The Bleakness of The Wire
Mark Bowden gets the central problem with The Wire, which is (I begrudgingly accept) the best show on television.
“I am struck by how dark the show is,” says Elijah Anderson, the Yale sociologist whose classic works Code of the Streets, Streetwise, and A Place on the Corner document black inner-city life with noted clarity and sympathy. Anderson would be the last person to gloss over the severe problems of the urban poor, but in The Wire he sees “a bottom-line cynicism” that is at odds with his own perception of real life.
This cynicism resembles courage. But really, who doesn’t want to believe that the tragedies of the inner-city are intractable? David Simon thinks he’s constructed a critique of capitalism, but in fact he’s prepared an elaborate, moving brief for despair and (ultimately) indifference. If you’re outraged by The Wire, do you then … go and support the election of your own Tommy Carcetti? Or do you throw up your hands and rail against the depredations of the market economy? This could lend itself to some more radical challenge to the status quo, and of course we’re never shown the depredations of Chavez’s Venezuela where petrosocialism has fueled new inequalities and new repression. Or it could lend itself to paroxysms of white guilt.
The Wire is ultimately premised on our inability to engage in self-help, and in particularly the inability of the black poor. It is about their lack of agency, and their status as eternal victims. Though compellingly drawn, so compellingly drawn as to move yours truly to tears, this is nothing new. Moreover, this view of human beings trapped in a cage of dysfunction transcends ideology: it strengthens the hand of paternalists of the left and determinists of the right. In that regard, the show is frankly destructive. I’m struck by how many of my friends believe they have more refined moral sensibilities because they watch and swear by The Wire, as though it gives them a richer appreciation of the real struggles of inner-city life, despite the fact that they are exactly as insulated as they were before. So apart from the handful of viewers who are embarrassingly naive, the worldview of the target audience remains utterly unchanged. Bowden says that the trouble with Simon is that he has “his story all figured out.”
The essential difference between writing nonfiction and writing fiction is that the artist owns his vision, while the journalist can never really claim one, or at least not a complete one—because the real world is infinitely complex and ever changing. Art frees you from the infuriating unfinishedness of the real world. For this reason, the very clarity of well-wrought fiction can sometimes make it feel more real than reality. As a film producer once told me, “It’s important not to let the facts get in the way of the truth.”
And so Simon is free of the messy world of Chutes and Ladders, in which members of the inner-city poor really do get ahead.
The truth is, it’s by no means clear to me that a more accurate show would be a better show. Far from it. In New York city, the housing projects are fast evolving into naturally-occurring retirement communities. They tend to be in desirable and accessible locations, waiting lists are long, crime is down, and tenants tend to stay in place for a long period of time. Family life has reconstituted itself in unconventional ways, but also in surprisingly robust ways. The drug trade has also changed dramatically since the crack epidemic, when Simon had his ear to the ground. New York is different for many reasons, and far less bleak than Baltimore by almost any objective measure. But these trends are a sign of the more complex picture of urban crime and poverty.
It doesn’t help that Simon seems fundamentally uninterested in women, who are of course better than half of the population. Economic advancement among black women is the unheralded success story of the past forty years. Though it is closely tied to other less encouraging trends, and though it is by no means as far along as it should be, the extraordinary success of black women in educational attainment has helped buffer the black family against a broken criminal justice system.
But now I’ve become a scold.
Much of Bowden’s piece is about his own experiences with Simon, and Simon’s jaundiced view of the newspaper world. It allows Bowden to get at the essential ways Simon’s worldview are informed by his character. I can’t really assess who is wrong and who is right. What I do know is that the bleakness of The Wire lends itself to a “knowing” political pose that almost certainly does little good. I’m tempted to say that it encourages exactly the wrong habits of mind, but that’s tough to say in light of my basic affection for and investment in the core characters.
P.S.- I’ve added more thoughts below.
Tim, if you think of me first and foremost as a “GOP partisan,” a heuristic device you seem to value very highly, it’s going to lead you in the wrong direction pretty consistently.
I actually do think Bunny’s intervention in the middle school was a real solution. But of course it’s a solution that appeared punitive and judgmental. In UK debates, isolating disruptive students is a tactic commonly identified with the political right, and I assume the same is true in the US. So I think you’re half-right here. But what is the upshot of the soundness of the solution? Who are the allies of the program — it’s most likely allies, members of the “punitive” right — don’t enter the picture, which of course is accurate: they aren’t a part of the urban power structure, by and large.
This is why the excellence of The Wire transcends its political narrowness — one can walk away with a quite different interpretation. That’s part of what makes the show successful as fiction.
As for Hamsterdam, it’s not obvious to me that it is presented in a particularly favorable light. Again, it seems like do-gooderism undermined by internal contradictions. I say this as someone who advocates the decriminalization and legalization and other harm-mitigation strategies. I feel like kind of a broken record when I say this sort of thing, but I feel like people project views onto me that I don’t really have. You can see why this might be frustrating.
As for Season Two, it was represents perhaps the most underinformed argument re: political economy in the history of the show. Note that I spoke of “self-help,” not “solutions” — solutions inevitably devised by Bunny or the good people of the College Park campus. Self-help for the dock workers might have involved breaking from a dysfunctional working-class culture founded on clannishness, chauvinism, and narrow horizons, and not on some deus ex machina.
Freddie: you make an excellent point, and this is actually why I’m always quick to defend “white guilt.” It’s not an unqualified defense, to be sure, but I often note that if the alternative to “white guilt” is white smugness or white indifference, it’s clearly not the worst thing in the world. I obviously have more to say on this subject, but that’s the heart of the matter.
But here’s the thing: who is allowed to be a subject or an agent? When upper-middle-class people watch The Wire, is it spurring them to constructive heights of weight guilt or even a meaningful expansion of the moral imagination? Or it a salve for their conscience? And if it’s the latter, perhaps a stance of basic respect — residents of the inner-city are human beings who are at some basic level responsible for their own lives — might be preferable. It occurs to me that this view sounds shocking in the context of deeply-ingrained luck egalitarianism (among intellectuals and the intellectually-inclined). But it reminds me of the extraordinary findings about victims of sexual abuse, evidence that politicians (and in particular conservative Republicans) have tried to suppress or condemn: people are extraordinarily resilient, even, perhaps particularly, those we think of as the ur-victims. The stance of nonjudgmentalism, of understanding and pity and inegalitarian compassion, seems to do little good.
“What I do know is that the bleakness of The Wire lends itself to a “knowing” political pose that almost certainly does little good. “
You aren’t wrong to point out these questions, but they beg a question of their own: is the alternative better? I can’t imagine anyone being served by people paying less attention to the plight of the urban, minority poor. As you say, most people are probably having their own preconceptions reinforced. But so what? Is that somehow worse than not having the question engaged? I think on some level this is linked to the old saws about liberal piety or liberal self-righteousness. I always wonder what, exactly, people would prefer? Self-righteousness is preferable in every way to apathy, and while it may fall far from the mark, I’ll take the (yes, aggravating) pursuit of righteousness through self-righteousness rather than an abdication of the pursuit of righteousness in total. America’s reserves of apathy and disengagement aren’t in danger of running low anytime soon.
— Freddie · Jan 1, 07:58 PM · #
This seems strikingly wrong. The show does suggest that there are available solutions to (or at least ways to mitigate) some of the social ills. Hamsterdam and Bunny’s class in Season 4 come to mind. In both cases, there seems reason for some hope, and in both cases, the programs are effectively done in by scolds. (In interviews, I think Simon points to institutions as doing in the programs. But in those two cases, the institutions are responding to the perceived potential criticism from scolds.) Season Two at least suggests that one solution to the problem would be capital investment in the harbor. That plan is done in by lack of political power, or maybe corrupt political institutions.
It’s curious to see the complaint about Simon’s inattention to the relative success of black females from a GOP partisan. I seem to recall Michael Lind claiming that a favorite GOP “family values” shot at African-Americans is based on the a willingness to ignore the same. I think—and I might be misremembering this—that Lind claims that the GOP continually inflates the importance of rising illegitimacy rates in the black underclass by ignoring the fact that the black underclass has decreased in size. This, of course, is not to say that illegitimacy isn’t a problem, but rather that the presentation of the nature of it is misleading in ways that are designed to help potential GOP voters justify writing off social programs that predominantly affect African-Americans. (OTOH, I thought someone made a broader claim about black illegitimacy recently. Maybe Lind’s criticism is no longer valid.)
— SomeCallMeTim · Jan 1, 10:08 PM · #
“Self-righteousness is preferable in every way to apathy”
Whoa, everything wrong with the left summed up in one sentence. If we have learned anything in the past century, its that leaving people alone is often far preferable to “doing something.”
— Thursday · Jan 2, 03:18 AM · #
Reihan – It’s difficult to find much to disagree with from anyone who concedes (however grudgingly) that the Wire is the best show on television, but I do have a few quibbles.
I think that you miss something in treating the Wire more as some kind of political treatise than as a work of art. You look at it as a fundamental depiction of the problems of the drug war or the pathologies of inner-city blacks and so on. This of course opens it up to criticism of missing the other side of the story.
But the Wire isn’t really the story of general social and political trends; it’s the story of Baltimore. That’s why David Simon’s politics and worldview seem limited when applied to the situations he depicts, but are in fact spot-on when it comes to his city.
This is also, I think, why its greatness resides less in its take on the issues, but in its specificity of detail and incredibly honest and multidimensional renderings of character. Basically, it’s a 19th-century novel (minus the happy ending, presumably)—not a socio-political tract.
— David Polansky · Jan 2, 03:53 AM · #
“Whoa, everything wrong with the left summed up in one sentence. If we have learned anything in the past century, its that leaving people alone is often far preferable to “doing something.””
Ah. And leaving people in the urban blight of Baltimore in their current condition is really going like gangbusters, right? Tell you what, rather than retreating to make a conversation as broad as humanly possible, why don’t you confront the horrific conditions at hand, and as argued?
— Freddie · Jan 2, 04:02 AM · #
Thats right Freddie, bring on your “solutions”. I’m sure they will improve things.
— Thursday · Jan 2, 04:20 AM · #
The show doesn’t give poor blacks any agency? Of course it does. Just off the top of my head from the 4th season, Cutty turned away from crime and made a new life trying with a youth boxing center. Weebay breaks with his own street ethic to give up Namond to Bunny, who himself had turned away from the path to hell when he refused to join with Michael and beat little Kenard. The show has all kinds of examples of effective individual agency. What it does have is a bone deep pessimism about collective agency, the world of institutions. What’s unclear is whether there is an almost metaphysical stance about the human condition, or a statement about the intractable ills of social institutions in areas with low social capital to sustain them. That is to say, institutions will always be least effective where they are the most needed.
— rd · Jan 2, 05:00 AM · #
The Wire is basically Homicide: Life on the Street part Two, right? I’ve never seen it. I doubt it was better than Homicide.
The problem with Simon is that he’s profoundly stupid. And self-serving. His critique of Capitalism amounts to “I should be king, people are stupid to govern themselves.”
Under Rudy , and strict “broken window” enforcement backed by CompStat, crime in NYC was tackled head on by arresting thugs. As much as possible. To the dismay of the criminal and thug lobby, particularly Al Sharpton.
Inner City Baltimore is a hell-hole because the people who live there, want it that way. Time after time, the Black Community has chosen to block politically any effort to crack down on thugs, brutality, and crime. Black people in the inner city WANT THUGS. They are not stupid. They have made a consensus political calculation that they need THUGS, regardless of the bad things they bring.
Because brutal thugs are their defense. Defense against the threat of Latino Gangsters (Florencia 13 is conducting their own “ethnic cleansing” in LA, Baltimore’s inner city must face the same threats). Latino gangs have essentially (in the case of Mexican-based ones) unlimited manpower and a friendly country to escape to in case things get too hot. Salvadoran Gangs have an unparalleled reputation for ruthless brutality and thus fear/intimidation to control territory.
