Pauline Kael Should Have Been A Pop Star

**REVISED 2/22/10

“Kael is the only writer about whom I can say that being condescended by her felt like an honor,” notes Ken Tucker, critic-at-large for “Entertainment Weekly.  In the same article by Tucker 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?  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.”  She deemed Kael an instance of everything that can go wrong with a staff critic, and called Kael's style a “lapse” that existed simply because she only wrote about movies;

–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 dullness, but at the expense of credibility.  In “House Critic” Adler cites, as an example,  a review in which Kael mistakenly accuses director George Roy Hill of “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” of recording indoors.  In her review of “Gimme Shelter” Kael racked up inaccuracies, inspiring the filmmakers, Albert and David Maysles, and Charlotte Zwerin to write “A Response to Pauline Kael” which they intended for publication in the “New York Times.”

Instead of relating Kael offers advice, prescription, and judgment that belittle not just the film, but her audience.  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, what is negative is that in her exploration she speaks for her audience instead of to them. On page 99 of “Afterglow: A Last conversation With Pauline Kael” Francis Davis asks if she wants movies to be “good for us” or “medicinal” and she answers yes.  She says not only that movies should be medicinal, but how.

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.”  This is a problem of style and word choice, used to convey a preaching, parental tone.  Kael seemed unwilling to grow past her initial reaction to a movie, or just unwilling to grow, and that problem is hard to overlook.