Jets vs. Sharks

** Please note that my citations of Sarris are in reference to the seventh edition of the text.**

The first thing that occurred to me while reading these assignments is that this debate is a load of nonsense and I shouldn’t have to read it. This entire discussion (loosely conceived) seems to be about the tensions between New Criticism and New Historicism, two schools of thought which are largely antithetical and have essentially agreed to disagree and coexist in our critical milieu. New Historicists are those who make the point that an author’s life, personal history, religious views, etc. should be relevant material to consider in evaluating a work, and New Critics are those who emphatically declare that nothing outside the text should affect our understanding and analysis. Auteur theory is clearly of the New Historicist bent and is no more or less valid than a theory of film analysis that demands only an evaluation of technical expertise – end of story. No? (Sigh.)

However, if I am going to sit down to actually think about this assignment, I would have to say that the most interesting tension amongst these articles is the Pauline Kael’s response to Andrew Sarris. Although more vitriolic than productive in her criticism, Kael does hit on a few important questions that need to be asked about the expressions (or indeed, the delineations) of auteur theory. I don’t find her (incredibly personal[1]) attacks on Sarris merited on a substantive level because Sarris’ project is really, as he has made clear himself, to express auteur theory as he understands it – nothing more and nothing less. And her claim that the observations of a director’s personal style is really a “personal theory of audience psychology” seems a bit too dismissive (audience psychology is an element of Reader Response Theory, an offshoot of New Historicism – again, these are tensions between schools of theory whose validity really depends on whoever is deciding to use those critical tactics) (269). I also disagree that auteur theory is "an aesthetics which is fundamentally anti-art," because Sarris makes clear the undeniable truth that evaluation of art (like all good critical work) must make some concessions to the technical elements of the piece, because after all, they are an inseparable part of what makes art, art (280). However, where I see Kael making a positive contribution to the dialogue about auteur theory is her insistence upon asking important questions about the limits of terminology. Sarris makes the key observation that personality has come to signify a great deal in the way we talk about and think about film (echoing what Foucault has said explicitly), but he does place a certain emphasis on the necessity of that personality to be “distinguishable,” or at least somewhat easily discernable. As Kael points out, the distinguishable is not always the more desirable. Where she asks how “this distinguishable personality [functions] as a criterion for judging works,” she points to the fact that some of the most beautiful film is often the film in which the “signature style,” if you will, of the director is more oblique (269).

Andrew Sarris, however, really seems to have the last word. If the third (and arguably most important in my opinion) criterion of value is the evaluation of the “tension between a director’s personality and his material,” then the gradation of authorial visibility certainly lies in the resolution or synthesis of this tension (Sarris 453). Kael's objection that this tension undermines the artistic integrity of a film is ill-founded: the tension with material has nothing to do with an indiscriminate selection of scripts, as she implies. Rather, this tension with material that Sarris cites is the fundamental conflict between artistic vision and practicable reality: something unavoiable in the best of films (in any film). Moreover, the importance of the technical value of film cannot be underestimated, because as Sarris continues to point out, in great film, “you always get more for your money than mere art” (452). Although, I would have to side with Kael when she writes, "[critics have to] remember that art is an expression of human experience"(278). Finally, she seems to soften by the end, making some comments with which I wholeheartedly agree, particularly with regards to her dismissal of that universal theory "that will solve all the riddles of creativity" (279).

Ultimately, though, the question I would like to ask of Pauline Kael is “where do you really see the function of personal response to a film?” When she spat that calling a film good out of some inexpressible gut feeling is like “a [woman] telling us that she feels a certain dress does something for her,” I wonder what Kael really thinks human reaction to art is supposed to be (and, hello, don't we all get dressed that way??). When she suggests that the response to truly great works of art is supposed to be something along the lines of "This time, he's really done it!", I wonder how she thinks this is different than finding that perfect dress (272). I don’t think having a critical response and an intensely personal, visceral reaction to one work is antithetical. I’m of the opinion that such is really the intent of art (yet again, another New Historicist bent – can you tell which way I lean?). Perhaps the first and foremost dictate that we require of our critics is that they love art, although Kael's addenda is admittedly just as invaluable: a good critics is one who "helps people understand more about the work of art than they could see for themselves" (277). But I don't think you can have one without the other to be a really good critic.

*Also Kael is mad if she thinks Dreiser has transcended anything. He’s just such a terrible writer. And Foucault is still a self-righteous jerk.

[1] To paraphrase her own words against her, a film critic need not be nice, but it is necessary that she not be a bitch.