|
 Four
years. Fifty shows. Each year a different theme, a new story line.
Each year the despair grows. Critics consider “The Wire” a remarkable
show. Is it good TV? I wonder. Creatively, HBO’s “The Wire” is nearly
perfect. Yet it is a very cynical show cloaked in false reality that
is really a fragile fantasy about people, the blacks who live there,
the police, black and white who pursue them, and the politicians, also
black and white, all equally trapped on the mean streets of Baltimore.
Fine acting from many previously unheralded actors, sometimes
remarkable scripts that, by the way, create a language of their own,
terrific directing, wonderful photography, and a piercing viewpoint
make this an exceptional series. Take nothing away from the formidable
cast, many of whom do not have extensive acting experience. Credit the
quality directing for getting wonderful performances from all the
actors. They are all believable. In the series, that makes for the
needed verisimilitude. The writing is powerful and filled with the
experience of talented novelists who usually write novels about crime.
I am not sure that the people who inhabit those Baltimore streets
speak as those on the show do. I have no doubt that the writers have
conceived the dialect to make the show unique. At times, I wish they
would use lower third translations so I would better understand what
the characters are saying. That, of course, is impossible and would be
an insult to everyone who contributes to the program.
 However, I have
some qualifications. There is no more depressing show on television
than “The Wire.” Hopelessness is pervasive. Sadness is rampant.
Concern for life is non-existent. Poverty is everywhere. Drugs rule.
Children are major victims. Selfishness abounds. School is a failure.
Education is meaningless. Corruption rules on every level. No one is
immune. Even the supposed incorruptible are looking for ways around a
system that denies anyone the right to honesty. The police and the
politicians are role models for the evil that these characters inflict
on one another.
Some time ago, an editor rejected a manuscript of mine by saying, and
here I paraphrase -- I like what you wrote but I can’t say that I love
it. Not that that should matter to you, but I have to wonder, does
anyone love the show? I don’t, but I won’t stop watching it despite
its many flaws. Though the series has many admirers, what is it
exactly that the critics admire? Do the critics in their pristine
purity believe it is good for the audience to suffer with people
seemingly beyond suffering? Mostly the reviews have an ivory tower
quality to them. It is as if they are saying, by watching this show
you coddled Americans will see how bad life can be for people trapped
in the ghetto. The audience it has seems drawn to it for its
prurience. It repulses. I do not believe anyone can learn anything
from watching. I hope the reader does not think me naïve. I do not
want life sugar-coated.
 Almost no
one in this series is safe from moral, spiritual and physic harm. Call
the show honest. Call it a true depiction of life on the streets. It
is imaginative and disturbing storytelling. Yet, there is nothing
redeeming in the series. It is an unrelenting march toward societal
bedlam and anarchy. Almost everyone has a scam. Almost everyone is on
the make. Anyone with a scintilla of good ends up short. There is some
good. It is rare. Any payoff in the future hints at failure. Hope
hardly exists. It is a figment of the imagination. Hope on “The Wire”
feels surreal. Perhaps life on these imagined streets of Baltimore is
this way. Perhaps the writers are right in their vision. The problem
is that the few honest rays of hope – and they are rare – must deal
with a tsunami of despair that smothers everything else in the series.
I wonder if all the sometime brilliance of the production only adds to
my gloom after watching an episode.
Some readers, presumably realists, might say I can’t have it both
ways: a fine series, and happy endings, too. I’m not looking for a
successful conclusion. Life does not always afford easy answers,
especially when staying alive for the characters on “The Wire” is full
time struggle. Saying it is a brilliant show allows me to dislike it
even more. I seek no panacea, only honesty. Feigned authenticity works
in an historical drama when the writers do not know that much about
how people really lived. For a contemporary series, there is no
substitute for reality, unless, of course, you are dealing in fantasy.
This is where the “The Wire” fails. It tries mightily to be real, when
it unrelieved hopelessness seems to me nothing more than a fantasy.
However, I will continue watching in case there is change.
.........................................................................................................................
At NBC News for 35 years, Ron Steinman was bureau chief
in Saigon, Hong Kong and London, was a senior producer on Today and wrote
and produced for Sunday Today. At ABC News Productions, he produced
and wrote documentaries for A&E, TLC, Discovery, Lifetime and the
History Channel. He has a Peabody, a National Headliner award, a
National Press Club award, a International Documentary Festival Gold
Camera Award, two American Women in Radio & Television awards and
has been nominated for five Emmy's. He is a partner in
Douglas/Steinman Productions, whose latest documentary, "Luboml: My
Heart Remembers," aired on PBS' WLIW/21 and the History Channel in
Israel, April 29, 2003. He is the author of, "The Soldiers 'Story",
"Women in Vietnam," and most recently, "Inside Television's First
War: A Saigon Journal," University of Missouri Press, 2002. |
