The Wire
HBO Series

By guest columnist Kevin Hamilton, assistant professor of art and design at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign campus. He also is chair of their New Media program.

HBO's series The Wire ended after five seasons earlier this year. Like others who watch via DVD, I've not yet caught the final season, but I've seen enough to recommend the series. People love to declare it "the best show on television," and I'm certain Obama won some votes by declaring The Wire his favorite show. There are critic's darlings, and then there is The Wire. As in other "high-end episodic dramas," it's a show people love to be seen loving.

The Wire is a cop show about a unit of Baltimore police men and women, and the people they study, surveille, and prosecute. The world is richly detailed, in language, in character, in landscape, in bureaucratic routine, in personal vice. As deep and peopled as any Tolkienian fantasy, The Wire's universe requires some education for viewers, familiarization with weird jargon and habits; city politicians squeeze through baroque mazes of bureaucratic machinery, cops engage in arcane rituals after hours, and young "soldiers" in the drug trade learn the ropes of procuring, transporting, distributing, and guarding narcotics.

The show's creators present a compelling and rich world of interwoven and simultaneous plot-lines from up and down the economic ladder. Like the best episodic literature or cinema, The Wire reveals a world slowly - sometimes very little actually "happens" - but builds a broader context quickly, and with ease. There's always the suggestion of more beyond the frame.

What's in the frame is what makes the show worth watching. The Wire's stories and details just aren't to be found elsewhere on television. We see the impact of America's failed drug war on a city, where state resources are devoted to quota-filling over peace-keeping. We see mandatory drug sentences building prison into the daily life of the street. We see the impact of the War on Terror on local police enforcement, as funds dry up for projects not related to surveillance of suspected foreign nationals. We see the impact of No Child Left Behind on a school system, where for a time all teachers in the school are switched to teaching the same subject, in order to get test scores up.

We see the cogs of globalized commerce through a plot-line set in a shipping container port; there we encounter sex slave trade, union-busting, and the effects of gentrification on jobs for the working class. We see kids try and fail to escape participation in a drug economy where the bosses apply lessons learned from night classes in business school. We also see more strong characters of color than on any show I've ever seen.

And because it's an HBO product, we also see more sexualized bodies and detailed violence. Every few episodes, we join cops in heated sexual trysts, and drug bosses in the strip bars they operate. We see children gunned down on the street. I don't consider the show a vehicle for portrayals of sex and violence, but sometimes such things seem to be an essential part of the HBO brand. (HBO dramas also seem to like scripts full of exotic profanity.)

The world of the American urban drug corner is as remote for me as a Palestinian checkpoint. So I found myself thankful to the creators of The Wire for the views they gave me of a reality in which I'm complicit as a citizen of the U.S., as a white person who benefits from systemic racism. The show is the creation of a former journalist, and in interviews David Simon speaks of the show as a form of journalism. Each season moves through a different layer of the city: from the inner-workings of a successful street-distribution drug business, to a season spent in the shipping yards, to one in the schools, a mayoral campaign, and finally to the world of journalism itself, the offices of the Baltimore Sun, where Simon once worked.

But what form of journalism is The Wire exactly? As useful as the show may be for educating privileged folks about the drug war's real toll, it's important to keep in mind how this picture is delivered, to whom it is delivered, and what else is missing from the story. In other words, this piece of traditional episodic narrative deserves examination as a piece of journalism. Here are some things I suggest you keep in mind, or better, in discussion, as you watch the show.

