Is ‘The Wire’ Our Best Ethnographic Text on the U.S. Today?
Who needs real life? My boyfriend and I have been working our way through the first four seasons of the U.S. television show The Wire, and I have concluded that it may be the best ethnography we have of contemporary American society. Who needs ‘real life’ when fiction, a TV show no less, does a better job of representing US culture(s) than many social science texts? Ostensibly a cop show about drugs and crime in Baltimore, the show illustrates in (sometimes puzzling) detail the culture of urban life: the language the show uses, from drug slang to white Baltimore dialect (see also Hairspray), alone is worthy of note. Exhibiting exquisite sensitivity to local culture, the show also makes an ‘argument’ about how structural inequality is reproduced. The most amazing thing about it is that it dares to be about poor people and poverty – topics which, John Edwards notwithstanding, seem to be verboten in American public culture. Class consciousness vanished from US TV sets sometime around the period when Roseanne was canceled. But The Wire shows the effects of the post-industrial transformation of the US economy in minute detail by finding connections between corner drug dealers, police officers concerned to produce promising crime stats, politicians hungry for acclaim, dock workers just trying to make it, developers moving into abandoned urban zones, and so on. In fact, I think the show is so good that one could structure a course around it. You could augment episodes with social science in a really captivating way. Potential texts/authors could include: David Harvey (naturally) on urban spaces, Carol Stack on kinship, Phillippe Bourgeois on drug dealing and masculinity, Douglas Foley on reproduction of class relations in education systems, Hortense Powdermaker on race and history, and so on. Any ideas out there on other texts that could be paired with The Wire?
The Wire in part draws its dramatic and ethnographic force from the fact that some of its most captivating characters are played by people performing versions of themselves. Here is an interview snippet with Felicia ‘Snoop’ Pearson, who plays a character named after herself:
How about Sudhir Venkatesh’ “Off the Books: Underground Economy of the Urban Poor”? He’s running a series of discussions of The Wire with real-life drug dealers over at Freakonomics too.
Damn. I was going to write this post!
There are scenes in season 1 and season 4 where kids from the corner go to eat at a restaurant which are great for teaching Bourdieu’s notion of “symbolic violence.”
“Off the Books” is so incredibly good.
Here is a recent account from The Atlantic, which addresses the question of reality and fiction in The Wire, though from a different perspective than that of ethnographic reality:
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200801/bowden-wire
Hey Biella, Thanks for that link.
There is of course tons of writing about The Wire on the web. I am avoiding some of it because I don’t have access to the new season out here in Europe.
I thought initially that I would frame this post as “The Wire: Sociology or Anthropology?” One thing I didn’t like about the Hamsterdam storyline was that there was something ’sociology-ish’ about it to me, but I can’t quite put my finger on what it was. I suppose, it was the sense of a ‘controlled experiment’: some notion of dependent and independent variables; take away the drug ban and crime drops. I also thought the mise en scene of the Hamsterdam setting felt hokey and stagey, compared to the much more ‘natural’ seeming plot lines and settings of the rest of the show.
Dammit, I’m going to have to watch this show after all. Just what I needed before the dissertation’s done.
First off, great column.
I agree that as an ethnographic piece, The Wire is very effective. I can only hope that there can be further collaboration between ethnographers and the film industry, as it is by far the greatest medium to deliver a message. It is a shame reading dry yet insightful texts that, while they might decorate an academic’s bookshelf quite nicely, they won’t influence the general population (which, in my opinion is the primary focus of any SOCIAL science).
There are so many people out there that are intrigued by sociological and anthropological research, but (if they are aware of such research at all) are prohibitively intimidated by a jargon-laden ethnography. Unfortunately, they would much rather turn on the TV and be entertained
I think that the hesitation to embrace film ethnographies as the final product (where the text ethnography would be the analogous to the script) is due to control. The written word is much more accurate tool for an ethnographer to depict exactly what they think.
Since (in my opinion) change is the goal of ethnographies, I think it prudent to forgo a little control in order to capture the attention of a large audience long enough to convey the key points of an ethnography. “An ethnography should be a lie that tells the truth” (a play on picasso’s quote, wish i remember who said it to me)
Just my 2c, so I’ll stop now before this rambling gets even worse.
Chinese TV is *in some ways* a lot closer to “real life” than American TV, insofar as a significant portion of the shows that depict the present or recent history depicts houses, jobs and lives like the ones that most people actually live/d in. As a result, many Chinese people who have never been abroad take american movies and television as more-or-less accurate representations of american life, which has a big impact on how they see the US (i.e, the view that all americans live in giant beautiful three story suburban houses).
The only depictions of american poverty or lower-middle class life that are widely seen here are the scenes of “bad” (i.e. black) neighborhoods in action/cop movies, etc., which gives many people the impression that in the US only black people are poor, contributing to widespread low opinions of black americans (despite the enduring enthusiasm for hip-hop and “urban” styles).
Right now in China, there are a lot of Roseanne-style sitcoms about contemporary life in rural towns and small cities (“desakotas”) airing a lot of depictions of poverty and class, and even class conflict (usually in the form of confrontations between city people and country people). Some of them are cheesy–like “Happy Plowing the Fields, A Story”, where the supposed farmers speak perfectly standard mandarin (with the highly forced exception of using “an” instead of “wo” for the first-person pronoun, a marker for “dialect speech”). But some of them are really interesting, including “Northeastern People in and out of the City” and “Village Love” both of which are filmed in more or less authentic Dongbei (northeastern) dialect. FYI
I am obsessed with The Wire and have fantasized about incorporating it into an urban anthropology syllabus ever since I started watching it. That said, I have to say that much as I hate to utter anything negative about the show, it does have a gender problem. Friends and fellow Wire aficionados have pointed out to me that it contains almost no well-developed female characters, and I have to agree. Interestingly, a lot of the urban anthropology literature (with some important exceptions) has the same problem.
No way! Kima is actually one of the most interesting women characters on TV. I also think the storylines involving
RihannaBrianna are really interesting — and intersect with questions about kinship as obligation.I wanted to write this post too. obviously we are dealing with zeitgeist here. I’m not so impressed with the show, though I think it would be the greatest tv show since sliced primetime if only everyone would stop saying that it is so great.
here is a book to teach alongside the show, though, for everyone who wants to syllabusify The Wire.
I’m going to get ckelty one of these t-shirts.
yes to the question, I just caught up on the show-
in seasons 1 and 3 they did take some time with Brianna, but since then, there has been some problems.
In season 4, this problem was the most glaring, as mothers of the children seemed to be caricatures, (namond’s mother) or a bit one-dimensional (Mike’s mother, altho there was some time with her as well.) because the season was about the schools, it seemed to reproduce a lot of the tropes in films like ‘dangerous minds’ but still, we know this show was much better thought out than those films.
I’m wondering if people have seen ‘the corner’ another simon/burns collabo that focuses specifically on the junkie family.
I haven’t seen “The Wire” — so this question may be way off base, but I have to ask this: does “The Wire” seem to be great “ethnography” because it deals with the sorts (marginalized) people who are traditionally the objects of anthropology?
I think it has more to do with the care it takes to develop its characters, and also of different subsections of baltimore. (i.e. the police and the narcotics industry.) there is also a level of breadth and depth that is allowed by telling a story over a 12-13 hour season as opposed to 2 hour movie. the story was created/written mainly by former police journalist and police detective, so the police are still at the center of the show, and idk if they would be seen as ‘marginalized’ necessarily.
I agree, The Wire is a beautifully nuanced take on working class/shadow class life in a deteriorated urban setting. I think a lot of its force comes from the sense viewers get of it being in the voice of the people it’s about — little or no sermonizing, taking the POV of the characters.
