, Kael's review that mistakenly accuses director George Roy Hill of “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” of recording indoors.

Instead of relating Kael offers advice, prescription, and judgment that belittle not just the film, but the audience for whom she is writing. In her review of “Hiroshima” Kael writes:

It seemed to be a woman's picture—in the most derogatory sense of the term … I decided that the great lesson for us all was to shut up. This woman … was exposing one of the worst faults of intelligent modern women: she was talking all her emotions out …

It is as if Kael projects her own fear of intimacy onto the film and onto her audience. The movie screen is, indeed, only her starting point. And that is not necessarily negative—on page 99 of “Afterglow: A Last conversation With Pauline Kael” Francis Davis asks her if she wants movies to be “good for us” or “medicinal” and she answers yes—what is negative is that in her exploration she speaks for her audience instead of to them. She tells them not only that movies should be medicinal, but how. This is a problem of style, using “I” and “you” and “we” in a parental fashion. In her review of “My Left Foot” Kael writes, “I don't know that any movie has ever given us so strong a feeling,” and “you don't feel manipulated.” Kale seemed unwilling to grow past her initial reaction to a movie, or just unwilling to grow, and that problem that is hard to overlook.