Lena Dunham On ‘Girls’

[Battle]

I don't know what you imagine The Wire to be but I assure you, it's like nothing else you've ever seen.

You are absolutely correct about that.
















One question:

Why is the show called 'The Wire'?

[Curtis Metcalf]

Why is the show called 'The Wire'?

It is ostensibly about a small group of detectives using surveillance technology to investigate the drug trade in Baltimore. This is a long play to gather enough information to move up the chain above street level dealing. This is in contrast to the "dope on the table" approach most commonly taken. It is also an explicit critique of the war on drugs. Through this group working the wire and gathering intelligence on the drug trade we get an examination of police bureaucracy, the supply chain, city politics, longshoreman union politics, intra and inter-gang dynamics, education, decriminalization, media coverage, the decline of city newspapers, the criminal justice system, and so on. I'm sure I'm overlooking some stuff but you get the drift.

[Battle]

Why is the show called 'The Wire'?

It is ostensibly about a small group of detectives using surveillance technology to investigate the drug trade in Baltimore. This is a long play to gather enough information to move up the chain above street level dealing. This is in contrast to the "dope on the table" approach most commonly taken. It is also an explicit critique of the war on drugs. Through this group working the wire and gathering intelligence on the drug trade we get an examination of police bureaucracy, the supply chain, city politics, longshoreman union politics, intra and inter-gang dynamics, education, decriminalization, media coverage, the decline of city newspapers, the criminal justice system, and so on. I'm sure I'm overlooking some stuff but you get the drift.

Ah!
Interesting...   I didn't know this.  Sometimes, I see the show listed DIRECTV's programming schedule, selected that channel, saw a 1 minute scene with Idris Elba not knowing he was on the show but quickly turned away thinking this was just another TV crime drama with drug dealing,  etc, etc...
I'll give 'The Wire' another look someday but will be for me exactly what it is---  just another modern crime drama.
The reason I don't particularly care for those type of shows is the same reason I have a low opinion of the kinds of people who enter law enforcement or the military and organized crime

---it's because these people think what they do makes them movie stars.
In my humble opinion, organized crime, the military and law enforcement is very serious business and lot of these TV shows (and movies) seem to pump the egos of the people in those professions as well as spur business growth in law enforcement weapons and gadgets as well as increasing thier crime fighting tactics to pry even further into our personal lives. This, in turn, means less privacy and human rights for American citizens lulling them into complacency concerning thier own civil rights. The impression is that,

"Well, I saw them do that on a TV show I saw last week so I guess it's OK" 

I'll give 'The Wire' another attempt but I've said before, I really don't think I'm missing anything.   

[Kristopher]

That kind of show is not for me.  I've never watched an episode of The Wire (and never will) and I'm quite sure I'm not missing anything.

I don't know what you imagine The Wire to be but I assure you, it's like nothing else you've ever seen. Maybe you're right that it isn't for you but you owe it yourself to sample a couple of episodes to make sure. It was a little harsh for my wife to watch regularly but if she happened by while it was on, she was captivated. It's that good. It's also an insightful study of modern urban system dynamics, brilliantly conceived, written, and performed.

I, too, think it's the GOAT. The thing is, that doesn't really do it justice. There isn't anything else to even compare it to.

http://www.believermag.com/issues/200708/?read=interview_simon
"Another reason the show may feel different than a lot of television: our model is not quite so Shakespearean as other high-end HBO fare. The Sopranos and Deadwood—two shows that I do admire—offer a good deal of Macbeth or Richard III or Hamlet in their focus on the angst and machinations of the central characters (Tony Soprano, Al Swearengen). Much of our modern theater seems rooted in the Shakespearean discovery of the modern mind. We’re stealing instead from an earlier, less-traveled construct—the Greeks—lifting our thematic stance wholesale from Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides to create doomed and fated protagonists who confront a rigged game and their own mortality. The modern mind—particularly those of us in the West—finds such fatalism ancient and discomfiting, I think. We are a pretty self-actualized, self-worshipping crowd of postmoderns and the idea that for all of our wherewithal and discretionary income and leisure, we’re still fated by indifferent gods, feels to us antiquated and superstitious. We don’t accept our gods on such terms anymore; by and large, with the exception of the fundamentalists among us, we don’t even grant Yahweh himself that kind of unbridled, interventionist authority.

