Hate and Love are One in the Same: An Essay on Pauline Kael

When Pauline Kael (1919-2001) retired as The New Yorker’s film critic in 1991, she was met by the applause of disdain and of praise. She is loved by many, hated by an equal number, and occupies the minds of all those people enough to inform their thoughts on Art. Pauline Kael is worth discussing because her bold writing style and unabashed personality incited discussion throughout her life, and continues to today.

In “House Critic,” Renata Adler scathingly denounced Kael’s work based on her use of rhetorical questions and her use of “I,” “You,” and, “We” in her reviews. Though it is where Adler finds fault that Kael’s great strength can also be found.

In Kael’s 1989 review of The Little Mermaid, she asks her readers, “Are we trying to put kids in some sort of moral-aesthetic safe house?” Kael has her opinion already, and makes it clear, yet she asks her readers so that they may dialogue with her, or at least talk about it within their social circles.

Similarly, these ‘faults’ help Kael draw her authority from her life, not from an academic approach to film. She reflects personally on the films, using the first and second person to preserve herself as a member of the audience, just like her readers would be. Certainly, she has seen numerous films, and, as a critic, knows a great deal more than most of her readers do about the minutiae of film, though she presents that knowledge without being pedantic.

It is her brazenness that has captivated readers for so many years, and has made Kael so prominent. When reading Kael, her thorough injection of her personality into her work reflects her waiting for a response about her work, and herself. Both of which are welcome, and are important for a continued discussion of Art. Art is a discussion, and, as Oscar Wilde wrote 100 years prior to Kael’s retirement, “Without the critical faculty, there is no artistic creation at all worthy of the name.”

Kael’s critical writing should be talked about so that the discussion about the art of criticism can continue to develop by a new cache of voices and perspectives, and so that her subject, film, can also grow. As long as Art develops and responds to the changes in society, criticism must do the same. In doing so, Kael, and Adler, must be remembered and talked about, love or hate, and the art of criticism will continue to change based on the lessons learned from Kael and her colleagues.

The Jazz critic Francis Davis writes in the introduction to Afterglow, his book documenting his final conversation with Kael, that, “Pauline’s insistence that art happens in the real world and that it should be an instrument of pleasure has become a governing principle in writing about rock and pop.” Her influence across genres speaks to her relevance to criticism as a whole, and her protégés are as important as her enemies in enriching this art.