"I'll do what I can to help y'all. But, the game's out there, and it's play or get played. That simple. "

I think the best way to end this blog is with a dedication to a pop culture icon-- Omar Little. Omar is a stick-up man (he steals money from drug dealers with a sawed off shotgun) who lives by a strict moral code of not swearing only murders those who are involved in the drug trade--no innocents. Perhaps most interestingly is the fact that Omar is gay. Perhaps even more interesting is the fact that David Simon does not focus on Omar's homosexuality. He just allows it to "be," even though there has never been such a bad-ass, complex, gay, black character before (at least in such a large forum).

According to Alastair Mackay,

In one of the stranger moments of the American presidential election campaign, a reporter from the Las Vegas Sun asked Barack Obama to name his favourite television programme. Without hesitation, he mentioned The Wire, which was understandable because, a) David Simon’s drama is almost monotonously described as the best television show ever and, b) it shows life in the blue-collar city of Baltimore in all its tough reality. But Obama went further, suggesting also that his favourite character was Omar Little. “He’s not my favourite person,” Obama said, prompting some nervous chuckling from his interviewer, “but he’s a fascinating character. He’s this gay gangster who only robs drug dealers, and then gives back.” Omar, said the future President, was “sort of a Robin Hood. And he’s the toughest, baddest guy on this show.”

See? Even our PRESIDENT loves Omar!

I think that Omar Little has the potential to be one of the greatest pop culture icons of a television series...ever. It seems that David Simon took a gigantic leap in making him such a complex character. There has been much discussion throughout the years regarding the homosexual current that rides right below the rap mainstream. I recall a woman on VH1 asking the audience to consider whether LL Cool J was always shirtless and licking his lips for just the lady viewers. The answer is no. The fact that Simon was able to create such a complex character without beating every viewer over the head with the fact that he really IS so complex has opened the door for so many. The time has come for homosexuals, women, people of all races to be represented by not their social stereotypes, but as the complex people we all are.

Watch Michael K. Williams talk about stuff here

“I tend to suspect that my female characters are, to quote a famous criticism of Hemingway, men with tits.” - David Simon

Tania Modeski’s essay “Femininity as Ma(s)querade: A Feminist Approach to Mass Culture” immediately called out to me to be related back to The Wire. Many of the articles I have read regarding The Wire and feminist theory have called out the show for having male characters who are much more interesting, complex, and relevant than their female counterparts. I kind of agree and kind of disagree—makes for a riveting argument, I’m sure, but here’s the thing: The Wire depicts lives and life itself accurately. There are certainly no normal, well-adjusted males on the show and there are certainly no normal, well-adjusted females on the show. Not only would it not make for a good show, it would make for an inaccurate show. Kima Greggs, Rhonda Pearlman, and Brianna Barksdale (ostensibly the main female characters on the show) are all incredibly interesting and two-dimensional. Hey, they can’t all be Omar.

Kima Greggs is a no nonsense police detective who works alongside some of the biggest scumbags in the Baltimore Police Department. She is openly gay and has many issues with her partner, particularly after they chose to have a child together. I believe that Modleski would refer to the operative used in Douglas’s work where “masculine = production and work; femininity= consumption and passivity” (51) and say that Kima has turned this formula on its head. I, however, disagree with the notion of a woman doing a “man’s job” being inherently feminist. It seems, as Modleski would say, to “masquerade as theories of liberation” (54). Kima is amazing at everything that she does. She kicks ass, takes names, and drinks with the best of them. She is definitely a strong person, but why does she have to be a strong woman by acting like a man? Rhonda Pearlman is incredibly similar to Kima. So similar that it is unnecessary to devote another paragraph to her. She is an amazing lawyer with a no nonsense attitude, but, again, couldn’t we give these characters some depth? Some sort of weakness inherent to all living people? Rhonda and Kima’s characters just fall flat when compared to the interesting and lively back-stories of SO MANY of the male characters.

I find Brianna Barksdale, the sister of Avon Barksdale and mother to D’Angelo, to be incredibly interesting, however. She plays a pivotal role in the survival of the Barksdale drug trade (at least for a little while) as she ensures D’Angelo does not snitch on anyone in his quest to rid himself of the guilt he feels over Wallace’s murder. She is a matriarch in every sense of the word and holds the family together while her brother and son are in jail. At times, she seems villainous, but she does what she has to do in order to survive and continue having cash flow into the Barksdale account. Eventually, Brianna realizes that Stringer is the man who should be held responsible for her son’s death in prison and demonstrates a rare moment of weakness—making her character that much more believable. I view Brianna as a strong person, mother, and businesswoman. She plays the game the best she knows how, but also holds herself accountable for her mistakes.

