As far as I can tell, this is not Pauline Kael.
"The hot-pants Queen Victoria of American film criticism, Pauline Kael has now paid the debt of nature, providing the obituarians with the opportunity to finally top off their 35-year outpouring of ardor and awe. Never before has a film critic's living reputation sent so many scrambling for encomiums, and never has a film critic's passing left so many media mouths so verklempt. Don't expect it to ever happen again: Kael reigned supreme as film culture's fiery, maenadic Mrs. Grundy—what will she say?—during that culture's most fecund and dynamic day, which has long gone the way of film clubs, the Monthly Film Bulletin, Luis Buñuel, and the Bleecker Street Cinema."
-- Michael Atkinson, Village Voice, September 10, 2001 (link to full "obit")
Letter in response to the above:
GENDER DEFENDER
Michael Atkinson is certainly entitled to hate Pauline Kael's work. But what in the world did the late film critic, who died on September 3 at the age of 82, do to deserve such a gleefully hateful ''obituary'' ''As the Lights Go Down,'' September 18? The late New York Times film critic Vincent Canby wasn't subjected to this sort of slander in his Voice eulogy. Then again, Canby was a man--and it's the fact that Kael was a woman that evidently sticks in Atkinson's craw. How else to explain his descriptions of her as a ''maenadic Mrs. Grundy,'' a ''high priestess,'' ''the wolverine bitch,'' a ''hot-pants Queen Victoria,'' and ''a miniature tigress with gray hair and barbed tongue.'' Or Atkinson's ridiculous contention that Kael's ''relentless eminence'' was, in part, a result of her gender. Does he honestly think that Kael became celebrated because she was a woman? Does anyone?
Manohla Dargis
Los Angeles, California
Michael Atkinson replies: I don't ''gleefully hate'' Kael or her writing, but the national brown-nosing performed upon her at the perpetual expense of much wiser critics has been absurd. Canby never garnered such overripe praise, and saying so doesn't imply he deserved to. As for Kael's sex, guess what: The American media got off on her doughty-dame public profile, as her unprecedented (for a film critic) eulogization demonstrated. Pick a knee-jerk gender fight if you want, but her writing still isn't all it's been cracked up to be.
It's not terribly relevant, but the meaning of the word "captious" I learnt by associating it with Kael. I haven't read a great many of her reviews - none that celebrate "trash as art" as stated - but her critiques of Kubrick's films (2001 in particular) do help with the associative memory.
Adler and now Atkinson? Is there an "I hate Kael" blogfest going on that I missed?
As an obit, this is pretty indefensible on all levels -- moral, critical, journalistic. There is definitely something about Kael that seems to encourage a certain type of (insecure?) critic to open up with both barrels. Something beyond the usual "anxiety of influence."
I'd sure like to read all of this entry, but I can't get past Atkinson's suffocating smugness. For once, I'm glad I don't live in New York.
Steve: Now I can't even remember how I came across the stuff in these last three Kael posts. (Like a lot of people, I suppose, I do a lot of free-associating while looking things up, with help from Google.) But what I thought was most interesting about the Atkinson one was the reply -- from Manohla Dargis.
I'm not sure a lot of younger people nowadays (you know, the whippersnappers) are aware of what a phenomenon Kael was in the '60s - '80s, and how intensely she was both loved and reviled for what she did, both in print and as a power behind the scenes.
If you want to read a really slavish obit, instead of one full of "suffocating smugness" you can track down Howard Hampton's Film Comment piece (reprinted in his new book Born In Flames). As for Atkinson, he lays out all the pros and cons of her work pretty precisely: energy, chutzpah, the importance of pleasure, her combative nature on one side. Her abandonment of world cinema, and her stylistic shortcomings on the other. I am not sure how this type of obit is "indefensible" when there are plenty of others who give her a free pass.
"--MAENADIC!"
Time to grab the Fawnskin & Wine!
Was she THAT cool?
Pauline Kael had Atkinson's number four decades ago, when she decrid the nihilistic boys club of NY critics in her "circles and squares" piece, and the deeply hysterical reactions that have accrued since its publication (and the weird, "We must defend Cassavettes as if our mahoods (in all senses) depended on it!" attacks on her from certain blogs in recent years) only seem to reinforce her point. No one would call Andrew Sarris "criticism's Prince Charles," or Roger Ebert "Louis XIV" (even if his "l'etat c'est moi" response to critics of Crash last year might justify such a reading). And Atkinson's unwillingness to address the specifics of Dahrgis's response is telling. I always find it sad when really smart, engaging cinema writers get defensive about her, and seem to fear the real passion and love she brought to movies (the best critique of Kael is Phillip Lopate's essay in "Totally, Tenderly, Tragically," which is mostly negative, but honestly engages with the work and places it within interesting contexts).
i feel bad because she is a very important person to me and not to you! so i ask not to do that with her thank you.
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