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Lately at work I’ve been largely ignoring the task at hand and reading TV reviews of shows I don’t watch. Generally, I enjoy reading reviews. It makes me feel more like I’m part of the zeitgeist. It’s also interesting to experience media through different lens—a movie as impressed on someone else, then transcribed into words and then posted on the internet. Interesting, yes, but not always pleasant. For example, reading a Stephen Holden review is a little like looking through lenses that are irrelevant and retarded.
But I do love me some David Edelstein.
I think TV reviews are a little different from most. For the most part the shows being reviewed only air once (unless it’s on Vh1) so it’s not so much like a movie review, where the point is to gauge whether or not Shortbus might have been worth my hard earned $10 (as it turns out, no).
Regarding my views on TV critics: Writing about a medium as closely intertwined with the mass and popular as television, I think these people are freer from necessary pretension than their counterparts in cinema or literature. Television’s vapid, as it were. So to mirror that, it’s generally acceptable for a review of a TV show to say absolutely nothing beyond “this show is shit”—which is why it’s a really nice surprise when TV reviews are really well written. Since, as social animals, humans have an inborn desire to systematize life-experiences into a hierarchy, in my head I have arranged TV critics into a pantheon—a system akin to a media criticism Santeria. In such a spirit I shout ‘Ashanti, Ashanti!’ to my choice for chief among these saints, Salon’s Heather Havrilesky.
She almost makes me want to start watching 24, only seven years behind the rest of Amerika! Almost.
I like how she references her 2nd grade experiences in her reviews. It reminds me of innocent, non-English speaking times. Jesus Christ she is funny! Ok. Now that that’s out of my system, back to work.
Lately at work I’ve been largely ignoring the task at hand and reading TV reviews of shows I don’t watch. Generally, I enjoy reading reviews. It makes me feel more like I’m part of the zeitgeist. It’s also interesting to experience media through different lens—a movie as impressed on someone else, then transcribed into words and then posted on the internet. Interesting, yes, but not always pleasant. For example, reading a Stephen Holden review is a little like looking through lenses that are irrelevant and retarded.
But I do love me some David Edelstein.
I think TV reviews are a little different from most. For the most part the shows being reviewed only air once (unless it’s on Vh1) so it’s not so much like a movie review, where the point is to gauge whether or not Shortbus might have been worth my hard earned $10 (as it turns out, no).
Regarding my views on TV critics: Writing about a medium as closely intertwined with the mass and popular as television, I think these people are freer from necessary pretension than their counterparts in cinema or literature. Television’s vapid, as it were. So to mirror that, it’s generally acceptable for a review of a TV show to say absolutely nothing beyond “this show is shit”—which is why it’s a really nice surprise when TV reviews are really well written. Since, as social animals, humans have an inborn desire to systematize life-experiences into a hierarchy, in my head I have arranged TV critics into a pantheon—a system akin to a media criticism Santeria. In such a spirit I shout ‘Ashanti, Ashanti!’ to my choice for chief among these saints, Salon’s Heather Havrilesky.
She almost makes me want to start watching 24, only seven years behind the rest of Amerika! Almost.
I like how she references her 2nd grade experiences in her reviews. It reminds me of innocent, non-English speaking times. Jesus Christ she is funny! Ok. Now that that’s out of my system, back to work.
posted by Byron at 2:19 PM
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