Ultimately, David Simon really gets into hot water with me with his depictions of the girls involved in the sex trade during Season 2 and his inability to create female character that is both a stripper and a person with any smarts. I will end in his defense, however, by saying that every character on The Wire was offered a chance at both redemption and failure, regardless of gender.

"Hey, don't knock the G(r)eeks. They invented civilization."

Upon first reading Henry Jenkins' III essay "Star Trek Rerun, Reread, Rewritten: Fan Writing as Textual Poaching," I didn't for a second see a way that I would possibly relate it back to The Wire and thought I would definitely be using another essay for this blogpost. I was, however, wrong. When I think back to the time in my life before I had watched The Wire (my life is now Pre-Wire and Post-Wire, naturally), I remember all of my friends being extremely obsessed with this show. I mean, obsessed to the point of scaring me. I was excluded from conversations and treated with looks of downright shock and amazement when I admitted I had never watched the show. I imagine life would not have been all that different if my friends were die hard Star Trek fans, instead.

Perusing the internet, one is able to find a wealth of information regarding The Wire. There is really not a single stone left unturned. These are not only people writing about the show in a scholarly fashion (they are even offering classes on the show at some universities!), but EVERYONE. Every episode is picked apart and dissected and every quote is analyzed and reprinted. These people (including myself) are "fans," to say the least. Jenkins points to two articles that illustrate the opinion that "the fan constitutes a scandalous category in contemporary American culture, one that calls into question the logic by which others order their aesthetic experiences..." and that these fans generally are not respected by the academic world.

I, like Jenkins, disagree with this point of view. When die-hard fans produce their own texts (wholly different from mine, as this is not in the realm of "fan-fiction," but had I been asked...) it enters into something I believe Roland Barthes would be proud of. In his essay "Death of the Author," Barthes states that the notion of an “Author-God” with an irrefutable message is untrue and contends that writing is the destruction of “every voice” and “every point of origin.” He suggests that it is instead important for the reader to apply his/her own meaning to the text as it applies to them personally. In order to “overthrow the myth,” the “death of the author” and “birth of the reader” must occur. This act certainly occurs when viewers of a television show like The Wire or Star Trek go out and make the show their own. To pull from the ideas and narratives presented by the writers, directors, and actors and discuss them and make them your own is ultimately extremely important. In these cases, creativity gives rise to more creativity...no matter how geeky.

"Shaking it, jiggle it, yo. Who made that track? I'm asking who Young Leek be."

In Tricia Rose's Essay "A Style Nobody can Deal With: Politics, Style, and the Postindustrial City in Hip Hop," she begins in saying

Emerging from the intersection of lack and desire in the postindustrial city, hip hop manages the painful contradictions of social alienation and prophetic imagination. Hip Hop is an Afro-diasporic cultural form which attempts to negotiate the experiences of marginalization, brutally truncated opportunity and oppression...It is the tension between the cultural fractures produced by postindustrial oppression and the binding ties of Black cultural expressivity that sets the critical frame for the development of hip hop.

I believe that to relate hip hop back to the Barksdale crew and inner city Baltimore of The Wire would mean to talk about nearly every episode of the show. The presence of a hip hop lifestyle is never explicitly stated by any of the characters because they live and breathe the lifestyle. They aesthetically fit into the roles and their music is rarely talked about, but is omnipresent. Relating back to Rose's statements, all of these people have been marginalized and forgotten. When the show enters the season featuring the public school system most prominently, it becomes obvious to the viewer that none of the Barksdale crew (or anyone involved in the drug trade) ever had a chance no matter how intelligent they are. The system has completely failed them and pushed them to the outside of a society. To rebel against this society and come together as a community, they have turned to hip hop. It is their lifestyles represented in art and there are few episodes that don't feature a song that was popular at the time playing at Prop Joe's or some other store.

The scene there is so thick that when Bodie goes out of town on a drug run to Philly, the following exchange occurs:

Shamrock: We done gone so far from Baltimore, we're losing the station. Yo', try a Philly station or some shit like that.

Bodie: The radio in Philly is different?

Shamrock: Nigga, please. You gotta be fucking with me, right? You ain't never heard a station outside of Baltimore?

Bodie: Yo' man, I ain't never left Baltimore except that Boys Village shit one day, and I wasn't tryin' to hear no radio up in that bitch.

Chris and Snoop, who work for Barksdale's competitor and enemy, Marlo Stanfield, discuss killing New York drug dealers who are taking their business. As they are trying to decide how to decide how they could possibly tell if someone is from New York or not, they discuss Baltimore club music. Chris drops references to numerous rappers and artists, Snoop confesses that she doesn't listen to Baltimore radio. It seems impossible to Chris, who thinks that anyone from Baltimore running in the same circles as them would definitely know pop music there.

(Watch clip here. I highly suggest you do because Chris and Snoop are amazing.)

Finally, the problem is resolved by another pop culture reference involving hip hop:

Chris: Y'all gonna pop out and pop off. Drop who you can.

O-dog: Yo, let's go all west coast with this.

Anoop [laughing] Say what?

O-Dog: Drive-by. That's how they do. Drop a motherfucker and not slow down. Like Boyz n da Hood. Shit was tight, remember?

All of these references and cultural norms provide a seeming sense insulation and comfort where there was not before. These networks are a means for all of those involved in the seedy and unpredictable life of the Baltimore drug trade to form a community. And while this community may not seem like the most ideal to some, it is all that some characters have.

"I want what Wallace wanted. I want to start over. That's what I want."

In the documentary “The Merchants of Cool,” PBS follows market researchers and teens in order to have a deeper look into the teen world: what is “cool” to them? who decides that? when something goes mainstream, is it not “cool” anymore? Their world is “made of marketing” and the commercialization and commodification of their very lives is expected.

While watching this documentary, one point really stuck with me as related to this blog: are teens hyper sexualized and violent because of pop culture or is pop culture merely feeding back teen culture to them? Where does the influence stop and “real life” begin?

The teens on The Wire are all from low-income families in Baltimore (with the notable exception of Wee Bey’s son Namond, who is often criticized for his family’s wealth) and they all struggle to make money and maintain their roles as they advance in the drug trade.

The higher ups in the Barksdale crew (D’Angelo, Stringer, Avon, etc) take their clothing very seriously.

By all appearances, they are able to spend a lot of money on name brand street wear without being “flashy,” thereby garnering too much attention. Stringer’s dress progresses from what could only be described as “fine” to “fiiiiine” as he moves up the corporate ladder and begins to throw some of his wealth around while Avon is in jail.

This all to say: the teens are watching them. It is rare that Bodie does not have on new jerseys as his personal style expands from season to season (along with his rank), while the less street smart, less fortunate characters are often the most poorly dressed (see Duquan “Dukie” Weems who, ostensibly is the next Bubbles).

Perhaps the most tragic of all of the characters on The Wire is Wallace. Wallace worked at the low risers for Barksdale’s crew and never had the money or time to invest in new fashions like Bodie, his more successful counterpart. When Wallace is suspected of snitching, he is ordered to be killed by Bodie and Poot in what just happens to be one of the saddest scenes in anything. Ever. It relates back to my original questions in many ways, though.

(Watch scene here)

As Wallace stands there pleading for his life in a dilapidated apartment his drug addict mother has abandoned him and his brothers in, the poster of a strong, handsome Tupac stands behind him in the background. The dichotomy between the two is striking. The shiny poster of a muscular successful man dwarfs little Wallace who, at this point, has wet his pants in fear. Tupac wears a platinum gun on his chain while Wallace, crying, is faced with a real gun. He is a boy and his life is about to, like Tupac’s, end all too early. The poster is the only one in his room and the viewer is left to assume that Wallace and his peers probably looked up to him. As he meets his tragic end and Bodie and Poot stand there in disbelief, their stoic pop culture hero looks back at them. So, where does the influence stop and “real life” begin for these teens? In short, it doesn’t. It doesn’t seem fair to blame rap culture when the drug culture is to blame. It’s all a cycle and it takes one to influence the other. I just wish Wallace had stayed in the country.

"The bigger the lie, the more they believe."

A follower of Marx, Guy Debord, also discusses commodity fetishism and takes another focus on the degradation of mass media and marketing in The Society of the Spectacle. His statment that

The loss of quality is so evident at all levels of spectacular language, of the objects it praises and the behavior it regulates, merely translates the fundamental traits of the real production which brushes reality aside: the commodity-form is through and through equal to itself, the category of the quantitative. It is the quantitative which the reality form develops, and it can only develop within the quantitative.

actually led me to ponder the 5th season of The Wire most critically. In it, the focus is directed towards the daily ins and outs of the newsroom at The Baltimore Sun newspaper. As the season progresses, valuable and thoughtful reporters are lost due to budget cuts, the question of what makes a story "newsworthy" is consistently pondered, and the thirst for profit seems to ultimately cast a gloomy scenario on all forms of media in the future. The season, according to David Simon, grapples with "what stories get told and what don't and why it is that things stay the same."

The newspaper itself is, of course, a commodity and is therefore subject to all of the domination and reification delivered to all commodity by the people. There are important stories going on all around the city of Baltimore that the newspaper simply does not have the manpower to cover OR the important stories are deemed not "newsworthy" by higher ups at the paper because they aren't sensational enough and therefore won't make enough money. Ultimately, a fake news story of a homeless killer purported by a wayward detective in order to gain more money for his unit becomes the star story. Through these faked murders, however, everyone (readers, detectives, writers) become interested in an actual legitimate problem in their city--the homeless and their mistreatment by the government. Sadly, it took a sensationalized and false murder mystery to garner that kind of attention.

According to Wikipedia, "When Debord says that, 'All that was once directly lived has become mere representation,' he is referring to the central importance of the image in contemporary society. Images, Debord says, have supplanted genuine human interaction." It is the figurative image of a ruthless killer of the homeless that brings up the concrete discussion of who is the actual killer of the homeless--the ignorance shown to this group of people by the government and voters alike. The newspaper and its readers are "at once present at absent" (Debord) as they ignore the real problems of the city and focus their attention instead on sensationlized and fictionalized media saturation. Just like the drug trade, the writers and workers of the newspaper all ultimately fall victim to commodity fetishization as they become commodities themselves.

"Until then, we're going to handle this like businessmen, sell the shit, make the profit and later for that gangsta bullshit."

To begin to discuss themes, ideas, and storylines as Marxist on The Wire could be an entire blog in and of itself. The intricacies of the drug trade, the commodification and reification of nearly everything and every person on the show, as well as the inherent problems within every system presented would make for a long entry. In order to try and "decipher the heiroglyphic, to get behind the secret of our own social products" (Marx 91), I will defer to "The Fetishism of Commodities and the Secret Thereof" by Karl Marx in order to attempt to flesh out the relationships of the dealers to the suppliers, the buyers to the dealers, and those who work for the dealers.

The drug trade on The Wire functions as a hierarchy. The suppliers who arrange the shipments of the drugs are essentially nameless ("The Greek") and few are even allowed to speak to them. Joseph "Prop Joe" Stewart worked with these people and secured large imports of heroin for those like Stringer Bell and Marlo Stanfield (both also kingpins). The chain goes further and further down--the furthest point probably being the "hoppers," the extremely young kids working for the kingpins who are generally lookouts.

Within the hierarchy, these people have no relationship to one another except to further fetishize their product and the production of that product. Their actions are completely related to the fluctuation of the market and each and every player in that game eventually betrays someone in some way in order to get ahead of the other, seek revenge for loss of goods (whether that "good" be an actual person, money, or drugs), or to adhere to a "code" established through the trade itself.

As Marx states:

In the eyes of each other we are nothing but exchange-values... A man or a community is rich, a pearl of a diamond is valuable... A pearl or a diamond is valuable' as a pearl or a diamond. So far no chemist has ever discovered exchange- value in either a pearl or a diamond.... What confirms them in this view is the peculiar circumstance that the use-value of objects is realised without exchange, by means of a direct relation between the objects and man...

In the case of The Wire, this quote can be applied to the drug trade and those implicit in it. No chemist has ever applied a direct value on the heroin or crack-cocaine the kingpins are dealing. The value of all of it is directly applied through the consumers themselves. No one is exempt from both the fetishism of commodities and becoming the commodities themselves.

"Look, the pawns, man, in the game, they get capped quick. They be out the game early. "

D' Angelo Barksdale is a primary character on The Wire. He is the lieutenant of the drug trade organization run by his uncle, Avon Barksdale, and Stringer Bell. Throughout the show, D'Angelo proves time and time again to deeply feel the polarizing effects of what, to him, is essentially "right" from "wrong."

As he watches dealers get beaten for minor infractions and is unwittingly involved in a murder, he pulls farther away from his family and the "game" itself. He is a high-ranking drug dealer with a conscience--something that doesn't generally bode well for anyone.

Eventually, D'Angelo is caught running a large amount of drugs into Baltimore and is sent to prison. Before he enters, however, he learns that his protege and friend, Wallace, has been killed by order of his uncle. This act immediately pulls the family further apart and, as D'Angelo enters prison, he feels the desire to cut ties with his family.

While in prison, D'Angelo is introduced to The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald and discusses it with his fellow inmates. I suggest viewing the video here.

As, Barksdale analyzes Fitzgerald's renowned novel (which was generally ignored at time of publishing...), he observes the parallels between his life and Gatsby's. D'Angelo was at the top of his game. He had money, family, a girlfriend, a son--but all of these things were meaningless to him since he earned them through a broken and damaged system. Like Gatsby, the wealth he acquired didn't negate the person he was before the money, nor did it negate the lengths they had to go through to get it. Although The Great Gatsby is sometimes viewed as an American Dream success story (individual wealth, success, etc), both Gatsby and D'Angelo prove to represent the haunting truth of that dream. Despite appearances, neither can escape who they truly are.

I believe that Adorno would say that Barksdale was only able to reach these conclusions by being necessarily excluded by the cultural majority, and therefore industry, by being imprisoned.

For some insight:

According to Wikipedia: Culture industry is a term coined by critical theorists Theodor Adorno (1903–1969) and Max Horkheimer (1895–1973), who argued...that popular culture is akin to a factory producing standardised cultural goods – through film, radio and magazines – to manipulate the masses into passivity; the easy pleasures available through consumption of popular culture make people docile and content, no matter how difficult their economic circumstances. Adorno and Horkheimer saw this mass-produced culture as a danger to the more difficult high arts. Culture industries may cultivate false needs; that is, needs created and satisfied by capitalism. True needs, in contrast, are freedom, creativity, or genuine happiness.

By those terms, Barksdale was only able to find true sense of self and insight by being faced with his most basic needs. To say that his imprisonment set him (mentally) free may sound trite, but it is true. Through the escape of his false needs perpetuated by the culture industry, D'Angelo was able to seek a different kind of freedom--freedom from the prison of his occupation and familial expectations. Neither Gatsby's nor Barksdale's stories are without tragedy. They themselves are tragic characters, unable to escape their pasts to build new futures. Through Barksdale's imprisonment, however, he is able to observe and understand more deeply the inner workings of that which actually imprisons him and, ultimately, this understanding gives him the strength to cut his familial ties and give up the drug trade.

I got the shotgun. You got the briefcase. It's all in the game, though, right?

I recall a time years and years ago when The Wire was actually airing on HBO. I heard about it here and there and, honestly, I could not have cared less. It wreaked to me of some sort of Law and Order stuff, you know? One of the shows where they find the killer's toenail in the toilet or whatever and he is caught and goes to jail forever. I hate those shows. The Wire, as it turns out, is not one of those shows

I also must confess that I often show a great resistance to television my friends are really into at the time. I've never watched an episode of Lost and instead own every season of Seinfeld ever made. I know! I'm the worst! My snobbery, however, is somewhat unique. I'd rather watch a show that fits more under mid 1700s definition of "popular"...as in, I'd rather wax philosophical about America's Next Top Model than Dexter. I'd rather hang with the vulgar commoners. I cling to Judge Judy's every word.

This problem of mine does not stand true with The Wire, though. This show is smart. Smart, smart. Way smarter than I. The characters are interesting and intricate, but not overwrought. The storylines weave and dodge and intersect with one another from season to season as the viewer glimpses into the lives of police officers, drug dealers, teachers, and reporters of Baltimore. As the hierarchies of every group are laid out, "good" becomes "bad" and vice versa. I found myself cheering for a thieving man with a sawed off shotgun while becoming morally opposed to the commander of the Southeastern district. I cried for the death of fictional characters and laughed at every joke Bunk Moreland cracked. Ultimately, I fell in love with this show.

This blog is a dedication to The Wire and all its goodness. In it, I hope to explore more deeply the themes as they lend themselves to literary studies (I am an English major, after all). I will draw connections between major texts, authors, and tropes and their presence in the show. The protagonists, antagonists, Byronic heroes, villains, and tragic heroes of the popular show will all find their place in this blog.

Some examples of future blog postings I hope to explore:

Prometheus: Clay Davis is not.
D'Angelo Barksdale and the Great Gatsby
Monomanical Missions: Valchek as Melville's Ahab
The "Dickensian" Spin
McNulty: Byronic Hero or Just a Dummy?
...and many more