David Simon, one of the creators of The Wire talking about how everyone keeps missing the point of The Wire. How is it so many people loved watching The Wire but don’t support overhauling the American justice system?
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- On the exaggerated reports of a decline in British fiction. thewhitereview.org/features/on-th… 7 hours ago
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Thought you might find this interesting: http://www5.uwm.edu/news/2012/04/26/uwm%E2%80%99s-%E2%80%98the-wire%E2%80%99-course-started-academic-trend/
‘The people who made the Wire did so to stir actual shit’.
Really good essay, thanks for the link. We are halfway through the second season of David Simon’s ‘Treme’ which also stirs actual shit.
Far out … he can write. And he can rant.
“How is it so many people loved watching The Wire but don’t support overhauling the American justice system?”
It’s a good question. For what it’s worth, I think that maybe the Wire doesn’t show a solution to the institutional grind that it so convincingly portrays. Or maybe the solution is just to hard to consider (Hamsterdam?).
I do like his taking of American journalism to task (something just as relevant here in Australia):
“He might swallow hard, seize the moment and say something along the lines of, “Mr. President. I know you’ve said you’re a fan of The Wire. Well, one of that show’s basic critiques is that the drug war is amoral. More Americans are now in prison than ever before, and the percentage of violent offenders in prison is lower than ever. We are now the jailingest society in the world, incarcerating more of each other than even totalitarian states. How can we go on supporting this?”
Balls out like that. Truth to power, brah. Get some.
Instead, to use a sportswriting cliché, Simmons choked, throwing up an ugly brick at the buzzer: “Who’s the best character in The Wire?””
I just wrote about this. http://bit.ly/JfceIR
His comments remind me so much of Dave Chappelle’s when he left Chappelle’s Show, and that worries me. The fans who use these types of edutainment pieces for pure entertainment may be louder, but I hope that doesn’t discourage these talented and intelligent artists from creating their works. The rest of us are watching, too!
Makes for particularly interesting reading in combination with the article linked in this post and the post’s comment thread.