The New Yorker is now in the business of analyzing the process of, erm, analyzing, and the result is this latest foray into that particular area, which we here at TVWriter™ find absolutely fascinating in an overthinker’s ultimate overthinking sort of way:
VAHIERS DU BUFFY
by Emily Nussbaum
A few days ago, the critic Matt Seitz wrote a valuable, provocative, and deliciously finger-jabbing manifesto, arguing that TV and film critics concentrate too much on plot and character and theme and don’t write enough about visual craft. This is true. It’s certainly been true at times in my own television criticism, although I could defensively point to counterexamples as well, as one does when jabbed. The challenge Seitz sets forth is particularly timely this year, because there’s been an amazing influx of film directors into television—and this cohort has begun, slowly but surely, to warp the medium’s writer-on-top traditions. On shows ranging from Jane Campion’s “Top of the Lake” to Mike White’s “Enlightened” and Brian Fuller’s “Hannibal,” creators have been breaking the rules of what TV is “supposed” to look like.
Here’s Seitz’s nut graf: