Why Dont You Blog?

After mildly slagging off the Wire (that’s British for insulting, I have decided to insert idiomatic translations) I am forced to bow before it. I had forgotten that it ebbs and flows in quality. From great to genius, The episode on Monday on FX was a true work of genius.

The programme focuses on Bodie, di Angelo and Chief Daniels, each of whom is at a pivotal moment. There are so many layers of meaning that it I can’t begin to do it justice. I would be outputting exhuberantly semiotic stuff until next year. And that would be just for one episode.

So, I’ll just pick out a few points in a shamefully lame way.

On third viewing, I realised that Bodie puts on the executioner’s cap before he shoots the other child, in an episode of true horror. After this, he wears it more or less consistently. It expresses Bodie’s having become a “soldier,” a disposable cheap executioner for the Darksdales.

At the moment of the shooting, Bodie’s lieutenant is sobbing. The about-to-be-victim pisses himself. Bodie is horrified at having to shoot a boy. But he is not going to stop what he is doing either. He gets the boy to affirm that he is a man not a boy. Earlier, the about-to-be-shot boy has told Bodie that he is “a man” rather than a boy. At which point he looks about fourteen. Even the killers, despatched by Stringer Bell to do the shooting, look older. And one of the them looks 16.

Bodie has made a sort of low-level Faustian deal with Stringer Bell, as Stringer has implied that he can rise in the business if he gets rid of Ritchie. So, Bodie has already prepared to kill for a slight chance of a small improvement in his circumstances.

The Wire writers are showing us that the soldiers are children, living in desperate poverty and shooting each other over crumbs, both victims and perpetrators of the social values that support the whole system.

The moral implications of this killing are played out for Bodie through later series, as Bodie begins to dissent more and more from his role and to pay a heavy price for becoming an ethical being.

One immediate moral implication is that diAngelo, who has been getting increasingly disenchanted with his part in the Barksdales and is coming to ask himself moral questions about his life, explodes with anger about the murder of the child. This sets in train a decision to betray the gang. Which will soon become an epic moral struggle for him.

Both diAngelo and Bodie find that the development of remorse and the stirring of an ethical conscience do not bring any rewards. I think the Wire breaks some ground here. There is no sense of virtue justly rewarded and villainy justly punished. It is not a simple morality tale. Characters are killed off or survive, partly as a result of their actions but mainly as a consequence of the actions of others. You can’t just step out of “the game” by repenting.

At the same that diAngelo is developing an ethical sense, Chief Daniels is doing the same. There is battle of wits, rather than guns, between Commissioner Burrell and Chief Daniels. Burrell tries to applythe blackmail leverage he’s been holding over Daniels. He is being ordered by the political machine to stop the investigation, because it had uncovered a money relationship between the Barksdale gang and some Senators.

Daniels stands up, literally and metaphorically. As does di Angelo when he challenges Stringer Bell.

Daniels reminds Burrell that others would lose more by exposing him than would Daniels. They would have already used their leverage but for the fact that the greatest fear of the political machine is publicity. They have no intention of using their information against Daniels. So he calls Burrell’s bluff.

This stuff was powerfully moving. The moral complexities are laid out brilliantly through the masterly acting.

(As well as the writing, - taken for granted as pure genius-, the direction, the costumes, the sets, the use of music and anything else you can think of. The HBO marketing is naff, but The Wire’s got to pull an audience to satisfy its paymasters. And for bringing the Sopranos and the Wire to the television, I will forgive HBO pretty well anything.

Popularity: 26% [?]

Popularity: 26% [?]

The Boston Globe has an article purporting to show that Newton believed in Intelligent design so he couldn’t possibly get a decent post in a modern university.

They reach this conclusion via a mode of rhetoric that makes you want to chew your own arm off. It’s like one of those long drawn out jokes in which the punchline is supposed to come as shock.

That is, they characterise the beliefs of an unknown professor in a succession of paragraphs that are supposed to make you think he’s a real extremist fundamentalist.

Not many modern universities are prepared to employ a science professor who espouses not merely “intelligent design” but out-and-out divine creation.

