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Title details for I Like to Watch by Emily Nussbaum - Wait list

I Like to Watch

Arguing My Way Through the TV Revolution

by Emily Nussbaum
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From The New Yorker’s fiercely original, Pulitzer Prize-winning culture critic, a provocative collection of new and previously published essays arguing that we are what we watch.

“Emily Nussbaum is the perfect critic—smart, engaging, funny, generous, and insightful.”—David Grann, author of Killers of the Flower Moon
NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY NPR • Chicago Tribune • Esquire • Library Journal • Kirkus Reviews

From her creation of the “Approval Matrix” in New York magazine in 2004 to her Pulitzer Prize–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 showrunners—Kenya Barris, Jenji Kohan, and Ryan Murphy—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 “idiot box,” 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 “prestige television,” searching for a more expansive, more embracing vision of artistic ambition—one that acknowledges many types of beauty and complexity and 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.
FINALIST FOR THE PEN/DIAMONSTEIN-SPIELVOGEL AWARD FOR THE ART OF THE ESSAY
“This collection, including some powerful new work, proves once and for all that there’s no better American critic of anything than Emily Nussbaum. But I Like to Watch turns out to be even greater than the sum of its brilliant parts—it’s the most incisive, intimate, entertaining, authoritative guide to the shows of this golden television age.”—Kurt Andersen, author of Fantasyland
“Reading Emily Nussbaum makes us smarter not just about what we watch, but about how we live, what we love, and who we are. I Like to Watch is a joy.”—Rebecca Traister

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    June 25, 2019

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Read

      • ISBN: 9780525508977

    • EPUB ebook

      • ISBN: 9780525508977
      • File size: 1001 KB

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Kirkus

      In her book debut, Pulitzer Prize-winning New Yorker critic Nussbaum offers an expansive collection of writing that captures the artistically evolving spirit of current TV. The author's profiles on TV giants such as Joan Rivers, Jenji Kohan, and Ryan Murphy provide penetrating glimpses into how their personal histories have helped to shape their careers. In one of the book's longest--and best--pieces, "Confessions of the Human Shield," Nussbaum wrestles with the work of renowned artistic talents recently caught up in the #MeToo movement, including Harvey Weinstein, Woody Allen, Louis C.K, and Roman Polanski. "What should we do with the art of terrible men?" asks the author. The revelations about the widespread sexual harassment and abuse in Hollywood, she writes, "made the job of criticizing art seem like an indulgence--the monocle-peering that intellectuals resort to when we should be talking about justice." Nussbaum incisively discusses the difficulties in separating their creative output from their offensive actions. "When you look at [Polanski's] Rosemary's Baby sideways," she writes, "it becomes a darkly funny cautionary tale that could have been written by Andrea Dworkin....The movie was a feminist masterpiece created by a sex criminal." Assembled together, the author's essays and reviews reveal her vast interests and unpretentious tastes as well as her keen insights into what's phony. She seems equally appreciative of gold-standard dramatic series like The Sopranos and the pleasurable indulgences of "unscripted" reality shows such as Vanderpump Rules. We are currently living in what many consider the golden age of TV, with countless quality series from networks and streaming services introduced daily, and Nussbaum has proven to be a shrewd, highly reliable source for evaluating this rapidly progressing medium. "There was something alive about the medium to me, organic in a way that other art is not," she writes, reflecting on her career. "You enter into it; you get changed with it; it changes with you....[TV] was where I wanted to live." Sharp, insightful writing that firmly positions Nussbaum as one of the leading TV critics of our time.

      COPYRIGHT(2019) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. (Online Review)

    • Library Journal

      December 1, 2018

      A Pulitzer Prize-winning cultural critic for The New Yorker who focuses on television, Nussbaum clicks on the set to investigate how female protagonists have evolved, how sexual violence plays out on the small screen, and how the TV antihero mirrors Donald Trump. Her aim: criticism that doesn't get caught up in high-, low-, and middle-brow, making us rethink TV--and art itself. Including three all-new essays.

      Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Formats

  • OverDrive Read
  • EPUB ebook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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