A continuation of the TV thoughts I’ve been having
Aside from Game of Thrones is there a more SWPL show out there than HBO’s ‘The Wire'? It is hard to imagine anyone is unfamiliar with ‘The Wire’ if they are reading this blog, it is that kind of cultural staple that pretty much everyone has seen. Great swathes of millennials will tell you after some ponderous thinking that actually it is their favorite TV show - even better than their next fav show which is a dressed up soap opera with a few swords in the mix.
I would be remiss not to admit that I have very much enjoyed The Wire (though I stand firm in saying GoT was drivel and horror porn, I struggled through the first season and gave up) and think it is well produced television. It is at heart an entertaining depiction of what we imagine the reality of inner city Baltimore to be. Written by a ‘journalist’ who worked in the city we can be sure it contains both truth and fiction. Each season tells a slightly separate story though all are joined up as a portrait of the city. I would hazard a guess that the vast majority of fans of The Wire have never in fact been to Baltimore, perhaps they have flown through BWI or driven past but that is about it. It’s a mythic place to middle class whites elevated through this television show.
That show also tells us modern myths. In fact it is my belief that as a cultural force ‘The Wire’ has influenced white middle class America in profound ways that are only just beginning to bear fruit. At the heart of show is the myth is that the profound problem facing the black inner city residents of Baltimore, and by extension all black Americans, is the drug war. The war on drugs is portrayed as the looming villain and the white, and black, officers who attempt to enforce it are fighting not just a doomed battle but a fundamentally immoral one to stop it. Here we see the old adage that every white man deep down can be drawn to libertarianism if if just promises him occasional responsible drug use (that he believes he partakes in). The blacks of Baltimore are presented at a macro level as largely victims of this drug war (run by whites). At a micro level of course the show has a bit more nuance and is at pains to highlight the brutal reality for local residents caught up in the problem. Indeed for all the macro flaws the producers of the show don’t shy from showing the reality of dysgenic inner city impoverished black behaviors - it is only at that deeper level they are dishonest with themselves and the audience.
As each season of The Wire has a slightly different focus and so we are treated to slightly different myths within the larger one. Perhaps the most dishonest is season three which focuses mainly on the school system. This season would have you believe that just a few brave innovative teachers could turn it all around if only they weren’t stuck teaching towards tests! Again because the show is not completely delusional there are snippets of reality captured but by and large the vision of the white liberal (complete here with savior complex) is what the audience are left with. There is no subtlety in The Wire - the messages delivered to the white middle class audience are upfront in their critiques of society.
The Wire ran from 2002 - 2008. Here we are in 2023, a few years past the BLM riots. Those riots themselves took time to escalate, their origin starting many years before due the lies of Mr Brown ‘Hands up Don’t Shoot’. That final escalation of 2020 was not just the sheer destruction we saw where Police forces stood down but also the large numbers of white middle classes who strode out into the streets wearing their masks to show solidarity and validate the destruction. The narrative those people believe would be indistinguishable from the narrative The Wire tells. They are one and the same.
The war on drugs is a failed racist enterprise
The police are corrupt and racist
We just need more education and ‘opportunities’ for black Americans and more special treatment
This spread of ideas from a show ostensibly just there to entertain has probably been more damaging than people realize. The show no doubt closed the empathy gap that existed before and it goes a long way to explaining why there is a general air of sympathy for black Americans plight at drugs but almost zero attention focused on the drug epidemics that have beset the white working class.
The white drug show is of course Breaking Bad. A show I have not actually seen so can’t comment on in any kind of depth but it too has penetrated the popular psyche. The political messages within are likely to be a continuation of elite thought that we see in The Wire albeit a bit more updated and not as focused as latter was because that show was so explicitly looking at race, drugs, and crime. It is telling of course that there has been no real show that has looked at the opioid epidemic. Should one appear I fully expect it to minimize the disproportionate harms that poorer whites have endured from that in some fashion. Entertainment is just too powerful a medium for the right messages.
The power of narrative from entertainment has been on even greater display more recently. James Cameron’s Titantic film no doubt inspired the paying clientele who took the Titan down to see it. The shipwreck and story are heavily romanticized in popular culture but without that film I’m not sure it would be quite as obsessed over. The lasting interest in the Titanic doesn’t necessarily match up with the politics of the film, that poke at the class system as one would expect. The power of the romance is more what remains and keeps the interest alive.
There doesn’t have to be a grand message every time but the messages that sneak in both quietly and loudly inform the masses sensibilities. In the case of the still aspirational middle classes they really do flock to media and entertainment that affirms the values and beliefs they have been fed their entire lives. Our popular Twitter poaster in the image above perhaps realizes that somewhat. To him, as a whiggish inhabitant of a whiggish nation the underlying ideas expressed in GoT appeal. There is a sort of hidden connect the dots moment.
At first glance the claim proposed seems outlandish - The Wire helped drive the defunding of the police? But when you dig a little deeper it isn’t really surprising to see that the mass entertainment of this age is selectively chosen to further very specific agendas. It remains as important as ever for us to fund and drive our own.