Of course, Dawkins’s name gets drawn in, Dawkins somehow having the ultimate say over all academic appointments in the fundy worldview.

Popularity: 39% [?]

Popularity: 39% [?]

Charlie Brooker has just struggled to do the Wire justice on FX. And failed. But you can’t blame him. No one can really do the Wire justice. All you do is end up saying “Best TV programme ever made” or “work of art”

He started out funny and fanatical. He was basically agreeing that it’s really boring listening to people banging on about such and such an American tv programme being great. But in any case, you can ignore them all because only the Wire was worth watching. And it’s “a true work of art.”
Then there were various talking heads, a few of whom were recognisable, saying “it’s a work of art” and so on. Someone said a freind from America had said it was the best thing that had been on TV since Abigail’s Party . Alexei Sayle said “Hi, my names Alexei and I’m a Wire-aholic”

The rest of the programme was pretty pesh. It even achieved the seemingly impossible and used clips in a way that made the Wire look corny and formulaic.

The interviews were so focussed on the British and Irish actors in the Wire as to have Brooker forced to misrepresent the plot. He introduced Stringer Bell (Idris Elba) as the leader of the Barksdale crew. Argh. This rides roughshod over a whole subplot, in which Stringer is manoeuvring his way through the ranks to take over. (Starting as the dumber but tougher Avon Barksdale’s sycophantic sidekick, he works in his own ideas about puttting the Barksdale gang on a standard commercial footing and goes for Avon’s crown.)

The talking head suggestions as to why the greatest TV series ever made wasn’t even remotely popular threw up the likeliest reasons as being that
(a) most people are too stupid to appreciate it,
(b) it’s very complex and cumulative so you have to commit to the whole thing or it’s too hard to follow and
(c) its cast is 70% black, so it would never reach a mass US audience. All probably true.
(Plus the extravagant use of cuss-words, I suspect, given that the Charlie Brooker trailer show had to blot out half the dialogue in its clips. It’s probably never going to be on mainstream TV. But, then, as one of the talking heads said, you want everyone to watch it but you also want it to kep it as your own secret.)

The main point here is that you can’t do the Wire justice. Everyone who loves it is awestruck. You just end up gushing or saying ludicrous things like “it’s your civic duty to watch it” as Charlie Brooker did at the end, “or else watch celebrity goose-wrestling on ITV6.”

Popularity: 36% [?]

Popularity: 36% [?]

This is just a link to a clip from The Wire on YouTube There are thousands more. I suspect you could watch half of all 4 series if you look at the clips in the right order. Not recommended.

I only picked this particular clip because
A) it like the way the actors get across the characters of Bunny, Naimond and his evil Mom with a few words and expressions.
B) it has the weirdest comments on YouTube. I really really hope that these people are joking:

earmuffs420 (2 months ago)
naymonds a little bitch. i hate that fuckin kid. his mom has more heart than him naymonds a little bitch. i hate that fuckin kid. his mom has more heart than him
pimpsxycute (2 months ago)
put yourself in his postion . he just a bpy whp grew up in money . he doesnt want to live that life . he mayt be soft . but thats all he knows how to be . i still love namond . and the rest of the cast

Popularity: 26% [?]

Popularity: 26% [?]

Except for a few professional women, (police, DA, nurse, teacher)  the women in The Wire and The Corner are almost all basically evil - malignly manipulative - like the mothers of Di Angelo’s  baby and the kid who gets adopted by the saintly Bunny - or psychopathically murderous for fun -  Snoop

I should take some exception to this. It is certainly an example of the stereotyping of women as exemplifying pure good - nurturing -  or (im)pure viciousness - destroying or providing seriously bad nurturing. I also take exception to the fact that the Wire’s central female police officer is gay and acting as a male in relation to her “child” . Yes, it’s good to have positive gay characters. But couldn’t there have been an equally brave and intelligent  female police officer who was straight? Do all the “good” women have to be involved in caring? (Bloody hell, Cagney and Lacey were ahead on this one - thirty years ago.)

