Friday, March 30, 2007
The Wire
The Wire has received so much good press. We are only at disc 1 of season 1. I'm not sure we'll stick through the whole run — the well-done series has an off-putting feel to it. Exactly what makes that so I'm not sure — an unease about the underlying assumptions perhaps. It is well directed, the writing snappy. The performances have a feel of reality to them. So what is not to like?
The creator of the series, David Simon, said that he wanted to show two institutions — the world of the inner city and the world of the police — and how they parallel one another and affect individuals. This is moral equivalence by another name. The ponderous parallels between the two worlds is fake and feels forced.
In this interview, after season 3, Simon talks about the inner city, about American life — and on the DVD commentary managed to pull in Melville.
Simon may have convinced himself that these large issues are a conceptual underpinning to his show, but in reality The Wire hasn't thus far even come close to that depth or suggestiveness. Simon even managed to mention Iraq. Maybe as the series plays out it will pay the bill — his grand literary ambition fulfilled. At present The Wire is a better than average TV show.
At one point Simon, speaking of an actress who plays a performer in a strip club, said, “She graduated Harvard. So much for audience expectations.” But Simon himself has some expectations about the audience in that assertion — some of his own stereotypes.