A Blind Following

Pauline Kale’s unique style and loud opinions won her a long-time job as lead movie critic at the New Yorker for more than twenty years. From this post she and her work became influential in the world of film critique. Her love for movies drove a storied career that built up her sense authority on the subject as well as people’s acceptance of that authority.

A major pitfall in the creation of her argumentation, though, comes in her sense of authority on the subject. This authority comes, in large part, from the successful release of her first book I Lost It at the Movies. The result of such success was to create a voice of Kale that assumed authority over what was and wasn’t good movie making.

This authority, though, was often a false authority and Kale often proved to be largely uninformed. As Renata Adler points out in her article “House Critic,” Kale once made bold statements about the indoor shooting of Cutch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid only to find out that the film was shot outdoors by the demand of director George Roy Hill. “When informed of such errors, Ms. Kael never acknowledged or rectified them,” the article goes on to explain.

Instead of searching for some sort of objective truth about why the movie is good or bad she draws from her own authority as “Ms. Pauline Kale, lead critic for the New Yorker.” She dosen’t write to prove why the movie is good but to prove why her opinion of the movie is good and well informed. To do this she often uses manipulative tactics. For one, she draws on her previously mentioned authority as a way to make statements like
I walked up to the street, crying blindly, no longer certain whether my tears were for the tragedy on the screen, the hopelessness I felt for myself, or the alienation I felt from those who could not experience the radiance of Shoeshine,
sting line this line does in her review of Vittorio De Sica’s Shoeshine. Certainly no one wants to be unable to experience the radiance of a movie like Ms. Kale does.

Take also, for example, her trademark use of a familiar tone throughout her writing. She talks about the difference between academic English and “the way people spoke about movies” in her interview with Francis Davis chronicled in the book, Afterglow.

Renata Adler also talks about this affect in her overuse of certain fraises. “She also likes words ending in ‘ized’ (‘vegetablized,’ robotized,’ ‘aestheticized,’…) and a kind of slang (‘twerpy,’ ‘dopey,’ ‘dumb,’ …)which amounts, in prose, to an affectation of straigforwardness.” This, though, conflicted with an elevated language in discourse that acted to alienate any readership that was much less educated that that over her New Yorker readership.

These tools fooled many a reader into agreeing with her take on the movie or at least respecting it. I am not so easily fooled. Though. Her increased involvement with movie studios, even taking a position as a consultant to Paramount Pictures, prove to be a conflict of interest in my eyes and further to separate her voice from any objective truth in media critique.

Jon Pareles NYTimes Defense

The Article I'm Defending!
What first struck me about this particular article was the fact that it helped me become interested in a topic that I am normally not particularly interested in. Electronic music, and especially ambient music, is not a genre that I particularly enjoy or find my self interested in. The wording that Jon Pareles uses in this article to describe the sounds of a live ambient show paints a vivid picture. I was curious, though, as to whether or not the picture that I had in my head was actually accurate. To my delight, but not my astonishment, I found a cut down version of the show that Jon Pareles was reviewing on YouTube. What I found was that, amazingly, “background wash of pink noise like interstellar dust and puffy tones, pitched and unpitched, arising out of the static” sounds exactly as one might expect it to sound. What really impressed me about this article, though, was the length. Something that I have been having trouble with in this class has been fitting my reviews into their allotted word-count. Jon Pareles, though, does a good job of accurately describing something that’s very hard to describe in a succinct and straight-forward manner.
What, though, offers a source of authority when talking about what is a good or a bad live music performance? Knowing, inarguably, whether or not the music was on pitch can help and Jon Pareles, using his possession of perfect-pitch, can do this. In an interview with www.rockcriticsarchive.com Pareles recounts his love for music; “I had always been attracted to music—I have perfect pitch---and started playing the piano when I was 6.” This kind of love for music combined with a storied career in rock-n-roll critique gives Pareles this very authority. He speaks in such a matter-of-fact tone in his article and this sense of authority is, I think, where it comes from – and it makes it believable. Another thing that gave Pareles this authority came from my research in his past. His experience originates in Rock-n-roll music critique yet here he is talking coherently about ambient electronic music. Again, pointing to his long-time interest in music, with involvement in his college radio-station, and even a degree in music from Yale gives him a ground on which to stand on.

The show he reviewed.
A list of other reviews by Jon Pareles.
An interview with Jon Pareles.

Connecting Narrative with Arts Review

"Venus in Fur" Review
Story of Wes Bentley


Hey all,

Here are two articles I found especially interesting in this week's arts section of the times. First is a piece on Wes Bentley who played Ricky Fits in American Beauty. The story chronicles Bentley's fall from grace and inability to cope stardom after the release, and craze, of American Beauty.

The second is a review of the new play he is in, in NYC. These two pieces work to complement each other extremely well. This is possibly one of the most interesting parts of the Arts section in the New York Times to me; the pieces that report on more timely news maters and the way they connect to opinion pieces throughout the week.

English Facult Reading: Fostering a Sense of Family

The last Wednesday in January marked this year’s English faculty reading at Kalamazoo College. The ceremony was sited by Gail Griffin, who opened the reading, as being an event that aimed to “generate a little light” during this long, gloomy Michigan winter. She then introduced two visiting members of the English faculty, welcoming them to their first faculty reading at K. This immediately worked to establish a sense of family within the department. A jam-packed family it was indeed as the Olmstead Room of Mandelle Hall was filled with students and friends of the faculty– there was only standing room available for the last few arrivals of the nearly 100 audience members. Dr. Griffin then passed off the microphone to the department’s “fearless leader,” Andy Mozina.
Dr. Mozina started off the night with a calm and collective account of his “Non-sexual affair,” an excerpt from one of his short stories. His coherent and honest tone highlighted similar aspects of his teaching style known well by his students. He spoke with great dignity of the most mundane and even goofy details of a heated, yet platonic ice-cream date. A strong decision as an opener for this event, Dr. Mozina’s reading set the stage for what would prove to be a most enjoyable evening.
Similarly, Bruce Mills signified a strong choice as an ending point to the event with his reading from his upcoming book An Archaeology of Yearning, an exploration of autism and his interactions with his son who is affected by Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD.) He and Dr. Mozina shared a sense of dignity and honesty during their readings. The fact that Dr. Mills spoke from experience, sharing intimate details of his life with the audience, made this a very powerful reading.
In between these two readings came a plethora of different texts from the other eight members of the English department at K. These ranged from excerpts from dense, theory-based papers, to moving personal accounts, to vibrant creative responses. Di Seuss showed why her creative writing classes are often difficult to get into. She read with inspired gusto in her response to a poem entitled “I Dreamed I Knew William Burroughs.” She painted a picture of a powerful woman who slang hash as well as words. Seuss was the only presenter who read from more than one text that she is working on or has published. This gave her reading more depth. An engaging reader Seuss, writer in residence in Kalamazoo College’s English Department, captivated the audience.
The event as a whole certainly had its high points and its low points, and the value of each are debatable. The debate, though, is the true value of Wednesday’s reading. Forming a sense of community between students, and specifically English majors, is a worthy goal; and a goal achieved by this year’s faculty reading. Conversation continues to roam halls and classrooms of the school about the event. The English department invited one and all into their visibly tight-knit family and as students exited Mandelle Hall into the frigid night of January 27th they carried a little bit of light with them into the rest of the week.