"Some modern travellers still pretend to find Acephalous people in America." Ephraim Chambers, Cyclopædia; or, an universal dictionary of arts and sciences, 1753
...and are disappointed that none of you lot pointed out. Namely, that when I wrote this post a month ago, it never occurred to me that I was unconsciously admitting to a desire to be bossed around by handsome bald black men:
But apparently I do. Regular posting to resume shortly, now that I've got the majority of the lesson-planning for my new course–which I'm currently teaching, so I'm scripting class-by-class instead of working from previously devised material–completed.
Everybody loves The Wire and I think it's okay, but in the end it's just a police series. I love The Sopranos. Deadwood, which didn't last long, was a series I liked a lot; it had more filthy language than I've ever heard on television anywhere in my life, but it was brilliantly written. I like some of what is on now, like Breaking Bad and Dexter.
Ever since then, his Twitter feed's been mighty entertaining. In particular, he implicitly claims that The Wire is "just a police series" but Entourage is something more. (I'm not sure exactly what that something is, but it must have to do with the fact that, as a celebrity himself, he could relate to the Vince and his crew on a profound level inaccessible to those of us who found the show and its characters vapid and humorless.) Rushdie's dismissal of The Wire as "mere" genre fiction couldn't be more poorly timed, coming as it does on the tail end of Colson Whitehead's dismissal of genre fiction as an operative category in contemporary literature. Genre only matters, Whitehead argues, to people incapable of seeing past it. One would assume that a magic realist like Rushdie would understand that.
But no.
He'll watch Game of Thrones, but only because it qualifies as research:
I watched all that because if I am going to work in this field, I need to know what it is going on. I have been making myself have whole-series marathons to get the point of how it goes. I will soon start writing my little series.
Despite being on Court TV, and therefore ostensibly safe for late-night consumption, the reruns of Homicide in which Frank Pembleton's got someone in the box and is being, well, you know, are epically unsafe late-night fare:
There’s a word for your face, for the teeth you have left, and that word is danger, grave danger, because that word is “fear,” but it sounds like “snap,” because that word is “pain,” and it whistles, up through the lungs it’s got left, “What happened to my teeth? My teeth. What happened — to my — tee-th.” Court it within shot of my ears – my ears – again, and the word whispered will be “death.” Two syllables, you see, not one, but two: “Death.” But not– not – before “pain.” Never before “pain.
Transcribing that, I realize how little sense it makes unless you can imagine his delivery ... but the menace is there. It's just that before tonight I never realized quite how much of a run Pembleton can give Swearengen for his money, and I think I maybe didn't want to.
Why is it
any time anyone hipsters or academics are supposed to like dies, they
just so happen to be very important never-before-mentioned influences on
your life? Are you really so needy that there's no death you won't use
as an excuse to call attention to yourself?
Although this comment belongs to the tedious category of "complaints about bloggers having blogs and writing about stuff on them," it nevertheless struck a chord: first, because the size of the community grieving for Alex Chilton surprised me; and second, it seems to be a dangerous time to be a living artist or academic who changed my life. That said, this annoying anonymous person is reading in bad faith: not everyone who influenced me did so greatly or uniquely, which is why I noted Kurt Vonnegut's passing in passing, as a "Vonnegut phase" is required to join the community of readers. The same cannot be said of those academics and artists with whom I shared an intimate relationship over many years, which is why I wrote individual remembrances of Octavia Butler, David Foster Wallace, Howard Zinn, or Alex Chilton.
If I seem to be too familiar a type, blame central casting: academics play the part because that's the part they've been asked to play. That there seems to be a wider community of similarly interested intellectuals is, to my mind, a sign that while academic disciplines may be irrevocably balkanized, something resembling a larger intellectual culture still exists. Whether this cultural homogeneity is a good thing depends on what it actually contains, and given how surprising Chilton's inclusion image was to me, I probably should refrain from saying much more about it.
However, in light of the recent proliferation of lists like this, I think I'll take a moment to silence future scolds by listing all living authors, musicians, and filmmakers with whose work I feel a deeply irrational kinship. They may not still move me as they once did, but they once did and when they die a little bit of me will too.