1. People watch The Wire in different ways than television was once watched. They watch it out of sync with one another, and sometimes in long spurts at once. This is a different social space for television - it's harder to talk about it at the water-cooler the next morning, if at least because you don't want to spoil it for someone who's "behind." How might the subject matter of a show like The Wire be affected by such an experience?
2. Different narrative rhythms and relations to story emerge in this new format. Where in cinema a character moves in and out of audience empathy maybe once or twice, serial TV drama may dangle a character up and down this yo-yo several times a season, and from one season to the next. (Think of Tony Soprano, or The Wire's McNulty.)
3. "It's not TV, it's HBO," proclaims the network brand. And so we viewers go to our TV sets with more moral ease, assuring ourselves of the "quality," "authenticity," even the importance or moral good of our time spent watching. Of course it's always prudent to discuss which programming is worth our while as stewards of time and sensation. But consumption as a moral imperative is something to beware - especially in the case of The Wire, where real people's problems are at stake. 
4. Franchise television programs like The Wire are often part of the process of urban gentrification; they help "brand" a city, as either desirable to live in or as desirable to film in. The City of New Orleans is now a booming movie set, and for years East Baltimore was a set for The Wire. Shows like The Wire have spawned a new voyeurism towards America's failed urban spaces. "Ghetto Tourism," as some call it, implicates not only the gawking academic or street photographer, but also the home television viewer.
5. Systemic racism effects neighborhoods and the people who live in them through more than selfish cops and corrupt politicians. Perfectly legal and lauded efforts such as zoning law, tourism, community branding, and tax breaks also keep people in their economic place. Such efforts may make for less interesting television, but they are just as potent in creating the sorts of conditions depicted in The Wire.
6. Who's left out of The Wire's story? There are plenty of articles about this out there on the web, so do some poking around. Some have pointed out the show's lack of strong women among those living in the poorest neighborhoods. You also won't see much in the way of church roles in city, or community activism. Surveillance technologies in the hands of the law are an unquestioned good, and there's also not much in the way of strong interpersonal commitments among any sect or class. The world of The Wire is a bleak, individualistic social space; Simon doesn't want us to feel good.

Television is full of cop dramas with plots "ripped from the headlines." The problem of course is that the "headlines" of major news outlets aren't telling the stories of a large part of America. The Wire fills in some of this gap; watched responsibly, it will prod you to want to know and do more.

The Wire, seasons 1-4 are currently available on DVD. Season 5 will be available at summer's end.

Comments:

The main thing I'm thinking of in terms of systematic (I probably should have said "systemic") racism is mandatory drug sentencing, and the "drug war" at large. So it's not Baltimore in particular that I'm thinking of. But the Wire also speaks well to the power of urban planning to do the same. Gentrification and slums might both be described in terms of racism through the organization of space, rather than through explicit denial or acceptance of individuals based on skin color. I suggest that through benefiting from such practices, I'm complicit as racist, the same way I'm complicit in racism as a property-owner in a land stolen from others. I recognize that this may sound extreme - it certainly has sounded thus to the media in their reception of Rev. Wright - but I believe it's worth considering, and working as a church to move toward reconciliation in these matters.



5/12/2008 1:01:00 PM

The Wire is a great show. I'm on Season 3 now.

The show is as much about drug dealers as it is about cops, which is why it is great. Some of the best characters, indeed my favorites, are Stringer Bell, the thug who runs his corner operation like a corporation, and Omar, a streetwise stickup man who targets drug dealers.

I wish the show had more noble characters to root for though. Officer McNulty, who we are supposed to hate, cheated on his wife, uses other women and is a drunk. Bunk is the same. In fact, nearly all the characters seem to cheat on their significant others, drink excessively, swear, cops play dirty, all characters engage in rampant sex......the list goes on.

Maybe that's why I like Omar; he doesn't swear, deal drugs or cheat on any of his boyfriends......for morality the best we get is a homosexual chain smoking thug who kills drug dealers to steal their money.

The review is good but am I missing something? Systematic racism? Baltimore is largely run by African Americans. 8 of 15 Council Members are black. The Mayor is black. The school superintendent South American. 2 of the last 3 police commissioners were African American. We have two African American colleges inside the city, the oldest black college in America is here.

I live in Baltimore City. While I won't defend past actions against any group of people systematic racism doesn't exist here in any notable way.



Baltimore, Md USA
5/9/2008 6:39:00 PM

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