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% [?]

Casual, even indiscriminate, blog searching came up the news that HBO have finally given the Wire Series 5 a release date in the US at least. (wahay, w00t, etc.) It’s supposed to focus on the media.

In the UK, FX is showing all series straight through from Series 1 and is then supposed to go straight into series 5, when it runs out of previous episodes. I make that about a year in the future in the UK, which you’d expect to be at least 6 months after the US. The HBO site seemed to show no signs of having any future series on the go at all so I was getting a mite worried.

I know I shouldn’t even think this, let alone say it, but some episodes of series 1 have been pretty poor. (Strike me down now, Thor.) Series 1 will morph straight into series 2 which was generally poor for most of its run. When I say “poor”, it’s a relative term. The Wire is still so far ahead of anything else that even its poor episodes are pretty gosh-darned good.

But put yourself in the shoes of someone (for example moi) who has been sounding off about the Wire being the greatest work of art ever shown on television, etc, for so long that people I know have even started listening to me and watching it.

And then I find myself shamefacedly having to say “Well, that one wasn’t a very good episode” or “You have to watch them ALL to really get into the characters and storylines” or lame things like that, that sound like I’m covering my back over boosting something that turned out to be a bit naff.

Rewatching series 1 for the third pass, it is indeed still stuck a bit too much in a “TV crime” genre. That is good. Nothing wrong with the genre as such. But, I have to admit there is more cliche TV crime stuff in the first series than you’d expect after you’ve been acclimatised to nature of the Wire series as a whole. The whole set of programmes just slowly edges its way out of the “crime” category and turns into genius.

Or maybe it’s just that I don’t like McNulty, who is the central character in the first series. His character is a bit too irritating. It’s rooted in the cliche lone-wolf Philip Marlowe “flawed investigator with integrity” mould. Series 1 was just finding its feet, so it too often took the easy way out. Someone decided that McNulty’s character was supposed to bring bad to all those around him as a result of his arrogance, or something. So the cast have to keep saying that, in case you haven’t picked up on it. I can’t say that I would have picked up on it, to be honest, but that doesn’t mean that repeatedly telling me that’s what I’m supposed to see constitutes character development.

Sadly, last night’s rerun milked the whole “officer-down” scenario to death. The corrupt and manipulative Commissioner Burrell turned out to be a tower of non-judgemental sympathy to Kima’s partner. Even the repellent Rawls was there to give out sensitive heartfelt manly consolation to a McNulty whose guilt was expressed by his hands being covered with Kima’s blood. Come on. Out damned spot and all that? He wasn’t even remotely to blame. (He even threw up in a bin because she’d been shot, which seemed a bit out of character for a homicide detective.)

When a TV cop show presents someone drenched to the elbow in someone else’s blood, followed by them doing a symbolic handwashing Pilate-thing, it’s time to start putting extra notches on your cliche gun.

(I guess this blog post must be an example of what is the Americans call “tough love”, by the way. I adore the Wire but I’m not letting it get away with self-indulgence……..)

If you have started watching the Wire reruns and don’t think it’s so groundbreaking, stick with it. Because it gets more and more subtle and complex and goes deeper and deeper into the way society works.

Plus, the McNulty character is barely in it after series 1 and a bit of the series 2. He must have been too busy being a digitally-remastered Spartan, for which much thanks.

Popularity: 21% [?]

Popularity: 21% [?]

…. and watch the Wire?

If you haven’t seen it and you are in the UK and you have Sky or cable, watch it now.

Series 1- Episode one should be on FX now. NOW unless it’s way past ten o’clock. In which case you can catch it on the repeats (possibly Sunday. Don’t as me, I’m not the TV Guide.)

If you have seen it, you probably want to watch it again a few more times anyway.

You’ll thank me later.

Popularity: 20% [?]

Popularity: 20% [?]

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% [?]

Public service announcement:
(For Wire fanatics and potential converts)

It seems that 23 July is the date when FX starts showing all the existing series again. This news came courtesy of a Guardian comment on a post asking where to find decent TV.

FX begins a complete run of seasons 1 - 4 Mondays at 10pm starting July 23rd. Once they’ve done that they will launch staight into the 5th (and, sadly, final) series in 2008.
Posted by vertigowooyay on June 19, 2007 12:20 PM.

