Emily Nussbaum Likes to Watch

The New Yorker Radio Hour

WNYC Studios and The New Yorker

News, Wnyc, David, Arts, Yorker, Society & Culture, Storytelling, Books, New, Remnick, Politics

4.2 • 6.2K Ratings

🗓️ 28 June 2019

⏱️ 18 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

For decades, critical praise for a TV show was that it was “not like TV,” but more like a novel or a movie. That ingrained hierarchy always bugged Emily Nussbaum, who went on to win the Pulitzer Prize for her criticism in The New Yorker. She has been compared to Pauline Kael, but Nussbaum—acknowledging the compliment—is quick to point out that she has never written about movies, nor has she wanted to. She was inspired to be a TV critic by “Television Without Pity,” a blog site of passionate, informed fans arguing constantly. In her new book, “I Like to Watch: Arguing My Way through the TV Revolution,” Nussbaum argues that the success of serious antihero dramas like “The Sopranos” and “Breaking Bad” has led many to devalue mainstays of TV, like comedies and even soap operas. It’s time to stop comparing TV to anything else, she tells David Remnick.

Transcript

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0:00.0	From One World Trade Center in Manhattan, this is the New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of the New Yorker and WNYC Studios.
0:09.0	I think what America wants to know, Emily, above all, is how do you get to watch TV for a living?
0:15.1	How do you get to be a TV critic? How did this happen to you?
0:17.2	It is a scam that I have pulled off to my satisfaction. But at the same time,
0:23.5	the amount of television has grown so substantially that all TV critics do is complain.
0:28.8	Welcome to the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. Whenever I read an essay by Emily Nussbaum
0:33.9	about some new show, I know I've got a lot more TV to watch. Emily brings this
0:38.6	incredible level of insight and intelligence to her writing, and at the same time, there's always
0:43.9	a quality there that's best described as joy. Emily writes all the time in the New Yorker, but she also
0:49.8	has a new book coming out called, I Like to Watch, arguing my way through the TV revolution.
0:56.1	It's not just a collection of reviews. What the book does is articulate Emily's unique point
1:01.1	of view on the medium. I caught up with Emily Nussbaum last week. I think it's important
1:06.8	for people to know that what you set out to be was a scholar of Victorian literature.
1:12.0	Well, the truth is I roamed around a little bit for a while before that.
1:17.7	But it's true that I was in graduate school.
1:20.8	I had a plan to write my dissertation on the public woman, the overlapping categories of actress,
1:26.5	Jewess, and prostitute.
1:28.5	So that's what the world was spared, is that dissertation.
1:32.4	I was very obsessed with Daniel Duranda.
1:34.6	I had a lot going on.
1:35.9	Now, what kind of TV watcher were you growing up and until this time as a budding academic or would be academic?
1:42.6	Well, as a kid, I liked to watch TV in the way that a lot of kids did in the 70s when I was a little kid in the 80s.
	...

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