To avoid being pushed out of historic black neighborhoods, poor blacks in the inner city have embraced thugs and the thug life in the same way Serbs embraced Ratko Mladic in Bosnia and Kosovo. For the same reasons.
Blacks also fear inter-marriage and assimilation. The lesson of Mexico’s blacks (absorbed into the population my intermarriage) who no longer exist as a separate cultural, ethnic, racially distinct group is something poor blacks in particular fear. Hence the glorification of thugs and general thuggery by Blacks, and the obsession of “being Black enough” and “acting white” (the latter amounts to valuing education, hard work, deferred rewards, etc.). Thugs of course also block White Gentrification which also poses a threat to control over historic Black Neighborhoods.
I am not unsympathetic to the idea that given the struggle to merely survive under slavery and segregation, it would be a betrayal of past generations for Blacks to integrate, intermarry, and accept assimilation. But acting like the Serbs (themselves the victims of centuries of slavery under Muslim rule, under constant German and Muslim threats) has consequences. Not the least of which is constant violence.
As for Black women in the inner city, illegitimacy rates there are 90% (around 70% nationally), according to the latest data from the CDC. Rappers take heat for their portrayal of women, but it is not uncommon to see a woman with three kids by three different fathers (this is also increasingly common among poor/working class white women as well). Sexual selection in the inner city is not the plumber, roofing contractor, or auto-repairmen but the hardest hard boy around. Which is quite natural given that as a whole, consensus in the Black community exists for a thug-militia to fend off existential threats. A thug will be more successful than a working-man. Again, see Serbs in Bosnia-Kosovo.
Now, this is un-PC, and doesn’t play out to Simon and other elitist’s view that if only THEY had the whip all would be well. People always want to be king. Some just admit it more honestly.
This has nothing to do with capitalism either. Presumably Simon is so smart he’d run the entire world’s economy better than ordinary people living their lives. He might even regulate how many squares of toilet paper they use in the bathroom!
Baltimore is eminently fixable: either change the local political consensus of the black community in favor of thuggery as a militia to one of support for law and order Rudy style (a difficult sell but not impossible), or over-ride their concerns by an electoral coalition of other races as in NYC (after the disgraceful Crown Heights affair). This is the actual reality. As opposed to Simon’s fantasy.
— Jim Rockford · Jan 2, 06:49 AM · #
RD, you make a good point. I agree, and I hope I didn’t give the impression that The Wire denies any possibility of individual agency. I wanted to make a point about the politics of despair.
Also, the kind of self-help I’m interested in is the Laschian self-help of “communities of competence,” i.e., collective self-help. So the iron cage logic of the show is exactly what I’m running up against.
— Reihan · Jan 2, 07:41 AM · #
Very perceptive, and I agree with your assessment of The Wire.
I’m commenting just to say that to me, the best show on television really is The Shield (with The Wire a close second). But then again I’ve only seen one or two seasons of The Wire.
— PEG · Jan 2, 08:47 AM · #
Does watching the wire make one more empathetic of the forces that act on young people in broken communities? I think so. Does empathy help? If it drives action at the individual level it can. This story, on the other hand, does nothing more than meet the writer’s deadline.
— Jeff · Jan 2, 05:01 PM · #
The Wire, inasmuch as it has positions on urban politics, seems to be to take these position:
As long as we hysterically pursue the war on drugs, we will not solve the problems of the urban poor.
As long as we posture on education we will not educate the urban poor.
Both of these problems have solutions. Perhaps the despair you feel is from your reluctance to contront them.
— brian levine · Jan 2, 05:24 PM · #
Recognition that the existing situation isn’t working is the first step toward finding solutions that do work. If a TV show can help people awaken to that recognition, I don’t think it’s much of a condemnation of the show to point out that it doesn’t go further than that.
Also, this struck me as odd:
“The drug trade has also changed dramatically since the crack epidemic, when Simon had his ear to the ground.”
