My Television Project for the Summer
June 5, 2009, 7:41 am
Posted by Cathleen Kaveny
My Christmas present to myself was the entire boxed set of The Wire, reputed to be the best show on television. I just started watching it, and it is riveting–grim but riveting.
Here’s a clip from the third episode, where D’Angelo Barksdale, a lieutenant in his uncle’s West Baltimore drug trade, explains the business to two of his underlings–using the game of chess. Warning: tough language.
If you haven’t seen the Bill Moyer’s interview with David Simon, a writer and producer for the series, you ought to take a look: http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/04172009/profile.html. Simon’s social analysis is incisive and easily yoked with liberation theology. This interview provided the series a different dimension and spured me to rewatch it.
Cathy: I am among those who have only the highest of praise for The Wire. One thing that I think is often overlooked is that, with the exception of Snoop, all of the actors are trained, professional actors. I sometimes fear that too many suburbantites view this as a documentary, and so find nothing impressive about what is taking place on screen.
I sometimes think that David Simon hoped The Wire, and his earlier HBO production The Corner (also worth watching) would cause people to wake up and do something about the situation (my students tell me it is a very accurate portrayal). Instead, he did such a good job of bringing the reality into their living rooms that they were terrified about the situation, and only became more convinced that nothing could be done.
An interesting read to acccompany your viewing of The Wire would be Elijah Anderson’s Code of the Stree: Decency, Violence, and the Moral Life of the Inner City. I have used it in my Ethics and Values classes and the students are often very responsive to it. What becomes clear from The Wire and from Code of the Street is the deep rationality present in these lives.
After being hectored for what seemed like years, we finally watched “The Wire” last year, all of it, and I found it completely discouraging: after watching such brilliance, how could I write again?! It’s all been done. And, in large part, by a newspaperman, of all things. (And the season focusing on The Sun really was depressing. The life of kings, indeed, it was.)
You’re in for a treat, Cathy, in that it is remarkable television–it works on so many levels, as other have said, and I think you will discover. And truly, the acting is astonishing. Joe, what about the students in the schools-based season? They can’t all be actors? Or are they?
It took me one season to get an ear for all the idioms, so I should go back and watch again.
If only for Omar.
The Wire is amazing. And I agree with David. Omar is the best character on the show.
Further to Joe Pettit’s comment it is remarkable that Dominic West who plays Jimmy McNulty is in fact a very posh Englishman (though born to an Irish Catholic family). He went to Eton. Don’t know if it has been shown in the US but he plays a magnificent Oliver Cromwell in the English Civil War drama ‘The Devil’s Whore’.
Idris Elba (Stringer Bell) is also a Brit, and now be seen in The Office.
David, I’m not sure about the school kids. I’ll bet the DVD for season 4 would answer that, but I only have seasons 1-3.
This link should work:
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/04172009/watch.html
Thanks Jerry.
I’ve never watched The Wire, but judging from the snip supplied by CK, it looks pretty toxic. Such wonderful role models for young African Americans, such inspiration and motivation! And I love the characters’ tender respect for African American women…
I don’t think it’s meant to provide role models–any more than the Sopranos was.
Yes, very well said, but why would that be a good thing? The Sopranos, so far as I can see from the few episodes I watched, chronicled the lives of violent sociopaths whose ethnicity tended to be Italian/Sicilian. Not my cup of tea.
Bob S: open the Moyers interview with Simon and watch the entire thing.
I need to rewatch episode three tonight.
It’s kind of like reading Tolstoy.
I can only watch it on DVD–without the subtitles, I’m lost.
Check these out:
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/10/22/071022fa_fact_talbot?printable=true
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200801/bowden-wire
It’s no Sopranos. There’s no Paulie Walnuts, for one thing, and definitely no Edie Falco. No one approaching the complexity of Christopher. There’s no crispness to the dialogue or the direction. It’s not at all funny. Some of the acting is excellent, some is completely wooden. Even most of the excellent acting is wooden, which can only be the result of bad direction.
No dream sequences, some very false-ringing schtick (the scene where two detectives speak in exclusively f-bomb terms) and the characters are mere types. Oh, she’s the smart one. Those two are the dumb ones. That’s the gay one. And did they just borrow the Sopranos strip club? Overall I found it pretty boring.
Wow. That is a pretty serious smack-down. I hope Mr. Simon doesn’t read the blog–it seems, given Gene’s links, you’d be on his list, Kathy!
Best. Show. Ever.
Was depressed for a week when [insert any number of characters here] was killed off.