A great predecessor to this was “The Corner.” This, too, was set in Baltimore and might work better for an urban anthro class because (1) it’s shorter! and (2) a number of the actors were the people who had been in the situations presented. Although I live in an big urban center, teach at a minority/urban/working class school, and have a wide network of acquaintances across class and ethnic lines in Chicago, I found “The Corner” opened up layers of people’s lives in profound ways for me. I remember going into the local mom & pop liquor store where a woman who seemed much the worse for wear for drugs/alcohol panhandled me and all of a sudden I ’saw’ her as a young woman, a mother, a person who managed her day to day life on her own (culturally-constructed) terms — this because of the way lives of such women had been shown in “The Corner” had opened up the possibilities of that vision. I love art that shifts my view.
I’ll agree with Young here and suggest that Comet Jo actually watch the program to determine for herself whether or not her question is off base.
Regarding johanna’s comment, I have to agree that The Wire does have a gender problem. I would probably call it something more like a gender omission than a gender problem. I just had to bring it up because I’ve been waiting for someone else to notice this issue as I’ve read through the many discussions of how great The Wire is. In the seasons that I’ve seen (1-3), I don’t remember a single woman who can’t be thought of as an accessory or interloper in male space (certainly, not any of the major characters). That said, I still love the show.
Um, why is everyone ignoring Kima??
I don’t think the issue is a lack of strong female characters – there are plenty of those, and not just Kima either. (Sidenote: I love the parallelism of the two scenes in the first season where Kima is asked by a cop when she first knew she was a lesbian, and when she is asked by her lesbian friends when she first knew she wanted to be a cop. Its great because the second scene is much more uncomfortable.) However, there is a problem when you look at the series from the perspective of narrative theory. Very rarely do the actions of any of the female characters serve to drive the plot forward in any important way. And several strong female characters become less important for the plot once they become romantically involved with one of the main male characters. This is all true – but its also true of everything else on TV and in the movie theaters. For instance, Trinity in The Matrix is a strong character, and she is instrumental in moving the story forward during the first act. However, once she becomes Neo’s romantic interest her role stops having any real agency.
Strong, I was just about to ask the same question. Kima is clearly a central figure in the series, and a driving character. I think she is pretty richly developed, and obviously central to every episode. Her relationship with Bubbles is fascinating. Rhonda Perlman (the ADA)? Also what about Snoop? Briana is a major player in the Barksdale operation, even if she’s not shooting, dealing, or making investments. Also what about all the women in politics? I am also taken by the roles of various mothers and, above all, Omar Little’s grandmother, and her “crown,” which accomplish much in the plot in Season 3. What about the young policewoman who works at the docks in Season 2, she’s pretty rich (as well developed as the docworkers, in my view). However, when I look for her name on the wikipedia summaries I see no mention of her……hmm, maybe the representation issue is not so much in the show as in discussion about the show?
That said, I am a little confused by this critique about women in the show, maybe people could explain a little more where they see a weakness in the role of female characters in the series.
**Gretchen**: Also, can’t the lack of important female roles be explain by the fact the show mainly deals with male-dominated professions? Drug dealing, law enforcement, politics, and working on the docks are all very male-dominated professions.
Education is the only profession they focus on that isn’t male dominated and the focus of the 4th season was on the kids and their relation to the education system, not necessarily the teachers in the schools.
Yes, the mothers’ roles in season 4 wasn’t very nuanced but they played very minor roles and Michael’s mother was the only role that seemed like it __could__ be expanded.
Kima’s role is fairly important, Snoop also is important, and both do not fit the stereotypical role for women. Rhonda Pearlman’s character isn’t too bad. We’ll see how Alma Gutierrez’s character develops when season 5 (and the show) ends.
Briana and D’Angelo’s child’s mother (can’t find her name on Google, again the phenomenon I mention above), are clearly important actors in the series of events leading to the major event at the end of Season 3. Not carrying the guns doesn’t make them non-agents does it? Clearly, we don’t want to make judgments about gender using an idea of agency that excludes forms of social action like the management of information and the application of moral pressure. Do we?
I think a lot of the female characters in the program are very rich, even the very small parts seem well researched, and not a sort of reproduction of normal TV female roles. Think of the women who work in Omar Little’s stick-up crew, and, again the various mothers, grandmothers, and community members we see in Seasons 1-3 (that’s as far as I’ve gotten, it’s hard to get the disks here in Dakar).
