TV is Better Than Movies, Just Accept It

Slate magazine has offered a polemic against this notion that TV has superseded movies on artistic merit. It is obviously hilariously bad, wildly uneducated, and is guilty of an incredibly narrow perspective reinforced by spending too much time talking to his own in-group. It shows a distinct lack of understanding of even the basics of the argument as presented.

To begin with, he has a repeated problem of assuming the Emmys actually are a reflection of artistic and qualitative merit. They aren't and they never will be. Also, he seemingly has a rather intense bias against comedy, given that he never mentions a single one the entire article. In fact, the only genre he considers at all when making his argument is drama, even though TV is a rich with genres (including several that do not exist in movie form) as the movies.

On some level, of course, the whole argument is absurd. People will tell you that the dozens of hours TV shows devote to their characters make those characters richer than their cinematic counterparts—but dramatists have known for literally centuries that you only need one night to create a character people will never forget.

Oy vey. Talk about an irrelevant non-sequitur to cover up a flawed argument. Being memorable is not the same as being a rich character. The Room has plenty of memorable characters, I would never call them particularly rich though. Television allows long term development and transformation to occur. A movie could have Walter White go from sad-sack teacher to "I am the one who knocks" in two hours, but that would never be as satisfying or startling as seeing that play out over dozens of episodes.

But generally the TV-is-better argument is a way of saying, 'I don’t have to keep up with the movies anymore, and neither do you.'

First off, no one is making that argument. Secondly, no one has to keep up with the movies or TV outside of actual film and TV critics. The author has this weird through line that there is some sort of moral obligation to watch movies. The TV-is-better argument is a commentary on how television, in general, is more a more emotionally  and artistically satisfying experience than going to the movies.

"Ask nearly any professional critic—not to mention many amateur ones—for the best TV shows of the last decade or so, and you will get a very familiar list, starting with The Sopranos and ending, probably, with Breaking Bad, or maybe, say, Homeland or The Americans."

Seriously? Breaking Bad premiered six years ago, and in that time the author is willing to concede only two more recent shows might appear on a best-of list? That would be a really awful critic. Not to mention that is a good chance The Sopranos would not make the list (I certainly would never place it on a best-of list), along with any of the other given shows. They are not universally beloved.

You are not likely to encounter the sometimes bewildering variety that a collection of film critics is likely to present you with.

Again, the author is engaging in sloppy intellectual bias. He is comparing an actual survey of film critics to a singular, hypothetical TV critic. Get enough TV critics together and you will have exactly the same bewildering variety as appears on that over-100 movies long list. In fact, if someone wants to see bewildering variety, all they have to do is look at the annual AV Club's top 30 list. Everything from Childrens Hospital to RuPaul's Drag Race to Adventure Time to Comedy Bang Bang to Breaking Bad is on it.

And there are good reasons for that. For one thing, when we talk about television, we are almost always only talking about American television.

No, what the author means here is that when he talks about television, he almost always is talking about American television. Just because he does not participate in discussions about Japanese anime or Korean soap operas, does not mean that they do not exist. There is a bias, in the English speaking world, to discuss English language television, most of which is produced in America. But that is no different than the movies which are similarly biased.

So while the best movies come from an intimidating diversity of sources, and present a similarly wide range of aesthetic approaches and aims, the best TV shows tend to come from three or four American cable networks and frequently follow a familiar model.

 Again, rampant bias coupled with complete ignorance. In fact, this entire article is merely a stealth polemic against the male anti-hero. But the worst element of it is the author is seemingly completely unaware that is what he is writing, as he is seemingly unaware that other types of shows (critically beloved shows, in fact) do exist. Somehow he does not realize that Community or Enlightened or Girls or Spartacus all exist. And those massive, massive blindspots result in someone who is making a self-evidently ignorant argument.

Take today’s Emmy nominations, which, though there were, as always, a few surprises and snubs, generally rewarded the prestige dramas—House of Cards, American Horror Story, Game of Thrones, Mad Men, Breaking Bad, Homeland—that most people regard as the best stuff on TV.

Why no, people do not consider House of Cards or American Horror Story to be the best stuff on TV. House of Cards is essentially the definition of mediocre. American Horror Story managed to pull out a pretty great year, but its first season was atrocious. Not to mention there was a rather stiff backlash against both Homeland and Mad Men this year. But more importantly, this is only half the picture. What about the comedy Emmys? To include them would destroy the author's argument, so he conveniently pretends they don't exist.

Compare that to any year’s Oscar nominations, which encompass multiple filmmaking styles and span the studio and indie world and still rarely scratch the surface of what critics and serious moviegoers consider the best of the year.

Once more comparing unlike things. That's because the Oscars do not differentiate by genre. With the Emmys, drama, comedy, reality, variety, ect. all get their own unique categories. That's simply the basic nature of the Emmys. Complaining that the all the nominations for Outstanding Achievement in Drama are dramas is startlingly stupid.

What bothers me most about the TV-is-better line, finally, is that TV could be better.

 It is, and the author has provided no evidence that it isn't. In fact, all he has provided is that he does not understand television, nor the critical conversations about it, at all.

there’s no reason, theoretically speaking, that the adventurous approaches to visual storytelling that we see in certain movies couldn’t come to TV, too.

