Ben As part of our 2017 intern program, we sat down with the students and recent grads who help make the NYTVF run smoothly and represent the next generation of televisionaries. This week, we chatted with Kachi Iwu, a rising junior at Columbia, who offers her take on the “golden age of TV.”

Tell everyone a little bit about your educational background and the origin of your interest in TV!

Howdy! My name is Kachi Iwu. I am a rising junior in the undergraduate Film Studies program at Columbia University. I’m from Nashville, Tennessee (hence the howdy), and I’ve loved television since I was very young. My parents both worked often, so our television set was our babysitter. My brothers and I, despite our differences, were always able to bond over the shows we watched--Boy Meets World, That’s So Raven, etc. I love how years later, we can still quote Spongebob to each other without missing a beat.

However, I didn’t realize that this fondness was a passion until about high school. I was obsessed with shows like Orphan Black, The Office, and Hannibal. I was constantly watching deleted scenes, fan theories, and analysis videos of all of the shows, interrupting my friends mid-conversation, with the annoying “Have you seen ____?” I watched videos about how they were made, obsessed with the mechanics it took to weave these stories together. I loved the experience of watching characters either evolve or devolve, watching how they interacted with different environments and challenges in ways that just wasn’t possible in film. I loved finding myself in characters who looked nothing like me, and being validated by characters who did.

You’re starting your career in a time that’s been dubbed “The Golden Age of Television.” What do you think TV shows are doing now that they weren’t doing before to earn this title?

I think television now is a medium to explore complex ideas and stories in ways previously only reserved for film. Television is no longer a way to simply entertain, but also to explore complex themes and challenge us to be reflective. We see this shift not only in live action shows, but in animation as well. Children’s and adult animation have experienced a great shift since Spongebob and Family Guy, with shows like Ricky and Morty, Bojack Horseman, Gravity Falls, and more now using the medium to construct depth and honesty in their narratives, while also remaining light-hearted.

Television also isn’t just reserved for TVs anymore. We have multiple digital platforms to experience television now, leading to a large increase in quantity and accessibility. This increase in accessibility to watch and make television has led to the medium being more accessible to different voices and identities. For example, Issa Rae began her career by creating the web series Awkward Black Girl, leading to her network success with Insecure. Dark-skinned, older black women as leads is something we never saw until a few years ago. Therefore, not only has the narratives we tell with television grown to be more complex, but the people we allow to perform that complexity has widened.

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