On a less gender-y note, what I like most about The Wire is the way the series represents the complicated ways in which events happen. Individual people are agents in the story, for sure, but, more excitingly, we see how the structure of law enforcement as a set of institutions, or the material kinds of telephone technology available (public phones, cellphones, removable SIM cards, disposable phones), technologies of circulation (e.g. shipping containers and software for managing their complex movements on the docks), and, most compellingly, the requirements of evidence (as a material and processural entity), ALL also shape the unfolding of events. What I find most compelling, and most ethnographic, if you will, about the Wire, is the role of these kinds of artifacts and processes as major elements of the plot. That is, social facts, not just characters, are highlighted in their seeming agency. Which is VERY COOL. When Tom called the Wire an ethnographic text, this is the first way I understood his statement.
“Briana is a major player in the Barksdale operation, even if she’s not shooting, dealing, or making investments,” writes Gretchen. I see this as a problem for Kerim’s account of the role women characters play in driving the plot forward. Briana’s persuasiveness or hold on D’Angelo in season 2 is the whole reason Season 3 even happens, if I remember correctly. Moreover, Briana’s judgment of Avon/Stringer in the context of D’Angelo’s ultimate fate frames the whole Avon/Stringer denoument. So her screen time is may not ‘equal’ that of the guys, but she is clearly central.
Kima/Bubbles is one of my favorite relationships in the show. Bubbles is by far my favorite character: to me he is the everyman of the show; maybe it’s just me and my own self-perception, or perhaps it is the perpetual feeling of vulnerability engendered by my continuing failure to secure permanent academic employment, but I often think when I see Bubbles: there but for the grace of God…
On the gender theme, I would also add that men have gender too, and one of the interesting things the show does is to explore ‘genres’ of masculinity in the contemporary US and how gender structures certain dynamics that actually can be really damaging to people. Moreover, Omar is like a revolution in the representation of gay men on TV or film in the US. He is really unprecedented (and he has good taste in boyfriends).
OK and to mix Gretchen’s observation about the importance of technologies of communication and surveillance, and the requirements of evidence, with the question about gender and female agency, note that the KEY person adjudicating this (evidence, permisability, etc) in many instances, in a practical way, is _Rhonda Pearlman_, who is romantically linked with the guys, but does not therefore cease to drive major plot developments. (I liked her better with shorter hair though.)
Strong: True for the earlier seasons. Seems less true this season – at least so far.
Friends,
I have been a huge fan of The Wire for years.
Readings: Erich Auerbach, Mimesis. Kenneth Burke, A Grammar of Motives.
Paul
I think that a strong argument can be made that The Wire has a female gender problem, maybe not in comparison to certain reality shows but a problem nonetheless. What makes this problem frustrating is that the show does such a good job of covering race and class that the social stratification trifecta of race, class and gender seems so unattainable. Are the lives of woman covered well enough to use “The Wire” as an ethnography? For a show as broad in scope as this one, we have only a few women to choose from and mainly understand them as they relate to the men. Yes, men have gender but so do women. It’s the gender of the woman that needs some fleshing out.
The first thing I notice is that there are so many overwhelmingly masculine settings and virtually no corresponding feminine ones. Yes, it is a show about drug crime and the police so it can be expected to focus on masculine spheres, but over the seasons the show has proven its ability to move into new territory along the axis of race and class. We’ve seen the insides of labor unions, the prison system, the legal system, and the government and they look like very masculine spaces. Is a choice being made conscious or otherwise to avoid feminine spaces/perspectives? The show moves so naturally from street drug organizations into the world of politics yet it hasn’t looked into the world of prostitution. The only female sphere explored by the show is the school system and the lack of female protagonists here speaks volumes. Despite the fact that inner city schools are populated almost exclusively by female teachers and a disproportionate number of female students, we see the institution through the eyes of Prez, Bunny, and the male school children. The show is otherwise so good and adding new characters it seems natural that a female teacher or student might get included in our list of main characters. Other chances to develop the woman characters and follow them into their worlds are passed by. For example, I was hoping that the show would follow the female officer Beadie home after season 2 or maybe the stripper, Shardene, after season 1. Ironically, the show ends up getting back to Beadie only in form of McNulty’s affection at the end of season 3.
