Kael Revisited

Pauline Kael drew upon a highly familiar tone in her writing as a way to connect with her readership. This aspect of her style tends to conflict with her tendency towards elevated language in her reviews. This contrast, coupled with several other techniques act to separate her voice from any sort of objective truth within arts-journalism – despite the longevity of her career.
Kael’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 of authority on the subject as well as people’s acceptance of that authority.
A major pitfall in the creation of her argumentation comes in her sense of authority on the subject. This authority is derived, 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 Kael that assumed authority over what was and wasn’t good movie making.
This authority, though, was often a false sense of authority and Kael often proved to be largely uninformed. As Renata Adler points out in her article “House Critic,” Kael once made bold statements about the indoor shooting of Butch 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 Kael, 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 sting in an attempt to twist her audience’s arms into compliance. In her review or Victorrio De Sica’s Shoeshine, Kael writes,
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,
Certainly no one wants to be incompetent of feeling these deep emotions that such an ‘authority’ as Kael does – or at least she suggests as much through the tone of the sentence.
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.
For Renata Adler this is characterized in Kael’s “overuse of certain fraises.” She points to her use of words ending ‘ized’ as well as her abundant use of slang words like ‘twerpy’ and ‘dopey.’ For me this element of Kael’s style conflicts with the elevated language used to connect with her New Yorker readership. Although this mix works well for those who customarily read the magazine it alienates audiences outside of that faction. This seems contrary to a way “people spoke about the movies.” It puts a contingent on which people and does not appeal to a wide audience.
Her increased involvement with movie studios, even taking a position as a consultant to Paramount Pictures, prove to be a conflict of interest - further separating her voice from any sort of objective truth in media-critique. In my eyes, techniques sometimes viewed as supplementary to her strong arguments only detract from a point of view drawn from a false sense of authority.