— since crack plays approximately zero role in the show. Are you suggesting that The Wire’s depiction of the heroin trade is inaccurate or outdated? Any external confirmation of that?
— jmb · Jan 2, 06:23 PM · #
I like this blog and all, but this is pretty disappointing. I have to wonder just how much this author has read/watched if she/he objects to The Wire’s depressing message.
— berger · Jan 2, 11:36 PM · #
The wire is necessarily bleak. Its purpose is to show the nature of the cracks in our society that the disenfranchised fall through. It shows how dysfunction begets dysfunction and how hard that cycle is to stop. So it’s not about the ghetto, or law, or politics, or even just Baltimore; it’s about the tradition of dysfunction common to them. There are a few things that bring about the dysfunctions, but it seems to mostly be when personal ambition supersedes civil responsibilities.
This is the last season of The Wire, and I hear the creators intend to wrap it all up nice and neat. The media is supposed to be highlight for this year’s theme. This leads me to believe that the proposed source of all the dysfunction will be the lack of public discourse needed to stem the corruption. This arises because the media doesn’t carry as many hard hitting stories anymore. Since the news media is profit driven, I guess that is why The Wire will be seen of a critique of capitalism.
I don’t see the lack of in-depth journalism as a failing of capitalism though. Putting the government in charge of exposing its own corruption is way worse. To me, the same problem of personal ambition will plague any alternative ideologies any way, so I don’t see how The Wire can even be intended as critique on capitalism. I’ll have to wait and see. I’m really looking forward to seeing the season to see how it turns out.
Jim Rockford: Your rant about how blacks in inner city Baltimore like to live in a “hell-hole” and how they all want thugs in for their own protection is simply racial Darwinism, which is bunk. Furthermore—and I know this is going to bug you—your views are elitist. You think you have the worlds problems all summed up and readily solvable. I don’t think you appreciate the depths of the problems you are commenting on. To drive that point home, you are commenting on a blog about a show you have never even seen. The wire is not Homicide Part 2.
— Trevor · Jan 2, 11:58 PM · #
“Also, the kind of self-help I’m interested in is the Laschian self-help of “communities of competence,” i.e., collective self-help.”
I think it’s nice to think that people can collectively decide to change, basically, their culture, but I think it is very hard. Especially when that culture values violence and denegrates education and assimilation with the dominant culture, as I think poor urban black culture does. I don’t think that is fertile ground for collective self-help. It may be possible, but very very difficult. Is hoping that a group of people will achieve something very very difficult a good policy? Especially when the costs are so high? Lives wasted?
I think a bettter policy is—if we decide it is imposible to change that culture—to help people escape. You help those who can and want to be helped with job training, education, housing in better neighborhoods, effective policing.
— cw · Jan 3, 01:50 AM · #
With so much static surrounding so many things I am truly delighted to read here that the vision Mr. Simon articulated for his show is the one that I feel that I pretty much got watching it.
“The Wire is dissent; it argues that our systems are no longer viable for the greater good of the most, that America is no longer operating as a utilitarian and democratic experiment.”
On the other hand, it always surprises me to find someone who is a fan of something that I am a fan of only to find that their perception of thing is completely different from mine. So which is weirder? That a pro-government cop/military lover like Bowden would feel that the show doesn’t give enough respect to our grand democratic experiment and its hope for the future or that someone like him actually likes the show?
— Paul Fallon · Jan 3, 04:57 AM · #
“David Simon thinks he’s constructed a critique of capitalism, but in fact he’s prepared an elaborate, moving brief for despair and (ultimately) indifference.”
Obviously there’s no contradiction here. Indeed if Simon’s post-industrial urban landscape is so bleak as to compell indifference, then his “critique of capitalism” stands all the stronger.