Maybe I shouldn’t have given up halfway through season 1. Then again, I couldn’t stand the tedium. Yes, the system is corrupt. Yes it is bureaucratic. There was one entire episode in which the word “favor” was mentioned like 27 times. Yes, the system is corrupt.
As Thomas Merton was wont to say about art, it has to have “some damn life in it!” It’s art. ART.
Here are the lyrics to the theme song, which is a gospel song:
Way Down in the Hole
When you walk through the garden
you gotta watch your back
well I beg your pardon
walk the straight and narrow track
if you walk with Jesus
he’s gonna save your soul
you gotta keep the devil
way down in the hole
he’s got the fire and the fury
at his command
well you don’t have to worry
if you hold on to Jesus hand
we’ll all be safe from Satan
when the thunder rolls
just gotta help me keep the devil
way down in the hole
All the angels sing about Jesus’ mighty sword
and they’ll shield you with their wings
and keep you close to the lord
don’t pay heed to temptation
for his hands are so cold
you gotta help me keep the devil
way down in the hole
This song is way better: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BAd23WNP9Q8
Not to mention: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2_faH4hFwB0
I think it’s great that they’re making shows with moral content. But I don’t think heavy-handed exposes of the very fact of original sin is the same as art with transforming power. I think the Wire depends too much on pessimism and too little on actual intensity.
Okay, Kathy–we need a positive baseline against which to assess your criticisms What IS your favorite television series of all time?
Sopranos is excellent. The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd, short-lived but excellent. West Wing, excellent till season 5. Seasons two and three were some of the best tv ever. Wrong, sometimes very wrong, policy-wise, but top-notch tv.
British: Sherlock Holmes, the Jeremy Brett/ Granada TV series. To Serve Them All My Days. Foyle’s War.
You may remember that a couple of decades back there was a rash of movies about black-on-black violence, e.g. New Jack City. Films about the problems of inner-city African Americans, then as now, strike me as voyeuristic and exploitative, la kind of violence-porn. Especially this show which is made by whites for whites.
Cathy, just by the way, I am curious why you said “we” need rather than “I” need. It’s your question, right? So why not use the singular?
Because I thought you were addressing the posters on the entire thread, not just me, when you made your indictment of the Wire–so I saw myself as speaking on behalf of other members of the blog thread who like the Wire, and who are likely somewhat flummoxed by your opinion on it. To make sense of your point, we (the posters who like the Wire) need more information with which to contextualize it.
Kathy, don’t you think it’s a touch absurd to make such grand pronouncements about the show when you’ve only seen half a season?
It’s a minor quibble, but why would you presume others are flummoxed, and/or would benefit from the information that would help you understand? Whomever I was addressing, the question you asked me was apparently your own. I think you should have expressed it that way.
Because I don’t presume my thought processes are idiosyncratic.
On most matters, if one wants to find a basis for a group with a strong general consensus in one direction (in favor of the Wire’s worth) to have a constructive discussion with a quite divergent opinion the same topic, (your view against the Wire’s worth), one needs to create a broader basis of engagement. So I was trying to create a group discussion that was able to include and address your opinion with sufficient background information about what your standards for good television are.
But that’s the last time I’ll try to do that.
Grant, that was honestly all I could take. He’s the corrupt cop. He’s the cop who would like to be corrupt but is too inept to fall down the stairs.
Just look at the video Cathy posted, and how spoon-fed the lines are. “He like the stash.” If the writer wants to make a metaphor between chess and selling drugs in a low-rise, s/he should write it in a way that is several more degrees removed from simple exposition. “Show, don’t tell,” as they say in film school 101. But The Wire gets away with pedantry because it’s “real,” which is to say, “depressing.”
Or are you suggesting the writing improves after the first half season?
But that’s the last time I’ll try to do that.
Cathy, thank you. I would in fact prefer the discussions to proceed as they usually do. I would prefer it if we could each speak for ourselves.
Uhh. . . let me be even clearer. That is the last time I will try to engage YOU in this manner, because it clearly doesn’t work. I think it’s generally a good way to bring interesting and different perspectives into a discussion.
But as always, thanks so much for the suggestions!
Grant, another example. When the Sopranos wanted to show that the top dog gets all the money, they *showed* it. They showed the Sopranos’ house, ginormous pantry, envelopes full of money on the kids’ Confirmation. On The Wire, Dee goes to to his uncle’s lieutenant and says, “Where does all the money go?” Then he has a moment of realization that all the money goes to his uncle.
Here is some criticism of the pessiism of the show. There is plenty out there. See also the second page of the Bowden essay Gene points to above.
http://www.dissentmagazine.org/online.php?id=59
http://edition.cnn.com/2008/SHOWBIZ/TV/12/22/the.wire/