Highbrow Brilliant: The Approval Matrix Enters a New Era
The axes are iconic: highbrow, lowbrow, despicable, brilliant. Since 2004, New York Magazine has been plotting culture into quadrants on its back page—and for the past eight years, editor Carl Swanson has served as the curator of that Approval Matrix, weighing in on everything from wine for cats (highbrow despicable) to the hairstyles of PBS's Victoria (definitely brilliant, but right on the line between highbrow and lowbrow) to Michelle Obama's "Turn Down For What?" Vine, in which she dances with a turnip (lowbrow brilliant). But now, he's ready to pass the torch.
"Somehow, over time, the Approval Matrix ended up being the embodiment of the spirit of the entire magazine, to the point that our anniversary book in 2018 was titled Highbrow, Lowbrow, Brilliant, Despicable: Fifty Years of New York Magazine," he tells T&C via email. "I had to concoct a matrix covering the last half century—200 items total—which was included as a gatefold, an amusingly impossible task which everybody second guessed, and I probably should have retired from the gig then."
Two of the magazine's digital staffers, Madison Malone Kircher and Benjamin Hart, picked up the mantle this week, and starting a new chapter in the Matrix's history, one with perhaps a little more Taylor Swift, a few more sports references, and an eye for the theater (once Broadway reopens, that is).
"After Milton Glaser’s logo, the Matrix is arguably the most recognizable thing about the magazine and the most iconic thing we do, she said ever so humbly. So to be taking that on, definitely it felt weighty," Kircher tells me over the phone, with Hart adding: "But also really cool, just had to get that in there."
Here, the duo chats with T&C about why they're a good team, the hardest quadrant to fill, and the pressures of crafting the "deliberately oversimplified guide to who falls where on our taste hierarchies."
By nature, this position requires being an arbiter of culture. What do you think about taking on that role?
MMK: It's sort of terrifying, but also very fun. I've been making this joke a lot, namely once the announcement was made to our colleagues, but I just keep saying I'm looking at the job as sort of more Matrix doula than anything else.
BH: With the weightiness, there's a lightheartedness that goes along with that. So I don't want to emphasize too much that writing the Matrix is a weight crushing us because doing it this last week for the first time was really enjoyable.
MMK: It's also this perfect distillation of what we do page after page. it's hyper-specific, almost hyper-scientific, pseudo-scientific really, which is what's fun about it, right? There's a real joy being like, "Oh like red onions can give you salmonella." And part of the bottom left corner being: "Attack of the red onion."
At some points in its history, the Matrix has been created by a single editor, other times it’s been done by a pair. Why do you two make a good team?
BH: I think we bring complementary skills to the job.
MMK: Yeah, one time we robbed a bank together and it went really well.
BH: That was a dry run. Madison's on the Taylor Swift beat, I'm bringing some sports knowledge into this that has been lacking for the last eight years. I mean, I think speaking for myself, the reason I probably got this is because of my opinionated and judgemental nature in Slack that I think somebody took notice of and perhaps on Twitter as well. I think we're both judgemental people, but in a nice way, in a good way.
MMK: Hey, don't speak for me. I'm not so nice.
BH: You know what? I'm not so nice either. I don't know why I said that.
MMK: Something I'm most looking forward to is incorporating more internet culture into the Matrix. And I'm really looking forward to fighting over whether TikTok is highbrow or lowbrow, and where you park things like that on the Matrix.
Do you have a favorite quadrant to write for?
MMK: I could give you the inverse, which is that highbrow brilliant is the most difficult one to fill. Like, highbrow despicable things are so obvious, right? There's a zillion of them; we live in the age of Donald Trump. But highbrow brilliant is much, much harder to fill, I think because that's the one where you're making like a very serious designation on behalf of New York magazine. We're saying this book, this opera, this television show, this is the thing for these two weeks.
BH: If you say that highbrow brilliant is your favorite quadrant to fill out, it also makes you sound like an asshole.
MMK: Lowbrow brilliant is the most fun one to fill because that's so much of what I'm consuming on a day to day basis.
Walk me through your first Matrix together.
MMK: I think the first thing that pops out is Ben made a Big Lebowski joke and I was like, "Really? Really?"
BH: I know. It made it, it made it in!
MMK: I love the clean version of "WAP" that somehow manages to be dirty doesn't mean explicit. And the reason I love it: that idea actually came from a piece by Kathryn VanArendonk who's our television critic, who wrote this very funny piece about how “wet and gushy” is significantly dirtier than the Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion’s explicit version. But what I love about this entry, and Emily Nussbaum actually touched on this a little bit in an interview about creating the Matrix, is that it really should be wedded to the images at all times, and so we worked with our lovely graphics team to get a very explicit picture of a half a grapefruit on this week's Matrix in the highbrow brilliant-leaning-despicable quadrant.
BH: It is as much a pictorial feature than as it is a written one. And you really need to work around that, which I think we did, semi-successfully at least, but visual wins are really half the battle.
MMK: I did manage to get the word "Gaylor" into this week's Matrix (as in Taylor Swift's gay truthers). So there's that.
BH: More Taylor Swift content coming your way.
Obviously, it’s "New York" magazine, but do you think at all about the balance between hyper local ideas vs. national ones?
BH: I think we have an eye toward the city. It's similar to the New York magazine voice online. It speaks to a certain urban sophisticated crowd that translates well beyond the borders of New York, but we do try to remind ourselves that it is after all a city magazine. So we've got stuff that's pretty specific. In this one, for instance, Conde Nast bailing on One World Trade Center, the return of the Met, and as we said, when we're back to normal times, we'll have actual performances that you can attend in the city.
MMK: Something I love about the Matrix is that sometimes there are items that are so hyper-specific maybe they don't land with everyone, and that's been part of the mystique of the thing. You always see hyper-local things from editor to editor pop up. I was talking to Chris Bonanos, an editor who used to run Matrix for a while. And I was like, "Highbrow brilliant. What else do I put here?" He was like, "Honestly, how are the peaches at your farmer's market? Sometimes I would just put that up there when they were really good."
BH: Also, people who subscribe to New York magazine from a different city, on some level, enjoy the hyperlocal stuff. In part, it's what you read it for. It's being in the middle of that something that you can't experience, there's a certain pleasure and joy to that as well.
Why do you think the Matrix has had such lasting power?
MMK: There have been attempts at Matrix television shows and putting the Matrix online. And we have a small Matrix Instagram account, but really what works best is the approval Matrix as a back page that people just keep coming back for. Which I think is such a wonderful thing in a time where print media is so precarious.
BH: It's just nice to have something that actually doesn't translate as well online. A lot of care goes into the magazine every two weeks. And that feature is just emblematic of that. So it's just the perfect back page feature and is proof that print is not dead in my opinion.
MMK: But then they gave it to us so stay tuned.
BH: It may die, but it's not yet dead.
This interview has been edited for clarity and lightly condensed.
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