But clearly you’re committed, intellectually and professionally, to the notion that socio-economic relations as they stand are the natural state of things—more than that, the best possible state of things (which isn’t to say you’re a GOP hack, far from it). In that case it’s not so odd that you’d view endemic inner-city misery as cosmic, impervious to serious alteration, and therefore nothing more than an object of white sorrow—a futile guilt trip. Silly David Simon “thinks he’s constructed a critique of capitalism”, but fails to consider that there is only capitalism (shorthand for, socio-economic relations as we know it) and nothing else. And since a critique implies the existence of alternatives, and in this world there are no alternatives, Simon’s project is merely demonstration. Depressing demonstration—and who needs that?
— Mark · Jan 3, 06:03 AM · #
An excellent post — I came across it shortly after my own puzzled effort to figure out how The Wire is a critique of capitalism. Season 1 focuses on the Barksdale drug gang, a semi-feudal organization, as illustrated by the chess scene in the pit. Avon Barksdale and Stringer Bell self-consciously secure a monopoly market through force; D’Angelo asks why the drug trade is so violent when every other product in America gets sold without anyone being killed; and the Barksdale crew stops paying its employees for extended periods knowing they’ve got nowhere else to work and won’t leave.
Capitalism it ain’t. The police department is even less capitalistic — it is run according to the political whims of its leadership, it punishes talent and productivity, it is utterly unresponsive to the “market” in crime, it is a monopoly employer for those who want a career in law enforcement, its promotions are determined by patronage…If you need more examples to be convinced I flesh out the argument at a length inappropriate for a comments section at MagnifyingGloss.com, but suffice it to say that a show whose entire focus is basically on non-market institutions — police, drug gangs, unions, politics and schools — it would be hard to render a critique of capitalism even if you wanted to.
— Conor Friedersdorf · Jan 3, 12:44 PM · #
How ironic is it that a few journalists who praised the show are bitching and moaning because they feel that David’s got some personal vendetta.
The show was an honest depiction of the streets, docks and school system — about which I’d guess these people have not one fucking clue — but now that it’s their own, it’s an exaggerated piece of fiction.
Institutional self-preservation is a motherfucker ain’t it?
— Nadum · Jan 3, 04:16 PM · #
“Right now, though, I’m just proud to see serious people arguing about a television drama; there’s some pride in that.”
That is definitely something worthy of taking pride in. Self help requires self examination. A communal self help should require the same; this is what we are engaging in. I’m a white male engineer. I may not be part of the right community, but I don’t think anyone can say nobody in the right community is engaged. For that reason, I cannot fault the cynicism of the wire.
— Trevor · Jan 3, 05:23 PM · #
“Silly David Simon “thinks he’s constructed a critique of capitalism”, but fails to consider that there is only capitalism (shorthand for, socio-economic relations as we know it) and nothing else. And since a critique implies the existence of alternatives, and in this world there are no alternatives, Simon’s project is merely demonstration. Depressing demonstration—and who needs that?”
While I might agree with you that there is “only capitalism”, I disagree that Simon isn’t pointing a direct finger at how those relations play out.
Throughout the show, Burns and Simon are showing how the assumption that “this is how the world works, so let’s just let it rot” is actually contributing to the decline. The unwillingness of the media, the upper echelons of the police, and politicians to even consider exploring the pros and cons of Bunny’s Hamsterdam experiment is one example. The assumed unwillingness of Carcetti (and his Republican counterpart in the governor’s mansion) to raise taxes on suburban voters to pay for inner city schools is another. The inflexibility of underfunded institutions in child services and foster care is another.
Our addiction to statistics to sense whether things are getting better or worse is perhaps the worst problem. We live in a world awash with measurement and data in our public discourse. But how much further have we progressed?
— Samir · Jan 3, 07:04 PM · #
Simon, WTF?
— Paul Fallon · Jan 6, 05:24 AM · #
Jim Rockford how the hell would u know anything about the black community honestly. you depend on the media to get all your information about them, and base your opinion on that. anyone that depends on the american media to get there information about the inner city are very uninformed. the wire is a neccesity if u want to critize the black community. please watch the wire it is much better than homicide. and uve probably never met a thug in your life, you probably base your opinions on how they act by watching movies like gridiron gang or colors. thats as close as you come to knowing a “thug”
— J · Jan 10, 08:59 AM · #