The Wire

4. Media, Social Justice, Community

Chapter 4 Media, Social Justice, Community 83 I’m not interested in what can be quoted. . . . I’m interested in what feels true. Gus Haynes, “Took” The Wire’s claim to significance is based on its commitment to social realism and its willingness to tell a “truth” about crime and justice that is obscured by both other popular culture and mainstream discourses about crime. In this final chapter, I want to consider The Wire’s relationship to its audience and the question of whether its nuanced depiction of the drug culture is simply sophisticated entertainment or can achieve something more substantial in the relationship between world and text. Further, I want to examine The Wire’s unique relationship to the Baltimore it depicts, not only in terms of the way that the city figures as an important character in the drama but also in its insistence of filming Baltimore in Baltimore, employing both local actors and local residents. Fan and critical response to the show is split as to the question of whether it inspires social change or further exploits the lives of marginalized people by turning them into entertainment . In an exchange published in Dissent in the summer of 84 Chapter 4 84 2008, John Atlas and Peter Dreier contend that The Wire was too cynical in showing only the negative side of inner-city poverty : its bleak vision of poverty, they feel, contributed to an image of inner-city citizens as helpless and hence works against social change. As I argue above, this problem emerges from the tension between The Wire’s journalistic/documentary ambitions and its reliance on narrative precursors that privilege fate over agency. Anmol Chaddha, William Julius Wilson, and Venkatesh, in contrast, argue that although they respect the achievement of Baltimore activist groups celebrated in Atlas and Dreier’s account, they nonetheless feel that such efforts were “insufficient counterweights to entrenched structural forces, when . . . a deepening crisis continues to mark ghetto neighborhoods across the United States” (83). Fan response to the show is a significant and developing phenomenon that requires further research, a task made challenging by the online format of much of this commentary and the difficulty of ascertaining the identity behind screen names. Nonetheless, there seems to be some evidence that fans connect their responses to the show with their assessments about crime and poverty beyond the series . Kathleen LeBesco’s preliminary study of responses to the character of Omar Little on HBO’s official series bulletin board concludes that at the very least The Wire provokes serious discussion of criminality, violence, drugs, and homosexuality, even if it is difficult to ascertain the social class of the participants in such conversations. Audience and Agency One of the concerns raised about the program is that it is voyeuristic , representing a population unlikely to be among its viewers. Yet there is some evidence that a wide range of social classes view The Wire. Ventaktesh’s blog “What Do Real Thugs Think of The Wire?” published on Freakonomics (http:// 85 Media, Social Justice, Community 85 freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/) in 2008 recounts his experience of viewing and discussing the program with Chicago gang members. Further, Hua Hsu notes that a gang recently arrested in New York claimed that they had learned from the series to avoid police investigations by frequently switching their cell phones (509). Although it seems unlikely that the social classes depicted on The Wire are the bulk of its audience given its circulation on subscription channel or DVD, I would also argue that the middle classes are more urgently in need of the perspective it offers. As Freamon observes in “Unconfirmed Reports,” “A case like this, where you show who gets paid, behind all the tragedy and the fraud, where you show how the money routes itself, [reveals] how we’re all, all of us vested, all of us complicit .” The series’ role in documenting the complexity of the drug war and its economic sources with compassion and understanding brings to American television a tradition of social realism and public service that has informed production in Canada and the UK. Yet The Wire’s existence on HBO means that its market position is distinct from these public service commitments . A show such as The Wire seems able to thrive only in the conditions created by the shift toward subscription channels not beholden to public or advertising funds. Indeed, the complexity of...