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From SeeingBlack.com Movies/TV
The release this week of the DVD set for the fifth and final season of “The Wire” closes a chapter on this series that followed the interactions between police, politicians, drug dealers, educators and journalists in Baltimore. Created by David Simon, a White former newspaper reporter who brought us “The Corner” in 2000, “The Wire” displayed a rare insight into—and vision of—Baltimore as a city, and in particular of its impoverished Black neighborhoods. It addressed real-life issues, some seemingly taken from headlines, in a manner that made it fresh and compelling. It also seized upon our fascination for the lore of Black drug dealers—our "Black Godfather" jones—which long-running TV crime shows, such as “Law and Order,” or movies such as last year’s “American Gangster,” have not satisfied. Even if shows about cops and crime are a staple of broadcast and cable TV, the shows usually focus on White law enforcement officials and present crime, criminals and police in a formulaic manner. “The Wire” busted that formula and raised the bar for realistic gangsta fare on the small and big screen, in the same way that its predecessor on HBO, “Oz,” raised the bar for dramas about prison, lest they appear to be fake. There have not been many Black gangsta flicks during the tenure of “The Wire” and one quality movie that I can think of, “Paid in Full,” directed by Charles Stone III (“Drumline”), actually starred Wood Harris, who stars in The Wire” as drug kingpin Avon Barksdale Not only did we love to love and hate Barksdale as outlaw royalty, most of the women I know fell in love with Idris Elba, who played Barksdale’s business-minded partner Stringer Bell. We found ourselves rooting for and dismayed by corner boys like Bodie (J.D. Williams) and Michael (Tristan Wilds), who were smart enough to graduate from somebody’s college but, instead, were literally slinging their life away. As, sadly, the only game in town (meaning the country), “The Wire” actually gave a first-time, on-screen opportunity to scores of Black actors. It is not unusual for those in the Baltimore-Washington area to know somebody (or know somebody who knows somebody) who appeared on “The Wire,” if only for an episode or so until they were shot in the head. Despite such small victories, there was a price we paid for the lovefest with this hyper reality depicted on the small screen. First of all, despite its much hyped “gritty realism,” “The Wire” could also be described as just another production that frames Black people as drug dealers, the kind of Black drug dealers that, according to one news report, China is trying to ban from bars during the Olympic games. Yes, while there were Black and White police officers, politicians and teachers, every criminal was Black, with the exception of some Whites introduced in season 2. Second, in such a depiction of “reality,” there is no space to talk about how things got this way. History is irrelevant. There are only scenes of trash-strewn Black neighborhoods, filled with nasty, smelly alleys, nasty, smelly houses and, in some cases, people who look nasty and smelly too. In these neighborhoods, while there may be one good Black mother, there are more mothers who are either drug addicts or are pushing their sons out on the corner to sell drugs to the addicts. Speaking of Black women, thank God Simon and the rest of his writers do not create the REAL reality for us. We would be one group of unloved, sexless human beings. In five years of “The Wire,” most if not all Black women shown having heterosexual sex are hookers. The highlighted Black romances are homosexual, either between the Black female detective Shakima Greggs (Sonja Sohn) and her partner(s), or between the famous gay thug-stick-up dude named Omar Little (Michael K. Williams) and his assorted light-skinned lovers. Not to hate on anyone’s gay or lesbian love life but since when did that become our total romantic reality? Such shortcomings are a reminder of the power of narrative and voice, and who is given voice to put out their vision of the world, including Black people. Even though Baltimore, as well as every other major American city, has problems with crime and the breakdown of public and private services, a narrative like “The Wire” creates a hyper reality that makes the overall Black community both a wily, animal-like predator and helpless prey. Just as you can forget history in “The Wire,” you can forget any kind of community empowerment. “The Wire” made all its characters human and flawed, and so it had no cookie-cutter heroes. But if I had to choose its hero, it would be the Irish police detective (how cliché!) Jimmy McNulty, who is the most fully developed character and is the continuous thread, from season one through season five. In our hunger for that quality drama with Black cast members, we embraced “The Wire” as a ”Black show” but, for real, I think that is because we were, and remain, so hungry. This review also appeared on Tom Joyner's BlackAmericaWeb.com,/i> You can order Esther Iverem's critically praised We Gotta Have It: Twenty Years of Seeing Black at the Movies, 1986-2006 (Thunder’s Mouth Press, April 2007)at Amazon.com or purchase at your favorite bookstore. It makes a wonderful gift! Thanks! Read and search hundreds of reviews on SeeingBlack.com's Movies/TV channel and archive. Click here to post a comment or your own review. © Copyright by SeeingBlack.com |
