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Conversations with Bill Kristol

Paul Cantor on Great Television and the Emergence of a TV Canon

Conversations with Bill Kristol

Conversations with Bill Kristol

News, Society & Culture, Government, Politics

4.7 • 1.7K Ratings

🗓️ 6 October 2018

⏱️ 86 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In his most recent Conversation, University of Virginia literature professor Paul Cantor considers how television has reached a critical stage in the history of a medium: canonization. According to Cantor, television, much like theater, novels, and movies before it, has now reached a point where people recognize that its greatest artistic triumphs have enduring cultural value. Shows such as Breaking Bad, Deadwood, The Simpsons, Seinfeld, and The X-Files, Cantor argues, will be appreciated for many generations to come. Cantor explains how the canonization of TV follows a pattern whereby a medium—originally designed for utilitarian purposes or simple entertainment—is then transformed by great artists into an instrument for the creation of great art. Finally, drawing on the history of TV shows and movies, Cantor argues that collaboration, improvization, and chance are often as essential to the production of great art as forethought and individual genius.

Transcript

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0:00.0

And the Hi, I'm Bill Crystal. Welcome to Conversations and welcome back to a conversation with

0:19.8

Paul Cantor, Professor of English at the University of Virginia, with whom I had the pleasure

0:24.8

of discussing Shakespeare's Roman trilogy, I think is the name of your most recent, excellent

0:29.7

book.

0:30.7

And now we go from Heidelow go from high to low from serious to frivolous and discuss

0:36.2

television. I said that just to provoke you now. You can now give me you

0:40.0

lecture me on how terribly...

0:43.0

Television has reached an important moment in the life of a medium.

0:49.0

It's being canonized.

0:51.0

It's undergoing canonization, thereby proving what I've been saying along that a lot of the criticism of television came from the fact that people were coming at it was an immature medium.

1:03.1

And now in really just a few decades,

1:07.0

it's achieved the point where I think

1:08.4

the most interesting narrative form of art now

1:12.4

is television. And a lot of people are coming to agree with me

1:16.0

and there are a lot of efforts now to determine which are the shows that are going to last, just the way it took a while to figure

1:24.8

out which movies would last and going all the way back to Shakespeare, although

1:29.8

was evident to people at the time how great he was which of the plays by his contemporaries.

1:38.2

So for example a magazine I believe you're familiar with the weekend

1:44.0

and I had an article recently by Sunny Bunch called Television Overload.

1:48.0

So many great shows but who will remember them?

1:51.0

And it is interesting, a lot of people

1:53.2

are reaching the coin now where they say

...

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