The show is undoubtedly an indictment of the war on drugs and calls it a wholesale failure, no question there. It condemns the violence on the streets and is honest about how violent the police are. And it is completely consistent on the theme that people turn to crime because the socio-economic system left them no other option. As the show spirals out into other fields, it shows how thorough the corruption of the whole government and how impossible it is to change anything. Anyone who actually tries reform either gets boxed out of the process (Bunny Coleman, Daniels) or conforms to the corrupt system (Littlefinger).
But while it condemns the war on drugs, there is still an element of "the police could be saved through reform." Especially season 5 which is the worst season for a lot of reasons. The case against copaganda is much stronger without McNulty's bullshit fake serial killer plot, in universe it confirms that with better allocated resources police can solve stuff like murders. Season 5 was saved by Marlo's crew and the Newspaper storyline.
I think the biggest argument against it being copaganda is that you always follow the people they're investigating. They are main characters as much as the cops (and are usually much more compelling characters). In every season at least one of the criminal characters chooses to reject the violence of the drug trade in some way. I don't know of any other "cop show" that actually gives a shit about the people on the other end of the table, especially not to the extent we see in season 4. Season 4 is the highmark for showing the school to prison pipeline and actually trying to offer an alternative.
And as for the police, we see at least two characters who go through the journey of "don't be a fucking cop anymore, it's awful." Prezbo is actually pretty based for killing a cop and then becoming a public school teacher.
I'm not making an argument either way I just wanna hear your thoughts.
“Hero” cops are the minority, as are blatantly corrupt shitheads, most are just there for the overtime and pensions.
it's not pointed out often enough that cop is the only job in the US that is 100% armed and unionized, pays a salary you can live off of, and doesn't require higher education. so even if you aren't a hotdog necked white thumb ready to lynch a teenager for stealing bread, you might be attracted to the job for that alone. It is objectively a racist and classist job where you protect the private property of the wealthy and harras the poor, but most people don't go into it caring about that, or necessarily knowing about it. (this isn't a defense of cops so much as an analysis of why so many people become cops)
Yeah the show posits that black kids joining the drug trade is a product of socio-economic circumstances and so is the violence that comes from it. While the Wire shows that police do perpetuate violence against the community, it doesn't show why. It shows why a regular kid would join the drug trade, but not why a regular kid would join the police and the war on terror.
I always thought it was a shame the Wire ended before the Baltimore PD planting guns corruption was made public. That's awesome.
David Simon probably is a lib, he's too rooted in his conditions. He was a reporter who covered the crime beat, so it's natural for him to not advocate for tearing down the system. But Libs can still make good content and good points (occasionally) so I don't write them off completely lol. If I didn't watch anything liberals produced I'd be stuck watching exclusively old USSR documentaries and a few youtube channels.
Sometimes you just have to accidentally kill somebody to discover that your true calling is being a teacher
He also blinded a fourteen year old. And now he works with fourteen year olds.
It's a nuanced show for sure. Prezbo does show real growth, but they make it clear he can never reconcile blinding that kid. However, that is a very realistic scenario and he does basically the best thing he can do to try to make up for it.
Does he? The way I remember it, he kind of just forgets about it and no one ever talks about it again. Anyway, the idea of someone who'd do that to a child later working with children is pretty horrifying.
I'm thinking of the scene where the bring the kid in for questioning later and Prez can't look at him. Everyone in the room knows it and you realize that Prezbo basically set this kid into the life forever.
But you're right that in real life someone with that kind of history shouldn't be allowed to work with kids. I'll forgive it for the sake of being narrative fiction and because the season 4 arc is so powerful. Tbh that scene initial blinding feels out of character for Prez compared to the rest of the series. Every other scene, he's shown to be a bumbling and generally meek person.
He had already embarrassed himself in front of herc and carver by having a second accidental discharge by shooting the wall where he'd already had a reputation for accidentally shooting a car, so he wanted to feel like an emasculated and accepted part of the boys and so both went ahead and busted heads the western district way but also overcompensated and blinded a child by trying to flex. It probably got swept under the rug cause of Valchek. Also where Frank Sobotka in this thread? I'm not hearing his name in any of this!
Where is Frank Sobotka? In the friggin Chesapeake Bay.
But now that I've thought more about Prezbo, the show makes it very clear that THIS GUY SHOULD NOT HAVE A GUN. He immediately improves as a person when he's benched in the office with no gun. The fact that he blinds the kid with the butt of his pistol makes me think it's intentional. Same with him shooting the cop (which is played as a tragedy, sadly). I think the show is telling us that if you take an insecure person and put a gun and authority in their hand, they will hurt people.
And he did that on purpose. Wasn't trying to blind him on purpose, but it was a result of his brutality.
Yes, because it humanizes cops, and also because it strongly implies that there is no alternative to the status quo. Not once do we see people in the hood attempt to organize for anything except lumpenproletariat petite bourgeois capitalism IIRC.
IMO Babylon Berlin is a better cop show because it actually has communists who are human beings and even features fights between Trotskyists and MLs. It’s still a cop show though and it’s kind of frustrating in that the main character basically has no character while the other main character who is way more interesting is also in love with him.
Yeah that tracks. I probably gave too generous a reading to the corrupt status quo. It's capital realism for sure.
The season 3 arc with legalizing drugs is the most novel idea. My read was that "yeah it actually worked, so of course the man came in to shut it down." But you're probably right that the intended message was "it's a nice idea but it's not PRACTICAL."
I will have to check out Babylon Berlin. I don't really watch many cop shows, but that sounds cool to see German communists.
last season of Babylon Berlin was a bit hit and miss because it had a bad case of tonal whiplash and really loved to treat Charlotte as a total butt monkey, which afaik isn't in the books, but it's absolutely worth watching. i haven't gotten around to the new season yet, i need to check if it's out already.
Hamsterdam was poorly applied and that can be seen any time it's shown on screen. It's fucking bedlam and it would be, you can have all those drug dealers and addicts in one place, things will go bad. There will be violence, sexual assault and just all kinds of fucked up shit. If made legit, as there were several outreach groups willing to step in, then it could maybe be pulled off well. As it stood, it wasn't too great. There was also the old lady they missed in the sweeps who refused to move and just lived there now.
Bubbles interacts with plenty of people doing outreach work etc. The hamsterdam arc also has community concerns. It wouldn't be a particularly realistic show if there was a Black Panther chapter in the projects of Baltimore right after 9/11
A video essay on TV? In my hexbear? :gulag:
Nah JK I'll check it out.
Great video and I largely agree with all his points. Doesn't give me any sort of clear cut answer on the Wire being copaganda, but I also think there is no clear cut answer.
Mixed bag. I think the cop characters are pretty similar to how cops see themselves or how someone who's spent a lot of time around Copa but doesn't necessarily hate them would see cops. The average cop on the average day just thinks of themselves as a dude with a job going to work but at the same time are down to be corrupt or lazy or abusive as they want cause they all cover each other's asses. There are numerous occasions where the main characters beat the shit out of perps and fucking with people cause you can as a cop flex is seen as pretty normal. It also depends on who's doing what in the show, a homicide cop is gonna be generally doing more good stuff and less bad stuff than a drug cop just because of how the job works, and you can see attitudes shift with the position they're given. It's a lib show at the end of the day, but it's fairly left leaning lib. Also, season 5 doesn't count.
True, but I think that might be beyond the scope of the show. David Simon has been pretty clear the Wire's main character is the city of Baltimore. I don't know how you tie in international drug cartels and the DEA and keep it still focused on Baltimore. The show's politicians are all local, that kind of stuff is far above their pay grade. When they do show the Feds, the FBI are just ancillary to the main story.
Maybe if there was a 6th season that dealt with immigration. Each season added an institution to focus on and if we had some Hispanic characters to follow then the DEA/CIA/Drug cartel alliance could have been hinted at.
Obama saying that it was his favourite show really sticks with me.
Well Obama is a fucking grifter whose entire ethos is pretending to be progressive. The whole "here's my summer playlist totally not curated by my interns" bit stuck with me. Maybe Obama just liked that it was the first critically acclaimed TV show to feature a cast with a black majority. Or maybe he knew it was popular and would earn clout by giving lip service to it. My point is disregard whatever that clown says, he has no incentive to be honest about anything. If he truly watched the show, took in it's meanings, and didn't see himself in the face of Mayor Carcetti then he's a fucking moron. Even the most libbiest, reformist reading of the Wire is a condemnation of the neoliberalism that Obama lives by. And I don't think Obama is an idiot. To quote an actual moron, “Let's dispel with this fiction that Barack Obama doesn't know what he's doing. He knows exactly what he's doing."
I love that read. Bodie says as much himself, they want him to stand for Marlo but Marlo won't stand for them.
Whatever you do, don’t watch “We Own This City.” Its made by the same guy. It’s not copaganda because at the end the reformers feel like their work is futile and it’s left like that, but the show is just boring as shit.
The time jumps just make the show seem disorganized and don’t help the narrative in any sort of way. Characters are mostly boring and their personality is “beat people up and deal drugs.” They’re based on real corrupt cops and a cop who killed himself but the cops are in denial and say he was murdered even though it was a bullet up the mouth lol
