If I'd have known that I could make a living as television critic, I reckon I would have made different choices about my studies and career. Emily Nussbaum, television critic for the New Yorker, has my dream job as a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist, insightfully analysing popular culture. Nussbaum has compiled a collection of her articles in I Like to Watch - Arguing my way through the TV Revolution (2019).
'Buffy the Vampire Slayer' is the show that started Nussbaum's career. Often dismissed as a superficial program for young people, Nussbaum argues, in the first essay in this collection, that 'Buffy' is multilayered and more complex that it appears.
Throughout I Like to Watch, Nussbaum writes intelligently about many of the shows I have watched over the past twenty years - 'The Sopranos', 'Sex and the City', 'Girls', 'Marvellous Mrs Maisel', 'The Good Wife', 'The Americans', 'True Detective' and more. Her essays allowed me reminisce fondly about some of these shows and made me want to rewatch others to consider some of the contextual angles she observed. There are also essays about shows I haven't seen (like 'Jane the Virgin', 'Blackish', 'The Comeback') which, while still interesting, are less engaging. Nussbaum includes profiles of Joan Rivers, Ryan Murphy and Jenji Kohan in this collection, observing how their lives are reflected in their art.
One of the most powerful pieces is 'Confessions of a Human Shield', a long essay in which she explores Woody Allen, Louis CK and the #MeToo movement. Nussbaum writes about her views on Allen changed over time, having been an avid fan from her teenage years, and now seeing him and his films in a different light. She is uncomfortably torn and asks whether you can seperate the art from the artist.
Nussbaum's sharp observations have a distinctly feminist lens and it is great to read a collection that praises art aimed at women, people of colour and other marginalised groups. In her essay on 'Sex and the City', Nussbaum pushes back against 'the assumption that anything stylised (or formulaic, or pleasurable, or funny, or feminine, or explicit about sex rather than about violence, or made collaboratively) must be inferior'. She elevates content targeted to women and dismissed the notion that TV is a 'guilty pleasure'.
Nussbaum's sharp observations have a distinctly feminist lens and it is great to read a collection that praises art aimed at women, people of colour and other marginalised groups. In her essay on 'Sex and the City', Nussbaum pushes back against 'the assumption that anything stylised (or formulaic, or pleasurable, or funny, or feminine, or explicit about sex rather than about violence, or made collaboratively) must be inferior'. She elevates content targeted to women and dismissed the notion that TV is a 'guilty pleasure'.
Television is often seen as a lesser art form, although that is changing with recent 'must see' event television and the arrival of streaming services which has seen top cinema directors, writers and actors drawn to the small screen. As an avid viewer myself, I appreciate Nussbaum's validation of this particular art form.