I’ll not press this point too far though. Because:

• Most of the evil females are fantastically evil - Lady-Macbeth style evil.
• They are truly manipulative and really forceful at using social expectations to get their own way, twisting “family values” to their own ends, using women’s people skills - promises, threats, violence, emotional blackmail and whatever it takes.  We all know people like that, which is a bit scary.
• They have some great lines.
• They are really funny.
• Thay are much watchable than the relatively pallid good characters.
• Snoop is in a class of her own, completely without any motivation except the pleasure of the killl and she seems only moderately uninterested in that. The banter between her and Method Man’s character is like a more true-to life version of the conversations of Samuel L Jackson and John Travolta, in Pulp Fiction . She has a magnificent but totally chilling contempt for human life -  shown best when she shoots someone more or less at random in an unfounded belief he is from New York. (Someone claims in a  Youtube  comment to know the real one. Argh)

Fran in The Corner has her own episode. It is her fault her husband has fallen from success (a good job, a house, a family) to the corners, according to her son. She is doing her best to send him down the same path, despite also wanting him to do better. She steals from everyone, including her son, then subtly tries to drop him in it when he brings the  owner of the monety to her - criticising him for saying it was her. The problem with this character is that the writesr have tried to give her some complexity - she wants to  better herself and tries to get into rehab - but there  is no character development. She swings from one approach to the other. You can’t care about her whether she is being  unscrupulous or seeking to improve. Which is a pity beacuse the actress is good and some of the things she does and says are very funny.

Popularity: 21% [?]

Popularity: 21% [?]

After three episodes of The Corner (I am trying to ration them a bit) I can report that it’s pretty good.

For The Wire fanatics, it’s the undeveloped low-budget version. It would probably seem really good if The Wire didn’t exist. This series allowed us to get The Wire in its full glory, so even if it was rubbish it would be worth watching.

Each episode in the series takes a Baltimore individual and shows his or her story, with a focus on the dissolution of the neighbourhoods. The actions and the dialogue can be as witty as parts of The Wire. Central concerns are the same, with a focus on how the family reproduces the fractured relationships of the neighbourhood, similar to the focus on the kids in Wire Series 4. The street shots are the same neighbourhoods used in the Wire. Lots of the action takes place in the Series 3 Hamsterdam area. Many of the same production team were also involved, and some stylistic marks of the Wire, such as the introductory quote and the good credits music are present in embryonic form

Most of the cast are the actors who appear in The Wire, often cast in diametrically opposed roles. Several Central Wire police are street addicts or dealers in The Corner. The Series 4 headmistress is a clam shop supervisor. Avon Barksdale is hustling for scrap to sell, and so on. This adds another level of entertainment value that can not have been foreseen by the original team. You can watch it, picking out actors and trying to remember who they were. For instance, I think I saw Method Man in there. I have a suspicion that one character is an unfeasibly young version of the main female police officer from the original team - the one who gets moved to Homicide in Series 5, as part of the first Mayor’s plan to sink the expanding investigation in the period leading up to an election.

The focus on individuals builds up into a composite picture, with each person forming a part of the others’ stories and each instalment sheds more light on the previous episodes.

When compared to the Wire, it is less than satisfying. The stories (so far) are unremittingly dismal, focusing only on those at the bottom of the heap, the moralising is too overt and the characters aren’t consistently strong enough to carry so much interest. The Wire has such an incredible array of fascinating morally complex characters from all social levels that this series can’t compete with its scope and complexity. However, it is brilliantly experimental televsion in itself.

Popularity: 18% [?]

Popularity: 18% [?]

Amazingly there are only two blogs listed with Technorati tags about the Wire (This isn’t one of them) After a fair bit of searching i found the Wire bits on http://mattzollerseitz.blogspot.com/2006/09/different-voices-diversity-in-wires.html and there is some interesting stuff there.

Such as the idea that the Wire isn’t very popular because most of its characters are black (with some % estimates by various people, suchas Vance Cureton, from something called the Reading Post) or that its characters are all violent and hostile. Uh? The Wire characters cross every level of society and exhibit every shade of moral failing and virtue.

