This image was lost some time after publication.

Blogger Gabe at Roth Brothers brought up a searingly important point, something that's been troubling us for a while: why does the placement of items on New York Magazine's Approval Matrix sometimes seem arbitrary, high/lowbrowness axiswise? Could it be that graphic design is trumping fairness when, say,

a Ricky Gervais-Stephen Merchant-penned episode of NBC's The Office" — i.e. the creators of a BBC critical favorite returning to the milieu of their finest work — is lower-browed than: (a) sports; (b) James Bond; (c) the new Christopher Guest movie?

Gabe went on to question whether the Matrix's compilers were taking their enormous responsibility seriously enough. A weighty charge, and, like many accusations leveled in the blogosphere, it seemed doomed to go unanswered, a muffled cry in the dark fated to fall on deaf ears.

But then! From a commenter who will be known to us only as matrixeditor came a full, intricate explanation of how Matrix placement is determined. It's after the jump, and after you read it, you will never be tempted to take the Approval Matrix not-seriously ever again (except when they rank the new Grinch musical higher than How I Met Your Mother next week).

Hello:

I am the editor of the Matrix and I assure you, we take it very seriously. Super seriously. Probably a little too seriously. Talmudic arguments have been settled more quickly and peacefully than arguments within these walls as to whether, for example, live musicals are highbrow or lowbrow. On the one hand: the thee-atah! On the other hand: Phantom!

Partly this process is intuitive, and partly it's guided by rough principles. For example: The Office is as low as it is because, even though its the best sitcom ever, its a sitcom, an inherently lowbrow venture.

Guest gets to be highbrow (albeit despicable) because indie movies are kind of highbrow by nature, and he gets extra points for being a critic's darling.

Sports usually goes near the middle because they're traditionally middlebrow: e.g., the mass appeal of baseball leavened by a rich literary tradition, with added marks, in this case, for the wonderful magic of the mythic gyroball. (Magic = middlebrow; myth = highbrow).

I do see why you'd take issue with James Bond. He's British (highbrow) but then so's Gervais. Unlike Gervais, however, Bond sometimes wears a tuxedo (v. highbrow). He should probably be demoted to just under the line, however.

One thing to keep in mind is that placement on the vertical axis has nothing to do with quality, even relative to other things in the genre — if it did, The Office would be off the charts. It's more about how big the potential audience is and how high the pretensions of the creators. And, you know, X-factors like tuxedos and Britishness and magic.

Maybe that helps a little. Thanks for reading, and noticing.
matrix editor