So what’s your take on the debate about whether The Wire is too cynical or might inspire social change?
One thought on “Open thread on this week's readings”
Brett Dollar
Here we go again, confusing the auteur with his art…
The Atlantic piece for this final week sort of continues the discussion from last week about the cynicism of the show and, implicitly, the question of the responsibility of a work like The Wire to truth/reality. Bowden seems critical in a passage where he says, “[Simon] offers up his undisturbed vision, leaving out the things that don’t fit, adding things that emphasize its fundamentals, and the using the trappings of realism to dress it up and bring it to life onscreen.” His point is that journalists can’t do this, or at least good journalists don’t, but what he describes here is excellent fictional storytelling. He goes on to say that this lack of journalistic restraint “frees you to be unfair.” Okay, so David Simon holds a few grudges and has a healthy ego, but to demean the value of The Wire on this basis is pretty ridiculous. It is a fair criticism to say that many of the newsroom characters are one-dimensional and under-developed compared to most of the shows wonderfully textured individuals, and it’s fun to speculate about the personal grudges that may have contributed to this problem, but it’s important to remember that Simon was not the only one with a pen (or laptop/FinalDraft). While one person gets the credit listing for writing any given episode, a team of writers plans and executes the entire season together. Simon and the other writers on the show, like the rest of the WGA, answer first to story. Their job is to create and reveal compelling characters in interesting dramatic settings; just because this group of writers does so with particular skill and insight into contemporary society does not make them any more or less responsible to journalistic standards. It’s an unfair comparison since the serial television and journalism work in different ways, as we are all exploring in our final papers.
Last Thursday there was some heated discussion about the value of “raising awareness.” It’s an ugly phrase, associated with all kinds of bullshit activism, which is why I think The Wire does something slightly different. Perhaps we can say The Wire “involves” the viewer, rather than simply making the viewer aware of something. I’m not sure about others in the class, but watching half a season or so per week and being encouraged to think and write about it often has been intense and a little consuming—I talk about the show to anyone who’ll listen and often find myself thinking of how it illustrates concepts from other classes. I have been continually amazed by the show’s ability to make me care so deeply about so many characters across different fictional circumstances, and it is my sympathy for these individual characters that makes me angry about the condition of modern urban America and curious about what one individual can do to improve various problems. As for the cynicism of the show in the context of inspiring action vs. despair, it obviously affects different people differently, but I can’t imagine it adding upbeat elements and retaining its narrative or thematic power. The Wire doesn’t need to feature the community activist groups and their triumphs – I’ll find that when, inspired by the show, I ask what to do next and look.
Here we go again, confusing the auteur with his art…
The Atlantic piece for this final week sort of continues the discussion from last week about the cynicism of the show and, implicitly, the question of the responsibility of a work like The Wire to truth/reality. Bowden seems critical in a passage where he says, “[Simon] offers up his undisturbed vision, leaving out the things that don’t fit, adding things that emphasize its fundamentals, and the using the trappings of realism to dress it up and bring it to life onscreen.” His point is that journalists can’t do this, or at least good journalists don’t, but what he describes here is excellent fictional storytelling. He goes on to say that this lack of journalistic restraint “frees you to be unfair.” Okay, so David Simon holds a few grudges and has a healthy ego, but to demean the value of The Wire on this basis is pretty ridiculous. It is a fair criticism to say that many of the newsroom characters are one-dimensional and under-developed compared to most of the shows wonderfully textured individuals, and it’s fun to speculate about the personal grudges that may have contributed to this problem, but it’s important to remember that Simon was not the only one with a pen (or laptop/FinalDraft). While one person gets the credit listing for writing any given episode, a team of writers plans and executes the entire season together. Simon and the other writers on the show, like the rest of the WGA, answer first to story. Their job is to create and reveal compelling characters in interesting dramatic settings; just because this group of writers does so with particular skill and insight into contemporary society does not make them any more or less responsible to journalistic standards. It’s an unfair comparison since the serial television and journalism work in different ways, as we are all exploring in our final papers.
Last Thursday there was some heated discussion about the value of “raising awareness.” It’s an ugly phrase, associated with all kinds of bullshit activism, which is why I think The Wire does something slightly different. Perhaps we can say The Wire “involves” the viewer, rather than simply making the viewer aware of something. I’m not sure about others in the class, but watching half a season or so per week and being encouraged to think and write about it often has been intense and a little consuming—I talk about the show to anyone who’ll listen and often find myself thinking of how it illustrates concepts from other classes. I have been continually amazed by the show’s ability to make me care so deeply about so many characters across different fictional circumstances, and it is my sympathy for these individual characters that makes me angry about the condition of modern urban America and curious about what one individual can do to improve various problems. As for the cynicism of the show in the context of inspiring action vs. despair, it obviously affects different people differently, but I can’t imagine it adding upbeat elements and retaining its narrative or thematic power. The Wire doesn’t need to feature the community activist groups and their triumphs – I’ll find that when, inspired by the show, I ask what to do next and look.