“Some years ago I attended an evening of mime by Marcel Marceau, an elaborate exercise in aesthetic purification during which the audience kept applauding its own appreciation of culture and beauty, i.e., every time they thought they recognized what was supposed to be going on. It had been bad enough when Chaplin or Harpo Marx pulled this beauty-of-pathos stuff, and a whole evening of it was truly intolerable. But afterwards, when friends were acclaiming Marceau’s artistry, it just wouldn’t do to say something like ‘I prefer the Ritz Brothers’ (though I do, I passionately do). They would think I was being deliberately lowbrow, and if I tried to talk in terms of Marceau’s artistry versus Harry Ritz’s artistry, it would be stupid, because ‘artist’ is already too pretentious a term for Harry Ritz and so I would be falsifying what I love him for.”
Pauline Kael, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang