I Like to Watch: Arguing My Way Through the TV Revolution

I Like to Watch: Arguing My Way Through the TV Revolution

From The New Yorkerâ€™s fiercely original, Pulitzer Prize-winning culture critic, a provocative collection of newÂ and previously published essays arguing that we are what we watch.

â€œEmily Nussbaum is the perfect criticâ€”smart, engaging, funny, generous, and insightful.â€â€”David Grann, author ofÂ Killers of the Flower Moon

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY NPR â€¢Â Chicago Tribune â€¢ Esquire â€¢ Library Journal â€¢ Kirkus Reviews

From her creation of the â€œApproval Matrixâ€ in New York magazine in 2004 to her Pulitzer Prizeâ€“winning columns for The New Yorker, Emily Nussbaum has argued for a new way of looking at TV. In this collection, including two never-before-published essays, Nussbaum writes about her passion for television, beginning with Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the show that set her on a fresh intellectual path. She explores the rise of the female screw-up, how fans warp the shows they love, the messy power of sexual violence on TV, and the year that jokes helped elect a reality-television president. There are three big profiles of television showrunnersâ€”Kenya Barris, Jenji Kohan, and Ryan Murphyâ€”as well as examinations of the legacies of Norman Lear and Joan Rivers. The book also includes a major new essay written during the year of #MeToo, wrestling with the question of what to do when the artist you love is a monster.

More than a collection of reviews, the book makes a case for toppling the status anxiety that has long haunted the â€œidiot box,â€ even as it transformed. Through it all, Nussbaum recounts her fervent search, over fifteen years, for a new kind of criticism, one that resists the false hierarchy that elevates one kind of culture (violent, dramatic, gritty) over another (joyful, funny, stylized). I Like to Watch traces her own struggle to punch through stifling notions of â€œprestige television,â€ searching for a more expansive, more embracing vision of artistic ambitionâ€”one that acknowledges many types of beauty and complexity and opens to more varied voices. Itâ€™s a book that celebrates television as television, even as each year warps the definition of just what that might mean.

FINALIST FOR THE PEN/DIAMONSTEIN-SPIELVOGEL AWARD FOR THE ART OF THE ESSAY

â€œThis collection, including some powerful new work, proves once and for all that thereâ€™s no better American critic of anything than Emily Nussbaum. ButÂ I Like to WatchÂ turns out to be even greater than the sum of its brilliant partsâ€”itâ€™s the mostÂ incisive, intimate, entertaining, authoritative guide to the shows of this golden television age.â€â€”Kurt Andersen, author ofÂ Fantasyland

â€œReading Emily Nussbaum makes us smarter not just about what we watch, but about how we live, what we love, and who we are.Â I Like to WatchÂ is a joy.â€â€”Rebecca Traister
Country USA
Manufacturer Random House
Binding Kindle Edition
ReleaseDate 2019-06-25
Format Kindle eBook

Country	USA
Manufacturer	Random House
Binding	Kindle Edition
ReleaseDate	2019-06-25
Format	Kindle eBook

I Like to Watch: Arguing My Way Through the TV Revolution

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