This might be hard to sum up, but I wanted to offer a space for reflection as to what the “takeaways” are from this course and the series. Big thoughts, little thoughts, whatever – but what do you think is going to stick with you?
3 thoughts on “What have you learned?”
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It is very hard to focus and write down exactly what I’ve learned from this course. I suppose in terms of The Wire’s content, I have peered into a part of society that I could not have gotten from any other medium. Even in comparison with the three books that we have read, the show has imprinted images, most based on truth, that I could not completely visualize after reading the novels. It was great to see a show that is so dramatic without the usual nuances of television, and that leaves the audience with a real interest in the messages conveyed by the writers. The authenticity factor was another first for me – I had never experienced a show that was fictional, yet based on real people, and also have some of those real people appear in the show as other characters! The entire dynamic of the production was amazing to learn about.
Apart from the show itself, the concept of following serial television with an academic group of viewers was a great experience. I learned more about each scene simply by sensing the reactions of those around me. I believe that through this type of venue alone can allow almost all of the subtleties and purpose of the show to shine through.
What is going to stick with me, apart from brandon’s mangled face, Omar’s whistling, and Jimmy and Bunk portraying the versatility of the word ‘fuck’, I suppose it is the knowledge of what this show was born from; what a city can be like in all aspects, what poverty and self aggrandizing can lead to, and what type of studious attention it takes to let it all sink in.
The biggest thing that I’ll take away from this class is the realization that The Wire is more than just television. I’ve never watched any other HBO shows before (besides a couple Sopranos episodes), and Simon and Burns, true to the “It’s not TV, it’s HBO” slogan, have created a series that made me think about TV from a whole new approach. After watching the first couple episodes, I soon realized that watching the show just to see what would happen next was not enough; I found myself thinking hard about what the characters were doing or what was going on at any given moment just so I could stay grounded in The Wire’s fast paced world. The “fuck” crime scene example is a perfect example of this: you have to get inside Jimmy’s and Bunk’s head in order to realize what they’re deducing, and to do that you have to know the sort of detectives they are, knowledge that only comes if you’ve watched all the previous episodes.
One of the things that helped me to follow The Wire as social commentary, as fictionalized reality, as a series of inner-city snapshots–as anything other than TV, really–was the ability to watch it with the class. The goal of the course was “Watching the Wire” and I feel that the goal was reached for me. Discussions were helpful because I often found other students’ comments to be exactly what I was thinking, but was unable to articulate. But what I learned from watching the show was even more valuable: things that I never would have laughed at or thought about twice while watching the show on my own were sometimes the thing that left the rest of the class gasping in horror or bent over laughing (it happened at least once a week). Moments like that made me reasses the way I was watching The Wire, and often made me watch the scene again outside of class just to figure out why I had missed its humour, sadness, or other significance.
So having never taken a Film and Media studies class, what I learned most from Watching the Wire was how to critically watch television, and all from a show that was beyond any television I had ever seen.
Like tom and Evan, I have gained a higher level of appreciation for television throughout this class. Even having watched and enjoyed other HBO shows, and read about trends toward narrative complexity in serial television in the TV & American Culture class, I retained a somewhat snobbish attitude toward the medium. Until this semester I still held TV as inferior to the cinema, but with this show it hit me that brilliant writing and directing applied over sixty hours can achieve much, much more – in terms of storytelling and commentary – than it can in two hours. This seems really obvious, but most shows fail to capitalize on this advantage, so it is easy to forget. Someone asked me about my favorite movies the other day and the first thing that came into my mind was The Wire, which was a little disorienting.
This class has also taught me just enough about a variety of issues in urban America to want to know a whole lot more. This is the first class in a while (maybe ever) to inspire me to read multiple related but extracurricular books, probably to the detriment of my reading for other classes. The Wire explores the effects of 20th century economic transformations and the drug war upon Baltimore as a simultaneously distinct and universal example, but surely other cities have been affected differently—Los Angeles, for instance, with its endless sprawl and gang culture, has a distinct dynamic of crime and poverty. Because of my experience watching The Wire, I want to know about this stuff. The show doesn’t tell us how to respond to or “help” the problems it presents, but the fact that it makes me want to keep exploring must count for something.