...some how or other the most innovative and compelling show in the history of television is only the sixth best show of the past decade. (And they wonder why print's becoming irrelevant?)
I first got into HBO’s hit television program The Wired about two years ago. A stranger mentioned it to the person in front of him at the 700 Club
cafeteria, and by the time I finished the first episode, I knew I would
be telling people I was completely hooked. (This, by the way, is my
Recruitment Rule for The Wired: watch the first four minutes.
If you don’t like it by then, dump out.) I am so excited by my
enthusiasm for the show, in fact, that I often tout the first episode
of The Wired as the best show in the history of television. I
don’t simply love this episode for its terrific acting, wonderful
writing, quirkly plotting, or mind-boggling twists. I also love it
because of its subtle conservatism. Here are the top five conservative
characters on the first episode of The Wired. Beware—SPOILERS INCLUDED.
1. William Rawls: John Doman’s tough Homicide
investigator, William Rawls, is the top conservative character on
television, bar none. Rawls is a real man’s man, a true paragon of
conservative integrity. He knows that America is a meritocracy and,
according to Wikipedia, in Season 4
openly attacks the reverse racism of affirmative action by proving
that, instead of working up the ranks honestly like he has, the blacks
in the Baltimore Police Department were recruited up the chain of
command because of the color of their skin. This racism created a
leadership vacuum, and like true conservatives, Rawls knows the value
of a true leader of men. He may not always love the men beneath him, but
he knows they need discipline and is determined to give it to them.
2. Jimmy McNulty: If every public servant showed
McNulty’s commitment to civic duty, we would never have heard the
odious phrase “President-Elect Obama” said without a snigger. In this
episode alone, McNulty attends a trial when he could have been at home
and stays up all night to make sure his report is on his deputy’s desk
at 0800 clean and with no typos. Here he is in a clip from Season 2,
going above and beyond the call of duty:
He’s also a family man who wants nothing more than the judge to give him more than three out of four weekends with his children.
3. Snot Boogie: Every Friday night, anonymous
young black men would roll bones behind the Cut Rate, and every Friday
night, Snot Boogie would wait until there was cash on the ground, grab
it, and run away. Snot Boogie knew these games were unsanctioned and
bravely confiscated the illegal proceeds even though he knew the young
black men would catch him and beat his ass. To do what you know to be
right, no matter the consequence, is a true conservative value.
4. The Anonymous Young Black Men behind the Cut Rate:
The anonymous young black men behind the Cut Rate are American icons.
They let Snot Boogie in the game even though he always stole the money
because “[i]t’s America, man.” But it's not liberal
America, man, as should be obvious both by their devotion to the idea that
while this is a free country, all decisions have consequences, and their commitment to capital punishment. They could have just whooped
Snot Boogie’s ass like they always whoop his ass, but the anonymous
young black men behind the Cut Rate know how to prevent the next
generation of Snot Boogies from repeating the mistakes of the previous.
5. Avon Barksdale and Stringer Bell: I cheated
here, but this is a Top 5, not a Top 6. Avon and Stringer are pure
capitalists, compassionate but tough. Avon is a family man. When his
cousin D’Angelo comes to him asking for a job, Avon and Stringer decide
to give him one. But both men know there’s no such thing as a free
lunch, so they also decide to teach D’Angelo that, in America, hard
work is its own reward. Everyone has to start in the pit, but with a
little hard work, anyone can end up running a tower.
The first episode of The Wired is a show chock-full of
conservative values. It mentions God and quotes the Bible on a regular
basis. It debates police vs. criminals and free enterprise vs.
socialism. It promotes the value of the nuclear family—virtually every
character on the show has dealt with a broken home, and they all pay
the price for it. But everyone should know that the first episode of The Wired is one of the most conservative shows on TV. That’s part of what makes it so juicy.
Yesterday, the Clinton campaign accused Obama of plagiarizing his friend Deval Patrick. Patrick insists that the two friends often swap rhetorical strategies, saying he sees nothing wrong with Obama repeating a phrasing he helped create. I'm with Obama and Patrick on this one: I don't want to live in a world where every anaphora "plagiarizes" some millennia-dead Greek orator.