Popularity: 19% [?]

Popularity: 19% [?]

In case you think that this series of the Wire is straying a bit from the central strands of Wire, here’s your half-time peptalk (a couple of episodes too soon, granted.) If you are getting a bit bored with the politics, I’d have to agree. The election has been dragged out too long, with the same (albeit crucial) points about the corruption being made too often, for my taste. I suppose it’s important, in terms of the overall meaning of the series. I agree with the points, I think it’s very well done. I’m not really complaining….. It’s just that the nature of American politics is both too familiar to us from many other films and tv series and, to be honest, a little boring if you’re not a Yank.

The four lads are the central focus throughout this series and they’ll continue to be so. The first programmes should have already established their characters but there are some surprises in the way they develop, although the clues to where they are going are pretty deftly placed already (with the benefit of whatever the opposite of hindsight is, given I’ve already seen the rest of the series.)

Other strands worth paying attention to, because of how they’ll develop include Marlo’s setting up of Omar; Rawls’ shameless doubledealing with Carcetti and the Mayor; Bubs getting battered because of his nephew’s involvement with the corners; the exposure of the impact of race in the political system, exemplified by the white cop who is increasingly adopting the language of the corner and who is actively campaigning for the Mayor, (largely because his luck in catching the mayor in flagrante has got him made sergeant); the ineptly hidden camera, which will have repercussions for the same cop; the kid who breaks into Prez’s car when he locks his keys inside..

Extra-good things in tonight’s episode were Naimond’s visit to his dad in jail. The conversations between Naimond, his mother and his father were brilliant. His dad expresses the male “soldier” values that he is convincing Naimond underpin the street trade. Naimond listens avidly, trying to learn the male role, both impressed and fearful that he won’t be able to live up to his father’s expectations. The fact that these values are demented propaganda doesn’t occur to any of them. The mother is busy manipulating Naimond to start working for her benefit. She is the most uncompromising advocate of the successful street dealer “soldier” and “family” values, being in the advantaged position of profiting from them without putting herself at any risk. This stuff is just brilliant, so subtly written, with great depth so well conveyed through what appears to be completely natural speech. Of course the writing is brilliant, but the acting is superb as well. (plus the costume design, the sets, and everything else, but one thing at a time here, hey.)

The last crucial bit I have to mention is the kids finding out that the bodies are just dead people not transmuted zombies. The “If animal trapped, call…” message stencilled on the door of the empty building that serve as tombs for Marlo’s enemies has infinite resonance. The whole incident is really subtle. Duquon shows much greater adult understanding of the difference between real bodies and fantasy tales. He introduces the more naive kid to the reality in really gentle way. When the naive lad realises that these are just bodies, he expresses an awareness of the ubiquity of violent death in their surroundings which seems so world-weary, when set against his previous insistence that the people were being transformed into zombies. It’s a big growing-up moment for him, soon to be followed by a very adult realisation that the killers know that he’s the one they got to trick Lex to going to his death.

Popularity: 22% [?]

Popularity: 22% [?]

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% [?]

The Wire series 4 will be shown on British TV from Tuesday. (On Sky FX, which you should also have if you get cable.) There is almost no way to express how good it is, if you haven’t seen it. In which case, get the DVDs or something and watch the previous 3 series first or you’ve already missed 36 hours of tv genius and you won’t understand the back-stories. You should still enjoy it though. Series 4 is the one with the kids.

The Guardian’s TV Guide introduces the new series with a few pages of the obligatory paeans of praise and with pictures of some of the characters from series 1 to 3. I can’t help feeling the writer has missed the point a bit but that’s all part of the Wire’s magic - you’re alwys going to miss whole levels of meaning because it’s so multi-layered. In fact the TV Guide brought home a huge point that I had missed - Series 3 opens with the blowing up of two towers that is followed by “a dumb and protracted war” (quoting David Simon.) “..Is there a metaphor there? Well what the fuck do you think?…American power and American weakness is the subject. Well one of the subjects.”

The review says that the Wire is “so rich in character and nuance, and so powerful in its anger and painful with its humour that is has been compared to the darkest classics of literature.” The Guardian writer quotes from the New York Times “If Charles Dickens was alive today, he would watch the Wire, unless that is, he was already writing for it.”