 You mean like Hannibal?

Really this is a monument to one man's ignorance of his own subject matter. It is hard to take this article seriously when it makes so many sloppy arguments and has ever so many biases and blindspots. Simply put, there are movies that are great, there are TV shows that are great. If you are going to argue that the one is superior to the other, then you should at least possess a passing knowledge of the fields you are comparing.

I Know Who Killed Me

I Know Who Killed Me is what happens when the makers of a movie are so convinced they are making Great Art, that they completely overlook the fact that it is atrocious crap. Normally a movie this ambitious would be able to skate by on that ambition alone, but every cell of this movie is dripping in such smug pretension, such desperation to be edgy, that it just comes off as grating.

Lindsey Lohan plays Aubrey Fleming, a young woman who is abducted by the local serial killer. After her abduction, a second woman, Dakota Moss, who looks exactly like Aubrey is found lying on the side of the road with a missing hand and leg. Everyone is convinced Dakota is Aubrey suffering from some sort of delusion based on her trauma, however Dakota is determined to investigate exactly what happened to Aubrey and uncover their relationship.

Lohan, naturally, gives an atrocious performance. Incredibly dull, lifeless, and there's no difference in performance between Aubrey and Dakota. Watching this movie after watching episodes of Orphan Black really highlights just how lazy Lohan is as an actress (although the same can now be said for dozens of actors playing two roles in movies). While she is the most obvious failure in the movie, she isn't helped much by the direction.

Visually, I Know Who Killed Me was going for a cross between Sin City and Schindler's List. Yes, there is a scene in the movie that is a direct rip-off of the little girl in the red coat. The frames are bursting with visual symbolism, most obviously the use of the color blue. Everything is slathered in blues, from blue roses to the killer's blue glass weapons. But, of course, blue does not actually symbolize anything. The symbols are there because great movies utilize symbols, not as any key to reveal more about the movie, much less the human experience.

And stylistically, the movie loves over lapping shots, duo shots. Lots of shots to back up the whole "two women, one face" motif. But in order for all those trick shots to work, there needed to be an element of B-movie camp. Kill Bill was able to pull off similar effects by drawing directly on the grind-house, kung-fu movie aesthetic. I Know Who Killed Me takes itself far too seriously to make those shots, and even the basic plot, the kind of campy fun a movie like this should be.

And that's the primary fault of the movie. It takes itself deadly seriously. For a movie about a stripper who gets a robot hand, the movie has no sense of humor. It needed to be fun, and it just isn't. If you would like insight into just how pretentious this movie is, the original ending of the film was supposed to be the reveal that everything that happened was simply part of a short story Aubrey wrote. Worse than merely "it was all a dream" this would have been the ultimate example of smug satisfaction, straight up telling the audience how brilliant Aubrey (and by extension the movie) is. Despite this ending being removed, all the smug satisfaction leading up to it still sticks around. The movie is just not fun.

Black Rain

Black Rain is not a particularly good movie, however it is a deeply fascinating one. A Canadian, made-for-TV-movie released in 2009, it makes a whole series of story-telling choices that makes it stand out from the late-night, vaguely sci-fi, disaster genre which spawned it.

Dr. Jack Webster (Shawn Roberts) is a doctor of science-stuff (I do not believe they ever say what his doctorate is actually in, just that he is, somehow, famous for his sciencetasticness in every possible field) living in the middle of a forest by himself. As with his doctorate, it is never particularly established why he's hanging out alone in a forest like a crazy person for three years, he just sort of is. Enter three PhD students who decide to camp across the river from him.

After a bit of typical, gruff back and forth, the students and Webster become friends, just in time for a magical acid rain storm to attack them. Some sort of chemical plant explodes, sending huge puffs of chemicals into the sky, which then falls back down as incredibly potent acid in a storm cloud passing through. This all is supposed to be scientific, but the storm at certain points is literally chasing people, not to mention that the script attempts to handwave away the fact that the rain causes cars to explode and people to melt, while plants are completely unaffected. What follows is traditional disaster movie plotting where the characters attempt to stay one step ahead of the disaster.

If this movie seems a quite traditional, low-budget, late-night flick, that's because it is. What makes the movie weirdly compelling is the character of Webster. He's gay, but not for any real textual or meta-textual reasons. The movie contains no metaphors for homosexuality, there is no real gay-centric storyline (i.e. homophbia, coming out), it isn't produced for a gay film company. He's just gay because, seemingly, that's just an interesting character trait.

Coupled with that, Roberts is evidently playing Webster as somewhere on the autism spectrum. Roberts is most well known for playing affable bros who are slaughtered by zombies and psychopaths, a marked difference from his fussy, somewhat severe turn as Webster. All of which results in a rather interesting main character, anchoring a fairly traditional film.

Action is the genre which is most steeped in traditional characterization. The innovation traditionally occurs in the various action sequences, while the characters are normally little more than archetypes which fill specific story-telling conventions. Black Rain might be a silly, mostly forgotten movie, but the fact that it pushes the boundaries of what a leading man can be in this genre should be noted.