However, I would like to live in a world where I'm paid when bloggers from The New York Times plagiarize me. Last November, in a post entitled "The Munch Paradox," I wrote:
For those of you keeping score, it's possible that an upcoming episode of The Wire might now incorporate:
John Munch, a character inspired by Jay Landsman
Jay Landsman, a second character inspired by Jay Landsman
So in short, if Mr. Belzer is supposed to be Munch in that wordless
scene, then “The Wire” would now incorporate the real Jay Landsman, a
character named Jay Landsman, and a second character inspired by Jay
Landsman.
This person profited off my sentences. Granted, they're not the greatest sentences in the world; in fact, because they're bulleted, they might not even be sentences. How about we say this person profited off my infelicitous arrangement of words? Because he did.
I demand the $12 (or whatever) he earned "writing" that post. My campaign starts now. He might claim that they are just words. Just words? He might claim that they are just a coincidence. Just a coincidence? He might even claim that I'm just plagiarizing some millennia-dead Greek orator with my anaphora here. I'm just plagiarizing some millennia-dead Greek orator with my anaphora here? This I say to you, dear readers, that I will not stop, I will not cease, I will not sleep until I have in my hands the $12 (or whatever) he earned "writing" that post.
On that same post by Ari Kelman, ac wonders whether The Wire doesn't appeal to those it condemns:
Isn’t it also something to do with the audience at whom violent
gangster stories are directed? There is a voyeuristic or vicarious
observance for the male viewer, too. It’s not like most men watching
operate in violent code-of-the-warrior mode themselves.
Even ogged—of "there's no such thing as an anti-war war movie" fame—concedes there may be something to the notion that The Wire defies this (extensive) logic, that it may be an anti-gangster gangster serial. Not that ac and ogged have no point: who sympathizes with law enforcement while watching The Godfather? (That Fredo's execution has become an object of cultural parody indicates the extent to which viewers sympathetically identify with Michael Corleone.) The Wire escapes that voyeuristic pull for two reasons, one simple, the other so complex I've auditioned it before many, many, manypeople without working up the gall put in writing.
The Simple Reason
The Wire combines the narrative perspective of three previous David Simon-related projects: Homicide, Oz, and The Corner. As if to underscore this, at one point we see Omar Little and his boyfriend curled up watching Oz. (If that ain't irony enough for you, they're watching Chris Keller threaten to rape Toby Beecher, and Keller's played by Christopher Merloni, a.k.a. Elliot Stabler from Law & Order: SVU. So you have two gay men watching one gay man who plays a sex crimes officer rape a straight man and haven't we been down this road with these same folk before?) The multiple perspectives force the viewer to adopt an almost sociological attitude toward the characters in each group. We adore detectives McNulty and Bunk one moment, D'Angelo and Bodie the next. The narratives splinter our sympathies, forcing us to confront the limitations films like The Godfather would have us embrace:
We root for D'Angelo while hoping CID destroys his cousin (and employer) Avon's organization. Simon and company disseminate our allegiances so wide and thin that when conflict arises we feel genuine confusion. The algebra of identification grows to calculus so quickly that we stare, dumbfounded, unable to understand the ramifications of what we witnessed. This confusion is essential to the show's appeal. Knowing what happened is less important than understanding the potential consequences. (As is dramatized, via nail-gun, on numerous occasions in Season Four.)
The Wire isn’t simply the best show on television, in many
ways, it’s not a television show at all, generically speaking. To judge
it by the standards you’d apply to other shows denies it its uniqueness, denudes of it what makes it it. I know that sounds abstract, but let me explain the experience of watching it:
The age of television on DVD has created a Culture of Marathon. We
purchase entire seasons, then watch them in one or two consecutive
evenings. At least, the desire to do so is there, as if the serial
nature of the Victorian novel were abetted by having a Perpetual
Dickens Machine in the closet crunching out the next chapter on demand.