He says that the difference between the Wire and Dickens is the absence of a kindly old gentleman to set things right. There is indeed a kindly old gentleman, Bunny, the retired police chief, who has never put a foot wrong and becomes even more virtuous throughout series 4. I am unsure whether this is a weakness - having a truly good man in a world of infinite moral complexity. At first, I was a bit irritated that there was a character who was a genuine hero, in a series in which there is no clear right and wrong. In fact series 4 is much better at engaging one’s sympathies for the innocents - firstly by focusing on the kids, you come to feel more empathy with the adults. Bubs, Prez, Bunk, the boxer and Bodie are all playng “nice guy” roles, as well, all doing their best to follow some codes of decency. (And what about di Angelo in the first series?)

In the end, I feel that having “good” people isn’t a weakness but a narrative imperative - Bunny consistently shows how a single person of character can bring about small positive changes. He stops the Wire from being infernally pessimistic and shows how rationality and goodwill can be maintained in a sea of crap. That is, despite its darkness, the Wire always holds out the possibility that things could change. If it didn’t do this, it would lose a lot of its brilliantly expressed anger at the way things are now.

Popularity: 21% [?]

Popularity: 21% [?]

The good (in an odd way) funny Korean monster movie, “The Host,” sparked this post. The villains in this movie are all Americans. (I did say it was Korean, didn’t I?)

It’s certainly not a political movie, but it has an occasional wry political subtext. Part of which is that the villains - the pathologist who dumps the chemicals that create the monster; the doctor who lobotomises the ineffectual and narcoleptic hero Gang-du; and the military team who dump “Agent Yellow” on the monster and on the demonstrating students - are all Americans.

You don’t need a degree in Media Studies to work out that there’s something being communicated here.
Obviously, the Koreans have a long history of US involvement that’s left at best some ambivalence. You might expect them to cast American actors as villains. But it got me wondering why the villains in US TV and movies are always English men. It may be that the US public expects the Queen’s redcoats to turn up at any moment and demand all that unpaid tea tax plus interest. (After all, they have laws allowing each citizen the right to bear arms, on the off-chance that the UK will suddenly remember it used to be our most lucrative colony.)

Far from posing a threat, England has been uniquely co-operative - some would say slavish at points - to the US for well over 200 years. So why do they hate us so much that any male actor with an RSC-style delivery will never be out of work if he moves across the Atlantic? There is such a thing as bearing a grudge too long, surely.

Ah ha! They don’t hate us. They hate Europe. And we’re the only Europeans who speak a language they can understand.

Europe is big. It’s rich. If it stopped its internal squabbling long enough to look out for its continental interests, it would be the global superpower. Obviously, the European continent is, and has always been, a squabbling mass of tribes. We hate each other much more than the Americans hate us and we’ve had LOADS of practice.

Europe doesn’t act as a global ruler, so other countries don’t hate us much any more. In fact, we can project a sort of cuddly moral high ground image as the continent that has the Geneva Convention, the Red Cross and the International war crimes courts.
Other continents usually don’t speak English and would provide villains that might really feed on the anger of Americans. If every villain were Chinese or African or South American or Indian, there would be some reasonable questions raised about stirring up a nationalist frenzy. Europeans are OK because they aren’t going to war with us any time in the foreseeable future. That was “with” as in “against,” of course.

Aside: Why use British actors, at all? We all know that the average American 10- year-old can out act almost any British Shakespearean actor. In fact, our current TV and movie productions are generally so teeth-grindingly poor that we couldn’t compete against an evening’s HBO schedule with the best from a year’s worth of UK output. (You may be arguing “What about Mike Leigh or Ken Loach or the Office or whoever?” I said “generally.” ) Our films are so bad that we even infected Samuel L Jackson. He usually has the capacity to make even movie excreta watchable (e.g The Man) Put him and Robbie Carlyle (also a pretty good actor) together in a British movie and you have The 51st State. Need I say more? (OK, if I must then, Brad Pitt in some execrable London gangster movie where he was a gypsy bare-knuckle fighter) Point taken, I think.
Why do they hate us and yet let us humiliate their best actors? That will have to be another blog.

Popularity: 23% [?]

Popularity: 23% [?]

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% [?]