Anyway, it’s a very good blog post, with a quotation from sociology professor that I want to copy here, but, in fear of committing a double plagiarism, I’ve linked to the source.

It tells you that producer Ed Burns, “served both as a homicide detective in the real Baltimore police department and as a teacher in the city’s public schools” No surprise there but informative. It supports the feeling that its realiism is well founded in someone’s experience.

And it provides the fantastic fact that Stringer Bell is played by a British actor. Wow.

Popularity: 22% [?]

Popularity: 22% [?]

Now that a fair bit of the latest Wire series has been on, it’s due for another fanatic reassessment. This series has been less immediately engaging but demanding immediate engagement from the Wire seems oddly immoral, given its depth.

Hence, this will be the start of a more serious appraisal of the Wire. Basically, it is magical in the way it looks at every level of an American city with perfect clarity, while still being totally successful as standard tv narrative. It’s not exactly escapist, though. You have to have a clear head to watch it. You’ll still miss half the things it’s saying. Or more, in my case, as I feel the need for subtitles in some parts.

One of the themes of the Wire has always been the way formal and informal societies mirror each other. For instance, Stringer Bell had a sales conference for his street dealers with a tedious presentation and yes men asking flattering questions. (If you’ve ever worked anywhere, you’ve been there.) In Series 4, they are making these points (maybe a little too obviously) in terms of education and politics.

The opening titles always turn out to have surprising resonances in any case, but, in this series, the opening titles scream circularity - with a circular image in almost every scene. There are lots of circular themes, among them, the way that culture is transmitted across generations. The school is a focus of a few well meaning attempts to rescue the kids. This is achieved partly by the University project fronted by the legalising ex-police chief - which is building on the knowledge that the corner kids have - and partly by the teacher - who was a crazed nerd policeman - providing food and clothes and interesting maths lessons. The ex-con with a boxing gym is trying to become a good role model as well as save some of the kids from trouble. Their small successes are trapped in a context of test-driven educational policies that run counter to real education, lack of resources and the overwhelmingly sordeid environment.

The efforts of the good police chief and the ex-policeman teacher and the ex-con boxer are mirrored in the lessons in killing that are provided by Marlowe’s minions to kids barely old enough to tie their own shoelaces. Marlowe’s two sidekicks are an apparently himocidal little girl and an older cold and psychopathic man. They make the Barksdales seem like choirboys. Omar clearly has the high moral ground, not least when Marlowe fits him up by killing a shop assistant (collateral damage in pursuit of a goal) and threatening the shop owner to claim he wittnessed Omar.

(In the most recent episode, they have been instructed to kill the would-be New York intruders on the Baltimore turf and leave bodies, contrary to their current success in disappearing any signs of their murders. They devise a bizarre test, based on intimate knowledge of local music, that even one of them is unable to pass. The first person in the street who refuses to provide the right answer is shot, seemingly at random, with his body left to be discovered and supposedly send a message to the New York gangs. The utter pointlessness and stupidity of this typifies Marlowe’s rule.)

The political stuff is very good, but less interesting as narrative than the street stuff, partly because it has telegraphed its message too much. Throughout his journey to becoming Mayor-elect, Carcetti has been as slimy as he always appeared. however, he seems to be about to do something right, for once, by choosing the old Wire boss as a Colonel. But, of course, he is putting the truly evil Rawls in as the police chief. The circularity theme suggests that it will be no time before the former levels of corruption and political manoeuvring are restored with a new cast in power.

The titles are themselves worthy of a fair bit of study. Each series has the same song sung in a different style (are you getting the resonance, here?) There is always a collection of images that crop up in the series and are both beautifully shot and subtly significant to the story lines. Each is followed by a quote from a character in the episode, which gathers resonance when you finally hear it and understand the concept.

In fact, the Wire is a true masterwork of television. US tv is getting better and better, while British tv is descending ever deeper into a reality celebrity home improvement swamp that is so far beneath the lowest common denominator that you would need an IQ in single digits to watch it some nights. If any tv series ever gets better than the Wire, there should really be a nobel prize for it.

Popularity: 13% [?]

Popularity: 13% [?]