So I’m watching The Wire right now. It’s one my lovely on-demand box, and I am twelve episodes in, with forty-nine left to go. Yo, It’s a big long story arc, yo.
The Wire is a the story of two warring houses: the Baltimore police and all its adjunct, ancillary, and ascendant parts, and the Avon Barksdale crime group, with its money, secrecy, soldiers, and cannon fodder.
I like the wire because it’s… ethno-normativity, I guess you could call it. Baltimore is a largely black city (a ‘brown town,’ as it was called on the old show Homicide). If there is a fancy fundraiser at a Mansion, black people are the main players. If there is a scene in a fancy restaurant, the clientele is mainly black. The lietenants, the senators, the deputy commissioner, the detectives, are mainly black. There is no racism in the wire – just people of different colour living and working together. That this show is featured on the blog ’Stuff White People Like’ is a little silly.
The one glaring exception is Dominic West as detective Jim McNulty, a white man of Irish decent who is the show’s lead character. While he is white, his particular brand of drinking, grandstanding, navel-gazing, and poor fathering make him one of the best choices for this show of flawed people. His own colour, in a city of black people, makes him the perfect outsider, the man who first really takes notice of the well-hidden Avon Barksdale crime network, and bugs enough people to make the investigation happen.
Things I noticed about The Wire:
Criminal who use the ‘We’re all family united against The Man’ approach to rally their underlings are lying. Avon Barksdale has no problem with killing a child if it benefits him.
The show is an indictment of pure capitalism. Once someone gets to the top of the heap, he’ll just keep taking more until everyone underneath has nothing. Avon Barksdale makes millions, and yet his underlings and sellers live in housing projects with broken windows and no plumbing.
The other side of pure capitalism – that of administration and rank within the government – is just as bad as the criminal side of capitalism. The Wire is full of bureaucrats and politicians who would happily let Barksdale go on killing and poisoning as long as the campaign contributions keep coming in and the homicide clearances are high. The people who wish for change – McNulty, Kima, Daniels – are seen as bothersome meddlers.
I’m only a few seasons into the second season, and I’ve been refraining from looking it up in case I might hear that McNulty gets killed.
I’ve never watched it, though I’ve heard of it. Our equivalent is Underworld. Crime is supposed to be so interesting – and yet I can’t really say I am, much, interested in it.
Anything is interesting if it’s well-written and well-plotted.