I'm finding that one of the nice things about being in a new relationship is sharing what you're both interested in. This is kind of an outgrowth of that initial feeling out of what stuff you have in common, whether movies, music, books, or any sort of art.
So it is that I find myself rewatching the Wire with my girlfriend. We've taken on an episode at a time, here and there, when we've been spending weekends together (and when we're not off gallivanting around Chicago or Universal Studios), and the early indications are that it's a hit.
This is very important to me: I consider the Wire to be the best show ever made, bar none. Head and shoulders above intermittently brilliant but intermittently infuriating shows like the Sopranos or Breaking Bad, or over shows like Mad Men that I never managed to get into. It's also one of the most important things that opened my political consciousness, and my interest in finding out what's really going on with race in America - words that seem naive when I phrase them that way, but that are meant to express how the show gives me a glimpse of a way of life that I can't begin to comprehend based on my experiences in what amounts to a parallel universe of privilege.
And of course the Wire isn't the definitive word on race, just as it's not the definitive word on the drug war (though it's as close as anything); rather it's a perspective on both that comes through in David Simon's exploration of how we live together, how a city functions (as viewed from its constituent institutions) and how inertia in those same institutions makes it almost impossible to enact lasting improvements in citizens' lives.
These are all super heavy concepts for a show that starts out looking like a police procedural, but they begin to take shape over the following seasons, when it follows different parts of Baltimore and a shifting cast of characters.
(I have to be vague about what's coming, because my girlfriend sometimes reads this blog [hi, sweetie!] and I'm under strict orders not to spoil anything)
Most immediately, it's lovely experiencing the show again, getting to know characters like Bunk, McNulty, Bubbles and Stringer Bell as if I'm seeing them for the first time. It's also fascinating watching them again with the knowledge of what happens to them over the coming years - as well as thinking about the different fortunes of the actors who play these characters. David Simon himself has noted how most of the white actors have gone on to bigger and better things, while many (though by no means all) of the black actors remain character actors. Though I was excited to see Michael B Jordan's name in the credits, given his surge in popularity recently on the back of roles like Apollo Creed and Killmonger.
It's also interesting to watch the show without the echo chamber of all my friends in London who were watching it just before me or at the same time. I don't know what it was like here in the US, but in London it was An Event. Not only was my workplace buzzing with talk of Omar, Avon Barksdale and Clay Davis ("sheeeeeeeee-it"), but it was all over the papers and the culture generally. The phenomenon was even mentioned in NW, Zadie Smith's 2012 novel about an intertwined group of Londoners.
Now I'm watching it more than ten years since its end, and since the end of the cultural moment it lived in. Especially this first season, where interactions with federal employees are peppered with mentions of the War on Terror, but the whole show (as I remember it) refers to concerns that are so different from the world we live in now. That's partly because in the interim we elected our first black president, and right after him our first white one.
But the technology is also miles away from the smartphones and social media we use now, and the gender, sexual and racial politics are definitely seen in a different way than now, in our post-Ferguson, Me Too and post-DOMA culture.
As I said, my girlfriend seems to be enjoying it - beyond the well-drawn characters and the relevant questions of race and class, her work background is very similar to the milieu in the show, so it's full of things she recognizes. And she likes to quote some (particularly foul-mouthed) exchanges back to me when telling stories about work, which is also fun.
I'd been thinking idly of re-watching the show anyway, but now that I've gotten together with her it's made it easier to justify it to myself. I'm hoping that once we wrap up the Wire, we'll be able to take on my other Top 3, namely the West Wing and Justified.
No comments:
Post a Comment