Second, we have to examine the characters and the narrative. As a whole, if you looked at the ratio of screen time for men and women in the show, I would be surprised if women appeared on screen more than one fifth as much as men. A list of characters would probably show an even worse discrepancy. Kima is certainly a strong woman character and helps to make the argument for a feminist/gender consciousness in “The Wire.” But, she is one of few strong women in an enormous cast of strong and interesting characters. Other than interpreting her as an alternative to the masculine perspective, I think of her more as the exceptional interloper – a woman who’s more of a man than the men and can therefore be free to move through male space. Also, Kima ability to move the plot forward is limited; Despite other similarities, she’s no McNulty. For example, in season 1, her major plot contribution is that she gets shot. The woman as a sympathetic victim of violence should be a familiar theme to fellow tv viewers. It comes up again in the role of the murdered prostitutes in season 2 and the death of one of Omar’s girls during a heist.
Rhonda is even more limited than Kima. As a character, I think that she’s interesting but her role is limited to legal gatekeeper or girlfriend (first McNulty then Daniels). I really enjoyed the perspective of Officer Beadie in season 2 until she’s put out to pasture as McNulty’s girlfriend. Was it difficult to keep interest in these characters when they weren’t hooked up with one of the main characters?
Ok. I have to stop. This is really getting too long. In summation, women have a small role to play in the big story that is “The Wire”. In reality, I would say that their space is much bigger. Is it too late to say I love the show?
Victor writes: “Are the lives of woman covered well enough to use “The Wire” as an ethnography?” I argue that what makes the show ethnographic is not ‘coverage’. It is rather how it weds a finely observed account of certain social processes and institutions, above all professions (such as ‘being police’ or drug-dealing), to a kind of argument about the reproduction of key structural features of US social life, including race & class, but also government and so on. It does this by examining certain professional settings (mostly law enforcement), and yes, these happen to be inhabited mostly by men. Yet, as has been shown in comments already, despite the ostensible masculine ‘coding’ of these domains, the Wire actually shows how gender relations, both ‘cross-sex’ and ’same-sex’ so to speak, are constitutive of the salient forces governing the unfolding of events and the reproduction of relations. This requires thinking about and examining, and I think Gretchen is right on when she suggests that the gender problem with the show may not be with the show itself, but rather with discussions of it.
Writes Victor, “Second, we have to examine the characters and the narrative. As a whole, if you looked at the ratio of screen time for men and women in the show, I would be surprised if women appeared on screen more than one fifth as much as men. A list of characters would probably show an even worse discrepancy.” Yet Victor’s model of ‘examination’ is: counting. There is no analysis of the actual role that women play in the unfolding of plot. Rather there is some idea that if we see male domains, in order for there not to be a gender problem, we need equally to see female domains. This model of the analysis of ‘importance’ is rather weak. It reminds me of a time my advisor made fun of someone for analyzing speeches at ceremonial exchanges in PNG by simply tallying up the number of minutes people spoke.
So note again that Brianna is erased in Victor’s analysis of the female gender problem. I would argue that the *key* scene, the scene of most dramatic effect and most palpable tension in the *entire series*, is when Brianna is fixing the hair of the mother of her grandchild, and in a conversation it is revealed that her son may have been a victim of a profound violation of the morality of the ‘game.’ This is a scene with two women doing hair. It isn’t very long. But it alone ties certain actions by McNulty in a consequential way into the fate of the Barksdale empire.
Of course, one way to see the women on the show as ‘limited’ is to limit them. Thus, Victor apparently doesn’t think that Kima is really a woman. This would come as a surprise to Bunk, who seems to have a singularly indulgent appreciation of Kima’s womanly charms. I mean, Kima is tough, and a little butch, but she isn’t all that butch (cf. Snoop). Similarly, Rhonda is a great character and I don’t know what more Victor would like to see of her.
