COMM 380:  Media Criticism

Introduction

The HBO original drama series The Wire has had a popularity and acclaim well beyond its relatively short life span of five years. Depicting life in Baltimore’s African American communities, the show has drawn a level of attention that may eclipse all other TV dramas of the general genre it represents. The show has elicited college courses throughout the United States including three at Harvard University – none of the three courses are in the media or arts departments, but instead they were in the sociology, anthropology and political science departments. In the words of one observer of the series’ acclaim “Academics… can't seem to get enough of The Wire” (Bennett, 2010). Indeed, the author of this review raised the specter of academic conferences (The Black Humanities Collective, 2010), essay anthologies (Marshall, et al, 2009), and special issues of journals dedicated to the series (Dark Matter Journal, 2014).

 

This analyst maintains that the underlying purport of the attention remains the system-old adage that it sells. In beginning with this observation, this analyst is supported by the textbook, Mass Communication when it asserts that “…the news and entertainment business is… dominated by a small number of highly profitable big businesses” (Hanson, p69). Monopoly capitalism is the economic system in which HBO thrives, being part of this top elite of businesses in the media. Further, the series sells because it romanticizes and inaccurately portrays African Americans in Baltimore as if the majority are engaged in drugs and crime, it exoticizes the criminals, and it backhandedly “others” African Americans even to themselves. In engaging these simultaneous projects, the series at once directly makes money for HBO, but it more importantly extends and expands upon the ideology which justifies inequality, social classes (Taylor, 2009). It is the thesis of this study that The Wire uses false images of class in Baltimore’s African American community to scapegoat the victims of a social system which is based on drastic inequality.

 

Method of Analysis

In the approach to analysis of The Wire utilized in this essay, this analyst relies heaving on the observations of the textbook (Mass Communication) regarding political and economic power related to the messages in TV dramas like The Wire. “In the United States, the majority of media outlets are owned by a small number of giant multinational conglomerates and new media companies: Disney, News Corporation, Time Warner, Viacom/CBS, Bertelsmann, Comcast/NBCUniversal, and Google” (p35).  HBO is a subsidiary of Time Warner, and as such is a member organization of this tiny monopolistic group. Hanson quotes Ben Bagdikian, one of the foremost critics of monopolistic media control (1987), to the effect that the real fear of media control today need not be of a governmental boogey-man, but of “a new Private Ministry of Information and Culture” (Bagdikian) that monopolistic media corporations use to determine what we think -“control over what we will see, hear, or read” (Hanson, p35).

 

Influence

In its introductory remarks to their conference, the conference conveners of “Heart of the city: Black urban life on The Wire,” a gathering of academicians devoted to analyzing the social purport of the series, offer that the “Critically acclaimed and nationally syndicated, HBO’s series The Wire depicts a racialized postindustrial cityscape, marred by the brutal provenance of the drug economy. In its five seasons, the series is as much a dramatic achievement as it is a complex portrait of a black urban experience. Featuring a predominantly black cast, The Wire is an exceptional cultural text from which to examine a wide range of urban issues, to be approached from literary, historical, political, and sociological perspectives.” This depiction is typical of the approaches to analysis of the series, and its ambivalence and ultra-broadness exposes a class element among African Americans in which Black “scholars” can entertain abstract discussions about “gritty” subjects and end up saying very little.

Anne-Maria Makhulu, an African American social anthropologist teaching at Duke University has a similarly grandiose approach to analysis: “She finds that, for many of her largely upper-middle-class students, issues like poverty and urban deindustrialization are remote from their daily lives, and simply reading about them does little to bridge that gap. The Wire puts faces and stories to those forces…” (Bennett, 2010).

 

Negative Influence

Indeed, Makhulu describes some of the leading characters in the series in the following terms: “Stringer Bell, the gang leader with the heart of a CFO; Bubbles, the wry, entrepreneurial junkie; ‘Bunny’ Colvin, the police major who grows so disenchanted by the war on drugs that he tries legalizing them in his district” (in Bennett, 2010). This analyst will argue that the “snapshot” which the series takes of Baltimore’s African America has the majority of the people as drug dealers, prostitutes, gang bangers, drug addicts and otherwise criminals. A minority are in law enforcement, some corrupt, others caring, others are political/governmental operatives, a fewer still are gainfully entrepreneurs and businessmen.

 

The African American working class is missing. The working class, in Baltimore, and all over the United States, is by far the largest class in the African American community. People who work for a living, who work for others, in others words, they are not owners of capital, but are subject to the power of capital – this is the large majority: Bus drivers, dish washers, janitors, handymen, carpenters, teachers, nurses, waiters, construction workers, cashiers, warehouse handlers, clerks, office managers, secretaries, electricians, humans services employees, textile workers, laundry workers, counselors, writers, journalists, coaches, professional athletes, actors, office personnel, garbage handlers, fast food employees – this is the majority of African Americans in Baltimore. An opponent of this viewpoint could easily say: “But that is not who the show is about…” It is the argument here presented that the slickness of the propaganda that is this show is that it portrays its section of the population as if it is the norm, as if they represent the norm, as if they represent the majority, the average, the mean population. Even in the context of the very high unemployment rate in Baltimore, the large majority of Black Americans work in legal jobs to support their families. This series would have the observer believe that the majority is criminals.

