Freedom Socialist Vol. 29, No. 2 April-May 2008

TELEVISION REVIEW

Television as dissent: The Wire is an American tragedy in five parts

by Guerry Hoddersen

Left to right: Maestro Harrell as Randy Wagstaff, Tristan Wilds as Michael Lee, and Julito McCullum as Namond Brice. Credit HBO

Hands-down the most provocative series ever produced for television ended in March. If you think this is an exaggeration, you don’t know about The Wire, HBO’s sprawling story of a city in crisis. Filmed on the streets of Baltimore with a predominantly Black cast — the best ever assembled in a single show — The Wire is a complex, novelistic drama dealing with poverty, race and politics.

Tim Goodman, San Francisco Chronicle critic, called it an “astonishing display of acting, writing and storytelling that must be considered alongside the best literature and filmmaking of the modern era.” “A vibrant, masterful work of art,” wrote Robert Abele of the LA Weekly.

David Simon, a former Baltimore Sun crime reporter, is the show’s creator. A strike captain during the 1987 walkout at the Sun, Simon took a buyout in 1995, fed-up with corporate journalism. Later he teamed up with retired Baltimore homicide detective and schoolteacher Ed Burns to launch The Wire.

As the show progressed, Simon added other urban crime writers and playwrights to the team — Dennis Lehane (Mystic River), Richard Price (The Clockers), George P. Pelecanos (D.C. Quartet series), Kia Corthron (Force Continuum) — and African American directors Ernest Dickerson and Clark Johnson (Johnson also portrays “Gus” Haynes, a city editor in the final season).

Simon believes that “raw, unencumbered capitalism” debases human beings. In The Wire, he shows you how.

Each of its five seasons focused on some aspect of modern life and its institutions — schools, policing, workingclass job loss, the war on drugs, cronyism and dysfunctionality in politics, the corporate newspaper industry.

Through an unforgettable cast of characters, Simon and his team break your heart and put the lie to G.W.’s crap about “individual responsibility” and the free market as a solution to all social ills.

In a social system that thwarts almost everyone, taking personal responsibility can be the worst thing you can do. Or the most impossible.
The kids on the corner dealing drugs are obliged to take responsibility for their young lives by becoming predators.

“Bubbles,” a snitch and heroin addict touchingly portrayed by actor Andre Royo, struggles to become answerable for his life, but it’s anybody’s guess whether he’ll be able to stay clean.

Omar Little (Michael K. Williams), a homosexual gangster with a code of honor, robs drug dealers but never touches working folk. When he steps up to avenge the murder of his lover, bodies fall like pins in a bowling alley.

Gangly, 14-year-old middle school dropout “Dukie” Weems (Jermaine Crawford) doesn’t have the hard stuff for life on a corner and looks for a real job. “How do you get from here to the rest of the world?” he asks a retired gang soldier. Sadly, he never finds out.

Even police detective Jimmy McNulty, played by British actor Dominic West, has a warped sense of duty.

In order to get the mayor to allocate more money to the police department — so he and others can finally bring down a malevolent drug kingpin and prove his connection to the power structure — McNulty creates a fictional serial killer. This is an act that exposes every fault line in the mayor’s office, the police department and beyond.

In its final season, The Wire focused on the newspaper industry. Journalists at a fictional Baltimore Sun face cutbacks, layoffs, buyouts, the closing of their foreign bureau and management lectures about “doing more with less.”

Like union dockworkers in an earlier season, journalists face the destruction of their livelihood and profession. They long to do “real newspaper work” just as the cops want to do “real police work.” In a system that corrupts everyone, the good guys are hungry for authenticity while the bad guys, including those in Italian suits, are just looking for the next opportunity to screw their neighbors.

This is no ordinary cop show.

It’s not about bringing the bad guys to justice or pseudo police science. There are no law enforcement babes in tight shirts and push-up bras talking cop trash in squeaky, girly voices. This is gritty sociology and Labor Relations 101.

It’s a crying shame that The Wire has not gotten the recognition that it deserves.

It only received one Emmy nomination, for writing. The Sopranos, another HBO show with three times the audience and much less social relevance, received a bucket full of awards. But maybe that’s just proof of how good this show is. It’s too good for Hollywood, that bastion of white privilege and power.

If you missed The Wire, you can get the first three seasons on DVD. Check your public library and if they don’t have it, ask your librarian to order it. Or you might find a bootlegged DVD on the street. That’s where The Wire has cred.

Guerry Hoddersen, the International Secretary of the Freedom Socialist Party, continues the search for workculture in television, movies and theater. Email her at guerryh@mindspring.com.