I can see that Victor loves the show. I just actually think that the show is rather inventive in terms of questions of gender and sexuality. I think this thread of discussion on gender nicely gets us into what the specific ‘ethnographic’ strengths (or weaknesses) of the program might be.
Small archival research accomplished: D’s partner, the mother of Brianna’s grandchild, is named Donette!
But seriously, though we see little of Donette, her presence is very important. McNulty goes to her with the information, she takes it to Stringer, and then, in the hairstyling scene, she takes the information to Briana (without, I think, knowing its true significance).
I agree with Strong, the hair styling scene is pivotal in Season 3, if not in the whole Barksdale story-arc. Also, I think it’s very nicely done in another way: they act out that cliche of inconsequential female sociality “braiding each other’s hair,” but to much different effect. In this “behind the scenes,” classic–almost hackneyed–scene of female (and especailly black female) sociality we see a striking moral order. Donette is asking the mother of her deceased partner for permission to get together with Stringer (she then, not knowing the significance of what she says, I think, drops a bomb). The sequence of events after this encounter lead me to seriously wonder who controls the Barksdale operation. While a feud takes place in center stage front between Avon and Stringer, something else is going on behind this action.
Further: in Season 1 Kima does get shot, but the effects of her injury are interesting. First, it changes the dynamic with her partner (also an interesting story arc), and second, Kima’s sudden absence has negative effects on Bubbles. These two arcs which intersect in the moment she is injured should suggest to us that more is going on with Kima’s bullet wound than the classic “female victim.”
Is “The Wire” an ethnography? Well, is _Pride and Prejudice_ an ethnography? Of course not. However, there is a carefully researched presentation of a milieu in both works of fiction, and a very subtle attention to the way certain kinds of instituted social practice, specific to that milieu (technologies of surveillance, methods of police investigation, gossip, the circulation of carriages and the movement of dancers in a ballroom), interlock with longer-duree aspects of the social milieu (city bureaucratic structures, class and inheritance of land), and the ways that these social objects, represented in rcih detail, structure (or shape, or whatever you want to say), outcomes and events.
Why is it lit like a local market used car ad? Key grips too expensive in Baltimore?
I recently read an argument in class that went along the lines “social scientists are failed writers”. I don’t agree with the argument, but I also don’t see the need to hoard the label “ethnography” either. Its definitely ethnographic, the only difference is the Wire is also meant to be dramatic, direct, attached and interesting.
[and by being forced to be dramatic and interesting, its going to sensationalize way too much to be ethnographic]
I really enjoyed this post and the subsequent commentary. I’ve also thought of using the Wire as a text for class, and this gives me some great ideas for how it could be done. I also feel that there are a number of strong female characters on the show, and if anything, their lack of screen time does say more about the fact that these are male-dominated professions. We haven’t yet mentioned Theresa D’Agostino, Carcetti’s campaign manager. The class and power dynamics revealed in her relationship with McNulty were interesting.
Without giving anything away to Strong, who doesn’t have Season 5 in Europe yet, I noticed as I watched the next-to-final episode of the Wire tonight that Kima’s actions are driving the entire series toward its conclusion. This seems as if it will put Victor’s assertion to rest that “Kima’s ability to move the plot forward is limited.”
And here I thought that I’d found the one corner of the web that agreed with me ;). I appreciate the criticism of my early argument. I haven’t really thought through gender in “The Wire” yet. I just had this feeling.
Please, don’t give away anything on Season 5 yet. Haven’t watched it yet but I’m glad to hear that it may correct some of the gender problems in the earlier narrative.
I really should continue my argument by separating my critiques of the “The Wire” as an “ethnographic text” from critiques of it as a work fiction even though this division may be somewhat artificial.
As an ethnographic text, I would first ask who the population being studied is since the show itself doesn’t say. If the population is urban males in Baltimore, then I have no quarrels with the show in terms of gender. “The Wire” does nothing that I would deem inaccurate or misleading with regard to its female characters. But, It doesn’t do a good job representing them and thus should not be thought of as covering a more complete urban experience. If we break down gender relations,
1. Male-Male: Relations between and among the social aspects of masculinity (males, male dominated spaces, masculine coding systems etc).
2. Male-Female: Relations between and among the social aspects of masculinity and femininity (as above).
3. Female-Female: as above.
Then, how well does the show explore the salient features of these types of relations in all their complexity and variety (a far different question from how accurately)? I would say that in the show the discussion and analysis of the complexity/variety of male-male relations is outstanding, of male-female is good and female-female is poor. Again, poor in the sense of being insufficient not inaccurate. If the subject of the study was the male gender within society, this is exactly the kind of breakdown that one would expect. To study males, one needs lots of research on male-male interaction, solid research on male-female interaction and accurate research on female-female interaction in those places where relevant to understanding male-female interactions. This pattern of apportionment is similar to early ethnographies (possibly johanna’s comment earlier gets to this).
It would take a good deal of space for me to go through how I think that coverage of female-female relations is marginal. I would like to note though, that most of what “The Wire” shows about Kima (I understand Kima as a woman despite my lack of clarity earlier) and Rhonda would fall under the male-female heading as they interact mainly with the men around them and with the male dominated institutions in which they spend most of their time.
Further, counting becomes important when we ask whether there is sufficient variety in the female-female interactions and we aren’t forced to bring in outside texts/knowledge or to generalize the interactions and pick a few women as representing universal womanhood. I went to the cast and crew page for “The Wire” over at HBO this afternoon and counted 74 males and 9 females as major characters. Under the heading “School”, the number is 8 males and 1 female. Yes, it is an over simplified form of examination but that is quite a discrepancy and should raise some red flags.
If we have to bring in outside sources/information/theory in order to understand female-female relations but can construct good theories of on male-male and male-female relations using the text alone, there is a problem.
To refer back to my first comment, this whole gender problem is more a problem of omission and emphasis than it is of inaccuracy. Yet, marginalization can be achieved through selective omission and selective emphasis. I would be interested to hear from Johanna and young if this is the kind of thing that they were thinking about when they made their comments. Or, am I in my own world over here (likely).
Sadly, to me, most of what you all are talking about here is WAY over my head. But as far as gender representation on The Wire, these are my thoughts:
I believe that male dominated cast of The Wire is mostly a reflection of the world it recreates.
The Police – male dominated
The Game – male dominated
The Ports – male dominated
City Hall – male dominated (though not nearly as much).
The School – female dominated (and I believe mostly depicted as such)
The Media – White male dominated (though similar to the political realm)
The Wire does not glorify it’s subject matter so, IMHO, I view the ommission of female characters from the majority of these institutions as a good thing. Especially considering how much damage these institutions have done/are doing to our society.
The main characters of the school:
Prezbo: A perfect way to continue/redeem his character after the tragedy of S3. Also, Ed Burns himself taught in the Baltimore City Schools after leaving the Police Department.
Bunny: The perfect character to try the corner kids/stoop kids experiment. Again, a perfect continuation from S3 to S4.
Two male characters who moved from the male dominated Police world into the school system.
As far as why they chose 4 boys to follow. Well, The Wire wanted to show where the likes of Avon, Stringer, maybe Bubbles, maybe Omar, come from. How they are made. Again, the drug game is a male dominated game. It makes sense to follow these boys. It’s not as though female students were completely ignored. There were plenty of female students and they were shown in a wide ranges of abilities and personalities. Crystal – the girl that Mrs. Donally recuits to take clothes to Dukie’s house (“give these only to Duquan”). Xenobia was a great character. Remember the slashing in one of the first days of Prezbo’s class? Remember the girl who urged the rest of the class to quiet down cause Mr. Prezbo was trying to teach? Clearly she happened to be a “stoop kid”.
As far as the school staff goes, it was female dominated, despite what the cast and crew page over at HBO.com tells you. Everyone one of teachers in Prezbo’s team were female. Mrs. Sampson was a very strong character, as was Ms. Duquette. Every administrator who came down from North Ave. was female.