 

One standing image is the Black American man being shot in the head at point blank range. Every episode of The Wire that this analyst has seen has had at least one African American man shot in the head. This kind of portrayal drummed into our heads at once desensitizes us to the commonness of Black male untimely death, and at the same time justifies the marginalized standing of African Americans, as a people on the edge of the social system.

The African American working class is missing, and in its absence the non-English speaking, very “creative” criminals, who speak in a lingo that is semi-intelligible are “exciting” and “exotic…” to a public who enjoys watching them on television, but wouldn’t want to get anywhere near these type of people in real life. Indeed, as one analyst observed in this same direction, “I have been watching the first season of The Wire and all I can say is that this show is too bleak, dark and not realistic. All this show does is tells about the failures and downtrodden state of Baltimore. Baltimore is a proud city and has made a lot of progress that is not even mentioned in the show” (Bengal, 2008).

 

Personal Testimony

This analyst offers the following personal testimony not as an attempted scientific sample (it is not), but for the tactile evidence of the negative influence of this show on the psyche of everyday people. This analyst has two African American friends who live in Baltimore. They do not know each other. In response to my incredulity at the content of this show, each told me, “Most of that is really happening….” When I suggested that the African American working class is missing, one of my friends, who is a clerk in a hotel, said, “Hmmmm, you have a point there,” and the other, who is an office manager in the health and safety department of a local college, maintained that the two sections of the population live separately. When challenged by this analyst to the effect that (1) the show portrays “the ‘hood” as being inclusive, as if “this is Baltimore’s African America”; and (2) that “You live in a ‘hood yourself, in Baltimore’s African America. Is it a majority criminals?” At this presentation of the issue, my friend readily admitted that it is not.

 

I have two White friends who religiously watched the show together every week when it was airing. They both told me that they find the characters so “interesting,” and that they never really get to be so “up close” to “this kind of people…” When I suggested that they found these characters “exotic,” when in fact they are very poor and oppressed criminals on the edge of existence, they both shrugged and said, “Yeah, but the show is fun to watch…”

 

Conclusion

This analyst found even the African American “scholars,” who blew wind in grandiose sociological flurries, to be cashing in their paychecks in this one. Conversely, this analyst found the study conducted by Taylor, “The Wire: Investigating the use of a Neoliberal Institutional Apparatus,” to be the most on point in a sea of academic hullaballoo.  Taylor speaks to the political economy of HBO of disseminating to vast audiences these images. She explains that HBO presents the project of making money off of these images as self-generating and morally good: “Once economics is understood as primarily a technical realm [the production of series like The Wire], the trickle-upward effects of neoliberal policies can be framed as due to performance rather than design, reflecting the greater merit of those reaping larger rewards” (Taylor).

 

Taylor is saying that this business activity of producing such products as The Wire is self-serving: At once augmenting capital directly through the sale of the show; and at the same time augmenting the atmosphere, the consciousness, the perspective that inequality is merely human nature, that social classes are “natural,” that some sections of humanity belong in abject poverty because they lack morality, or the ability to speak standard English. These characters in The Wire, the large majority, lack any kind of morality or ability to function as “normal humans.” In this project the morality of capitalism is hidden behind the curtain.

 

References

Bagdikian, Ben. (1987). The Media Monopoly. Boston: Beacon Press.

 

Bengals. (2008). "‘The Wire’ is horrible and reinforces stereotypes.” The Wire Forums. http://www.tv.com/shows/the-wire/forums/the-wire-is-horrible-and-reinforces-stereotypes-5252-3363012/

 

Bennett, Drake.(2010). “This Will Be on the Midterm. You Feel Me? 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

 

Black Humanities Collective. (2009). “Heart of the city: Black urban life on The Wire.” Center for Afroamerican and African Studies. University of Michigan.  http://sitemaker.umich.edu/heart_of_the_city/heart_of_the_city

 

Dark Matter Journal (2014). Dark Matter in the ruins of imperial culture. http://www.darkmatter101.org/site/category/journal/issues/4-the-wire/

 

Hanson, Ralph. (2014). Mass communication: Living in a media world. SAGE.

 

Marshall, C. and Tiffany Porter. (2009). The Wire: Urban Decay and American Television Bloomsbury Academic.

 

Kennedy, Liam and Stephen Shapiro. (2012). The Wire: Race, class, and genre.

University of Michigan Press

 

Taylor, Sara. (2009). “The Wire: Investigating the use of a Neoliberal Institutional Apparatus and a ‘New Humanist’ Philosophical Apparatus.” Dark Matter in the Ruins of Imperial Culture. http://www.darkmatter101.org/site/2009/05/29/the-wire-investigating-the-use-of-a-neoliberal-institutional-apparatus-and-a-new-humanist-philosophical-apparatus/

Wilson, William Julius and Chaddha Anmol. (2010). “Why we're teaching 'The Wire' at Harvard”. The Washington Post

 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-        dyn/content/article/2010/09/10/AR2010091002676.html