Kael vs. Adler

Kael vs. Adler

Pauline Kael was a film critic who wrote for The New Yorker magazine. She was known to be very opinionated and closely focused when it came to reviewing movies. Her approach to movies would be very emotional and her writing style was strongly colloquial. She is often regarded as on of the most influential American film critics of her time. She left lasting impressions on many major critics, some good and some bad.

Major critics such as Armond White and Roger Ebert praised Kael in saying Kael had a more positive influence on the climate for film in America than any other single person over the last three decades. Others, like Renata Adler, strongly disagree. Regarding Kael’s writing, Adler argues in her piece House Critic, where she critiques Kael’s work, that over the years Ms. Kael’s quirks, mannerisms, tactics, and excesses have not only taken over her work so thoroughly that hardly nothing certainly of intelligence or sensibility remains but also that the critical discussion of movies have been altered astonishingly for the worse. In this statement Adler makes a valid point.

Kael had a tendency to let her emotions get the best of her reviews. In her reviews she shared her own reactions to films rather than analyzing them. In her reviews, Kael had a tendency of addressing questions to the reader that enlisted him/her in a constituency. These questions do not express what one sees as a view or perception, instead they are devices used to marshal a constituency that has, actually, no view at all. One sees this in a review Kael wrote in 1986 about the film Top Gun. After criticizing the film by calling it a “shiny homoerotic commercial featuring elite fighter pilots” and expressing her thoughts on the staged aerial dogfights with jets that, to her, were too quick and depersonalizing and nothing but “hunks of steel” flashing by, she plugs in one of her questions that marshaled a constituency. “What is this commercial selling?” she asks. Her use of such questions overshadows her reviews and, as stated before, her emotions and opinions takeover as well.

Throughout Ms. Kael’s career she faced some accusations of being a homophobe. She rejected the accusations as “craziness,” adding, “I don’t see how anybody who took the trouble to check out what I’ve actually written about movies with homosexual elements in them could believe that stuff.” Well perhaps people believed it because it was a reoccurring tendency of making such comments. For example, in her Top Gun review her comment stating that “the movie is a shiny homoerotic commercial featuring elite fighter pilots in training at San Diego’s Mirama Naval Air Station. The pilots strut around the locker room, towels hanging precariously from their waists, and when they speak to each other they’re head to head…” A statement like that one gives more than enough reason for people to speculate her views and accuse her of homophobia, and that will in turn bring speculations to all her reviews. Readers may wonder if what she is writing in her reviews is a well-educated opinion or is it her emotions and beliefs running wild.

Kael said she didn’t know how someone could believe what she wrote when being accused of homophobia with her critique on films she stated had homosexual elements. People believed it because she wrote it. She had made a career out of being a critic and had gained credibility, so naturally people will believe the words she writes are her actual thoughts. By saying she didn’t mean those comments, how is one to take her judgment on things seriously if she just stated that a critique of hers wasn’t a serious one? A critic loses credibility that way, loses the readers trust. To be a good critic one must have an open mind and see things in many different perspectives, think logically, can connect to the readers and can make a well-educated opinion. Pauline Kael is not such a critic, with her supposed phobia taking a toll on her writing along with her excessive use of colloquialism and questions to steering the reader in a direction caused her reviews to be drowned out by her own words.