Michael’s mother was a drug addict. Ofcourse he had no father, and his step-father sexually abused him.
Namond’s mother was straight up evil. Ofcourse his father was a sociopath who had commited many a murder and is in jail for life. What made Mrs. Brice the way she was? And look at the contrast between the four kids and how they were raised.
Both of Dukie’s parents were addicts.
But, how about Miss Anna, Randy’s foster mother? Nobody has mentioned here. She was a damn saint.
All in all, I think The Wire does depict mostly a “man’s world”. But damn, it’s a messed up world isn’t it. I think that says a lot more about gender, personally.
Kelly & Victor make great points in both their posts and I thank them to contributing to this thread. I love talking to folks about the program who are giving it a ‘close reading.’ I wonder, continuing the syllabus theme, if someone can recommend readings addressing the ‘gender’ question. I thought Bourgeois on ‘respect’ would be good. But there must be other ideas out there. Thoughts?
Thanks for opportunity to discuss these issues. I love this blog and I am glad to have the chance to contribute something for a change.
Although I’ve only read parts of it, Rouse’s “Engaged Surrender” would be a good choice for some perspective on female gender relations among African Americans.
Kelly – my concern with gender in “The Wire” is not so much about whether or not the women tend to be good or evil, weak or strong but whether they tend to be visible or invisible, essential or marginal. Also, thanks for bring up Xenobia (one of my favorite characters).
Yeah, I figured I was missing your point. Thank you so much for the incredibly interesting reading.
Kelly, I don’t think you missed the point at all, I think you understood it and responded with thoughtful observations about what the series shows in terms of gender and women. Thanks for dropping by.
Tom, I’ve thought of a few works that would be good in a course on The Wire; some of these comment on the gender problem: Micaela di Leonardo’s article “White Lies, Black Myths” (from the Gender/Sexuality reader) would be a good article to put in dialogue with Bourgois. For ethnographies, Promises I can Keep: Why Poor Women Put Motherhood Before Marriage by Kathryn Edin, and No Shame in My Game: The Working Poor in the Inner City by Katherine Newman. Also, not an ethnography but a great piece of journalism: Love, Drugs, Trouble, and Coming of Age in the Bronx by Adrian Nicole LeBlanc.
Kelly, in agreement with Strong, I wouldn’t say that you missed my point but rather responded to the discussion with your own observations. And, your point about portraying women as positive and strong is well taken.
The thugs over at Freakonomics think that the show has some gender issues as well.
(Note that these comments are based on Season 5, I get these sense they haven’t watched earlier seasons. And there were some important roles for women characters in the last two episodes, which they also didn’t see. But still, it seems that there is a lot more the show could have told us about the role of women in these communities …)
I am sure you are right about that Kerim. Alas, I can’t read these discussions because I haven’t seen Season 5 and don’t want to spoil it.
This might be an obvious set of texts, but the work of Elijah Anderson offers a strong complement/contrast to the Wire. See, e.g., the following article in the Atlantic which quotes Anderson as disagreeing somewhat forcefully with Simon et al’s depiction of Bmore:
“I am struck by how dark the show is,” says Elijah Anderson, the Yale sociologist whose classic works Code of the Streets, Streetwise, and A Place on the Corner document black inner-city life with noted clarity and sympathy. Anderson would be the last person to gloss over the severe problems of the urban poor, but in The Wire he sees “a bottom-line cynicism” that is at odds with his own perception of real life. “The show is very good,” he says. “It resonates. It is powerful in its depiction of the codes of the streets, but it is an exaggeration. I get frustrated watching it, because it gives such a powerful appearance of reality, but it always seems to leave something important out. What they have left out are the decent people. Even in the worst drug-infested projects, there are many, many God-fearing, churchgoing, brave people who set themselves against the gangs and the addicts, often with remarkable heroism.”
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200801/bowden-wire/2
Along those lines, I’d like to point out a piece by John Atlas and Peter Dreier in Dissent magazine. It’s a historical account of activism in inner city Baltimore with the aim of giving a more complete picture.
http://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/?article=1104
Thanks for these suggestions!