But instead of the old gods, The Wire is a Greek tragedy in which the postmodern institutions are the Olympian forces. It’s the police department, or the drug economy, or the political structures, or the school administration, or the macroeconomic forces that are throwing the lightning bolts and hitting people in the ass for no decent reason. In much of television, and in a good deal of our stage drama, individuals are often portrayed as rising above institutions to achieve catharsis. In this drama, the institutions always prove larger, and those characters with hubris enough to challenge the postmodern construct of American empire are invariably mocked, marginalized, or crushed. Greek tragedy for the new millennium, so to speak. Because so much of television is about providing catharsis and redemption and the triumph of character, a drama in which postmodern institutions trump individuality and morality and justice seems different in some ways, I think.

It also explains why we get good reviews but less of an audience than other storytelling. In this age of Enron, WorldCom, Iraq, and Katrina, many people want their television entertainments to distract them from the foibles of the society we actually inhabit. Which brings me to the last notion of why The Wire may feel different. The chumps making it live in Baltimore, or, in the case of guys like Price, Pelecanos, and Lehane, they are at least writing in their literary work about second-tier East Coast rust-belt places like Jersey City, northeast Washington, or Dorchester, rather than Manhattan, Georgetown, or Back Bay Boston. We are of the other America or the America that has been left behind in the postindustrial age. We don’t live in L.A. or go to their parties; we don’t do what we do to try to triumph in the world of television entertainment by having a bona fide hit, and meeting the pretty people and getting the best table at the Ivy. sh*t, the last time George and I went to the Ivy on a road trip, we waited forty-five minutes for a table and then were announced as “The Pelican party.” We don’t belong there and we don’t need the kind of money or the level of zeitgeist required to belong there. We hang out in the Baltimores of the world, writing what we want to write about and never keeping one eye on whether or not it could sell as much as a drama that had, say, more white faces, more women with big tits, and more stuff that blows up or squirts blood real good.

Our impulses are all the natural reactions of writers who live in close proximity to a specific American experience—independent of Hollywood—and who are trying to capture that experience. And that too is an improbability, given how insulated the American entertainment industry normally is. I don’t mean this to come off as some snotty declaration of classist, pseudoproletarian pretension, but it is what it is. I live in Baltimore. How many yachts can I waterski behind in Baltimore harbor? f*ck it, I’m happy to be getting paid what I’m paid to make a television show about what I would normally write magazine articles and newspaper series and narrative tomes about. And the other writers feel pretty much the same.

So we are misfits, and while we hope the show is entertaining enough, none of us think of ourselves as providing entertainment. The impulse is, again, either journalistic or literary. Hope this helps and doesn’t sound as wrought and pompous as I think it does. Forgive us for actually thinking about this sh*t; we know it’s television, but we can’t help ourselves. But as you yourself probably know from your love of music, sometimes even three chords and the right guitar solo and a good chorus can be pretty much everything."

[Redjack]

I'll say it again.

The WIRE is the best drama, bar none, in the history of television. it has no competitor and no equal. Nothing comes close. The reason it was overlooked, largely, by the mass of viewers and critics was because it showed Urban America (as distinguished from Black America. Urban doesn't mean black) the way it actually is; it showed how interconnected all of us are whether or not we like it. And it showed more than one black person, more than one kind of black person, more than five kinds of black person in every show. I don't belevie that's ever been done on a TV series, not even ones about black people written and directed by black people.

this was the most audacious, brave and, frankly AMERICAN series I have ever seen.

Some of the best black actors whose names most STILL don't know, did some of their best work in this show. If you didn't see it, you missed out. If you reduce it to the level of NYPD BLUE or even HOMICIDE: LIFE ON THE STREET (which takes place in the same universe) you are missing the point and missing the ART. Missing.

This is artwork. It is sublime. It is brutal. it is beautiful. It is real.

Reducing it to "just another" anything, especially without viewing it, is a mistake no writer and, frankly, no one who wants provocative thoughtful, AGGRESSIVELY intelligent and challenging television can afford to make.

You'll learn more from watching this show than you will from eight straight years at the best college writing program.

This is the Michael Jordan, the Muhammed Ali of television drama.

Accept no substitute.

[Battle]

>>>RedJack


Can you cite examples as to why (or even what) The Wire can show me that I haven't seen or experienced in 'real life'? 
Do any specific episodes from 'The Wire' stand out from other episodes or were ALL of the episodes great 'works of art'?

 

[Curtis Metcalf]

My dearest Battle,

While I understand your skepticism, you are missing the point and the boat. It is much larger than any individual episode. It is an integral whole although the individual seasons do have story arcs. You really should just start at the beginning. Seriously, this is not like anything else. Do yourself a favor and just try it out at some point.

[Kristopher]

Why so many colleges are teaching "The Wire":
http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/2010/03/this_will_be_on_the_midterm_you_feel_me.html

[Battle]

My dearest Battle,

While I understand your skepticism, you are missing the point and the boat. It is much larger than any individual episode. It is an integral whole although the individual seasons do have story arcs. You really should just start at the beginning. Seriously, this is not like anything else. Do yourself a favor and just try it out at some point.

Although, I don't live in Baltimore, the world of  'The Wire' is not entirely lost to me. I am extremely familiar with that world.
I don't live in a zone where none of that stuff doesn't affect me directly like some people who live well off do. I dont need to see an HBO dramatization of that on television mainly because the problem just sits there on the screen in a vacuum.

Trust me when I write this...     I'm not missing anything.




EDIT:
Lemme just add that I like television shows that can present a world I haven't seen before.

[Kristopher]

My dearest Battle,

While I understand your skepticism, you are missing the point and the boat. It is much larger than any individual episode. It is an integral whole although the individual seasons do have story arcs. You really should just start at the beginning. Seriously, this is not like anything else. Do yourself a favor and just try it out at some point.

Just leave it alone.

[Curtis Metcalf]

Trust me when I write this...     I'm not missing anything.

The Wire is not a documentary. It's an amazing drama based on the real life that you know.
But Life is not art. This is great art based on real life. And that is what you shouldn't miss.

[Battle]

The Wire is not a documentary. It's an amazing drama based on the real life that you know.
But Life is not art. This is great art based on real life. And that is what you shouldn't miss.

When I get a chance, I will take another look.   However, I don't believe 'The Wire' will impress me.

[Reginald Hudlin]

The Wire is not a documentary. It's an amazing drama based on the real life that you know.
But Life is not art. This is great art based on real life. And that is what you shouldn't miss.

Then it's a safe bet it won't. 

If you choose your entertainment based on its ability to transport you to a different world than the one you live in, that's fine.  It doesn't diminish the artistry of THE WIRE, which many compare to a Dickens novel. 






When I get a chance, I will take another look.   However, I don't believe 'The Wire' will impress me.

[Battle]

If you choose your entertainment based on its ability to transport you to a different world than the one you live in, that's fine.  It doesn't diminish the artistry of THE WIRE, which many compare to a Dickens novel.

O.K.  


I've set my recording schedule for a program called 'The Wire' for an episode called "Late Editions".   I'm going to check it out and come back with some observations.
The way I see it, a lot of these television shows have a problem with 'length of time' stealing a lot of my personal time.  I'm going to see if it's worth my time.
By the way, I'm working on a writing project that has a similar world & environment (like the one I live in) but y'know what? ...I know that whatever material I put out there can easily be dismissed and/or compared to what some folk's impression of stories (The Wire) like that is...  just another ghetto tale.

[Kristopher]

If you choose your entertainment based on its ability to transport you to a different world than the one you live in, that's fine.  It doesn't diminish the artistry of THE WIRE, which many compare to a Dickens novel.

O.K.  


I've set my recording schedule for a program called 'The Wire' for an episode called "Late Editions".   I'm going to check it out and come back with some observations.
The way I see it, a lot of these television shows have a problem with 'length of time' stealing a lot of my personal time.  I'm going to see if it's worth my time.
By the way, I'm working on a writing project that has a similar world & environment (like the one I live in) but y'know what? ...I know that whatever material I put out there can easily be dismissed and/or compared to what some folk's impression of stories (The Wire) like that is...  just another ghetto tale.

If you're planning on introducing yourself to this show by watching one of the last episodes(the ninth, I think) of the FINAL season, then you might as well not bother with it.