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"From her creation of the first 'Approval Matrix' in New York magazine in 2004 to her Pulitzer Prize-winning columns for The New Yorker, Emily Nussbaum has known all along that what we watch is who we are. In this collection, including several substantive, never-before-published essays, Nussbaum writes about her passion for television beginning with Buffy--as she writes, a show that was so much more than its critical assessment--the evolution of female protagonists over the last decade, the complex role of sexual violence on TV, and what to do about art when the artist is revealed to be a monster. And, she also explores the links between the television antihero and the rise of Trump. The book is an argument, not a collection of reviews. Through it all, Nussbaum recounts her fervent search, over fifteen years, for a new kind of criticism that resists the false hierarchy that places one kind of culture over another. It traces her own development as she has struggled to punch through stifling notions of 'prestige television,' searching for a wilder and freer and more varied idea of artistic ambition--one that acknowledges many types of beauty and complexity, and that opens to more varied voices. It's a book that celebrates television as television, even as each year warps the definition of just what that might mean"--… (more)
User reviews
The author has a higher tolerance for violence and a bleak world view than I do.
They're fairly varied. Some are short
Nussbaum writes with a distinctly feminist sensibility, although it is a variety particularly her own, as someone who enjoys edgy, raunchy humor and sees a valid place for stories about sexual assault and violence against women on TV, but who also has very strong feelings about the way television, and especially the shows that get labeled as "prestige television," so overwhelmingly center the straight white male perspective both in front of and behind the cameras, and about the ways in which stories more squarely aimed at women tend to be treated dismissively.
She's a good, interesting writer making some good, interesting points, and, somewhat to my surprise, I found that even when she was talking about shows I'd never seen -- which was probably at least half of them -- she almost always still easily kept my attention. And, really, I'd say this entire collection might be worth it just for the long, thoughtful essay she wrote in the wake of #metoo, grappling in a deeply honest way with the impossible question of how much it's possible to separate art from artist and what we can or ought to do with good art by terrible people.