Opinion Today: We should aim higher than “laundry-folding TV”

A desire for innocuous storytelling is spreading up and down the cultural food chain.

View in browser|nytimes.com Continue reading the main story April 29, 2024 By Adam Sternbergh I'll be honest: When I first heard rumors of TV executives asking prospective showrunners for so-called second-screen viewing — shows designed to play in the background while viewers distractedly scroll their phones — I assumed they were apocryphal exaggerations. Then a TV writer told me about a meeting in which an executive went one further and asked him for "laundry-folding TV." Of course, we all have laundry that needs folding. But to anyone invested in culture that engages, challenges and even unsettles us, the notion of stories created specifically to be half paid attention to is itself unsettling. As the playwright and novelist Jen Silverman explains in an essay published this weekend, this appetite for innocuous storytelling — public service announcements masquerading as narratives — can be found up and down the cultural food chain: not just in the rooms where new shows are being pitched but also in Silverman's classroom, where fledgling writers sometimes fret more about identifying and scrubbing problematic ideas from their manuscripts than about creating art that might disturb their readers or compel them to grapple with complexity. There's a reason art that makes us uncomfortable also sticks with us and even changes us. As Silverman — whose work often explores the interplay of art and politics — explains, artists get the audiences they cultivate. Artists can't expect to find an audience for thorny work if they refuse to create work that's truly challenging. 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