So, what is a TV Scholar exactly?
Personal notes on rejection and entering my 30s.
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I keep wondering: will I ever tire of television? My Serializd app tells me I’ve watched approximately twelve consecutive months of TV in my adult life. Damn, if only I had written down which episodes of Caillou and Barney & Friends I watched as a kid for the sake of accurate data. On rare days, when I’m feeling the weight of life on this planet, I do wonder about the point of it all—if all that watching was worth it. I’ve been thinking about what
mentioned on Instagram live recently, that it’s not so much about grappling with the pointlessness of the medium itself, but the industry and the systems that too often flatten and empty art of meaning.While defending a human planet under attack by an alien race in a recent episode of Halo’s second season, Master Chief (Pablo Schreiber) orders a tank to fire a round of white phosphorous to illuminate a dark bridge. The scene took me out of the show immediately, shifting my mindset to haunting images of white phosphorous used by Israel in its bombardment of Gaza and Southern Lebanon, scorching skin and airways. Television can be a tool of escapist numbing, but it’s rarely just that. We bring our own subjectivities to anything we consume.
Although I agree that watching television does not equal political engagement, I think there is a subculture of us (tvscholar hive, if you will) who have learned to read beyond the text and resist getting lulled into submission by what we watch. We struggle to let go of a critical gaze. I’m constantly reminded about how this medium gets under our skin, imprints on our memory, and at its most powerful, might shed light on a perspective we’ve been neglecting. Seeking to understand the chaotic clash between all those things is what I think a TV Scholar tries to do. My own personal journey has been trying to figure out what it means to want to study the medium and all of its multiplicities without institutional support (i.e., a university). That’s what I really wanted to write about this month—my almost-return to academia.
It will come as a surprise to no one reading this that I love television, and Shōgun was a recent reminder of my affinity to this medium. This is a show made with so much thought and care, down to every detail and stylistic choice. A revelation and one of the best new miniseries I’ve watched in the last few years. Every conversation carries so much weight, every gaze and bow and hand choreography is imbued with meaning.
A show not as meticulous, 3 Body Problem, also reminded me of my love for television—in the sense that I binged it in two days. It’s not a show I would say scores high on all my rubrics, nor is it particularly stylish in any way, and structurally bizarre (the plot deflates significantly after barrelling toward the fifth episode). But there’s room for it all, the revelatory stories and the bingeable fast food TV. This is the wonder of how the medium has evolved. It’s hard to believe there was a time—in the era of the original Shōgun, actually—when there were only three American channels to choose from.
Unfortunately, translating my love for television to a rent-paying job has been the challenge of my 20s. I’ve written a lot about this since I started this newsletter, evidence of how heavily it weighs on my mind. Some of the most talented writers I follow tweet about how they live paycheque to paycheque, or are laid off spontaneously by publications shuttering left and right. It’s exhausting to try to imagine a future as a full-time writer in this landscape. To a certain extent, I’ve more or less eliminated the option as a legitimate place to move toward, opting to keep a day job to keep the bills paid.
So at some point in the fall, I decided I would look at a return to academia instead of pursuing the freelance thing. I applied to three PhD programs, seeking to pick up where I left off from the one I dropped out of in 2020: Brown, NYU, and UBC’s media programs. I knew there was little to expect in terms of job security here, too—the academic job market is a Hunger Games for highly educated applicants fighting for scraps. But I thought, at the very least, it would give me baseline funding for seven years of writing and research into television.
Ultimately, I didn’t get accepted into any of the three programs. And who knows why. A lack of available supervisors with depth of expertise in TV, or the optics of having actually been in a PhD program previously and dropping out. At the end of the day, I don’t even know if I would be happier in school than I am now. I’ve been reading old journal entries in anticipation of turning 30 later this month, and my past selves reveal some dark truths about my time in school. Namely, how depressed and poor I was. Straddling the balance between a day job and my writing is the most financially secure I’ve ever been. I don’t need to worry about rent next month—that baseline security does wonders for mental health.
However, I did feel ready and excited for a return to being basically forced to read journal articles and academic books again. I wanted the rush: when you get to the finish line of a semester absolutely wrecked but you eventually realize how much you’ve actually learned, how you’re now able to put words to thoughts in new and sophisticated ways. One of the schools I applied to was for a FILM and media program (gasp). Even the thought of how I’d be able to apply film studies methodologies to television was exciting to me…
So where does that leave me and my identity as TV Scholar? My favourite piece of feedback I’ve ever received during my time writing this newsletter was someone who subscribed and wrote: “You make me feel like watching TV is something smart people do.” A TV Scholar is not so much one who exists within the confines of an academic institution. Rather, someone who appreciates a critical read on television, who hungers to learn more about the medium, who takes their job as a television watcher seriously to the extent that they have an awareness/interest in the socio-political, cultural, and historical underpinnings of what’s in and beyond the text. Someone attuned to the embodied experience of watching television. A TV Scholar sees television as containing possibilities beyond other mediums.
So here’s what I think I learned in my 20s: to listen and learn from the universe instead of trying to implode my life every few months in the hopes of strong-arming a shift. Right now, that looks like staying the course and continuing what I’ve been doing: watching television, thinking about it, and reporting back. Thanks for being on that journey with me.
Further Reading:
Speaking of milestones, I interviewed Allison freaking Janney for The Cut. She’s chewing on Palm Royale, a show I think is more style than substance but has its moments. When I spoke with her, I expressed how much I loved Mom, the robust sitcom that ran for eight seasons about a group of recovering alcoholics. She said it was basically the best job ever.
I also interviewed Paapa Essiedu, who’s starring in The Effect, an off-broadway play that just wrapped its New York leg written by Lucy Prebble (I Hate Suzie, Succession). He’s best known for playing Kwame on I May Destroy You, but he also stars in The Lazarus Project, a decent sci-fi series with a promising pilot but not one I bumped up my list with any urgency.
I always look forward to hearing from you. Loved to read this reflection.
You work is great and inspires me as a younger aspiring writer. Thank you so much for your honesty.