A Criticism of Kael's Criticism

Pauline Kael abandoned her intentions of law school to pursue her passion for writing. Her writing is as enthusiastic as her love for movies, and her knowledge of movies, actors, and directors was vast. Her taste was for lowbrow art, her writing is anything but academic, and her opinions often differed drastically from much of the critical world. For all of these reasons I should—and want to—love Pauline Kael and her independent spirit, but I do not.
Kael's vulgar, repetitive vocabulary does not bother me: the "whore" and the "trash" and the "horny" do not phase my teenage mind. Her individualistic opinions do not tarnish my image of her—though I wonder how many of those opinions are how she really feels or simply for the sake of being independent. Even her belligerent attitude toward popular films, given her tendency to pan films, "She hardly praises a movie any more," Renata Adler writes, does not bother me.
Pauline Kael's snobbish and conceited attitude toward her audience is repulsive. Thinking herself a lover of movies more than anyone else Kael says, "I always assumed that movies had meant as much to them as they did to me. But they hadn't." And although no one can contest Kael's love for film, she uses this admiration as a justification to speak as the most knowledgeable person in regards to movies. She writes, "But, oh, God, why isn't it better? Why isn't there the daring and the exaltation that our senses fairly cry out for?" speaking on behalf of all audience members and their senses, as if her opinion is that of a constant truth.
In addition to criticizing films in her reviews, specifically "Hiroshima Mon Amour," Kael criticizes both educated people and other film critics. In the opening paragraph, Kael admonishes educated audiences who enjoy foreign or experimental films, accusing them of using film for the wrong purpose. According to Kael, movies are intended for an escape "from the tensions of their complex lives and work," rather than for an appreciation of "movies as an art." This rule is extremely frustrating, begging the question of what right Pauline Kael has to decide what functions films should or shouldn't have, or how the public should perceive them. Later, Kael criticizes the opinions of various critics. Her grounds for disapproval seem to simply be her own opinion which contradicts them.
Although unarguably influential, Pauline Kael was unnecessarily belligerent and pretentious in both the reviews she wrote during her career and in the ways that she looked back on her life during her interview in "Afterglow."