We might not always do so—not always prudent to be watching season
finales at 3 a.m.—but that’s how we want to watch it. This mode of
watching (and reading) creates some retention problems: we get so
caught up in the big arcs that we miss a lot of the nuance. Instead of
brooding over details for the weeks/months between serials, we ride the
wave of plot from start-to-finish, and leave the little pleasures for
repeated viewings. (If the show merits any, that is, which creates of
host of other problems, but that’s another comment.)
Unlike any other show, The Wire demands you watch the
next episode, but leaves you so drained that it’s almost impossible to do so.
You take in so much in any given episode that, though you desperately
desire to continue, you know you won’t enjoy it as much, since you’ll
be so cognizant of all you’ve missed. They pushed this dynamic hard
through the first season; the second reversed course for the first few
episodes, then slammed you with almost overwhelming complexity. The
thing of it is, you always feel there’s a perfect balance somewhere:
two hours and fifteen minutes, maybe? But you can’t stop in the middle
of an episode, or you’ll lose its arc, &c. That’s what I mean when
I say that as a televisual experience, The Wire’s utterly unique, comparable only to something that doesn’t exist, like a page-turning modernist novel.
I can't best that tonight. Consider it the germ of something larger and to come ... but by all means critique it mercilessly. I may be blinded by The Wire's brilliance or embracing a pernicious televisual presentism.
What, for example, are the lives of the “Miss Annas,” the foster mothers like? What would it mean to focus on the foster care system and social work, another occupation/institution that is female-dominated? How do all of these areas fit into the puzzle that is Baltimore? Again, I suppose that one could make the argument that the writers are writing what they know, but would it kill them to find out some things that they do not know?
To which I responded:
You can’t let Simon off the hook so easily. The Corner’s very
much about the place of women in the masculine world, and its central
character, Fran Boyd, is a script-consultant/on-set
verisimilitude-guarantor. Simon knows the effect of this life on women,
he just chooses to focus elsewhere. That women aren’t involved in the day-to-day drug operations,
or in the dock workers union, isn’t a matter of making masculine what
is, in fact, more diverse—it’s a legacy of the extant misogyny in the
groups being depicted.
Simon knows the toll "the game" takes on those who ply its margins. Consider the families of the Barksdale crew: Donette finesses her way through relationships with one of its top soldiers, D'Angelo Barksdale; and when D'Angelo goes to prison, she insinuates herself with its de facto leader, Stringer Bell. Brianna Barksdale negotiates the increasingly strained relations between Avon and Stringer, and more significantly, their relationship to her son, D'Angelo. Brianna also works to support the families the incarcerated, managing the delicate egos and strident demands of De'Londa Brice and the like. While you may not respect the positions these woman occupy, Simon and his staff portray them with a keen sympathy for the pained decisions which have brought them there. (Even De'Londa becomes sympathetic by proxy, if only as Wee-Bey's wife and Namond's mother.)
That said, these figures do exist on the margins of Simon's Baltimore, so you can legitimately criticize him for choosing to depict a world in which women are marginal. Before doing so, rent The Corner, the mini-series Simon helmed for HBO. (Or read the book.) If The Wire neglects to document the toll of the game on women, The Corner focuses so intently on the human cost of the drug war that the structural critique central to The Wire's narrative appeal never emerge. We see the effects of systemic failure, but only hints of its origin and extent.
This is more true of the mini-series than the book, as the latter contains explicit criticism of the infrastructure of everything from drug organizations to the political entities who task incompetent law enforcement agencies to incarcerate the dealers et al. in brutal, corrupt correctional facilities. (But only after they're sentenced by number-crunching prosecuting attorneys who overwhelm the meager talents of drunken public defenders before august, indifferent judges.)
The Wire contains these beshitted multitudes, weaving their mercenary narratives into something so grand, it deserves it own post.
[UPDATE: Before I tackle that other post, I should mention one more thing about gender on The Wire: namely, that the traditional roles are often reversed, such that the most motherly character on the show is a homeless drug addict who helps other even more destitute souls learn how to survive the streets. More on this later.]
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