The Wire: Writing a City

Make no mistake, David Simon is doing something bold, ambitious, and remarkable in his five-season HBO drama The Wire. The show is a veritable novel onscreen; Simon is building the narrative of a city quite literally from the ground up. From the street-level war on drugs in the First Season through the loss of blue-collar livelihood in Season Two; to the political machine in Season Three; to the deplorable state of the public school system and the Baltimore youth in Season Four; to the current, final season's emphasis on the role of the media in reporting on society's moral failings. For Simon, an ex-reporter at The Baltimore Sun, this is social commentary that is also a very personal story. This post was inspired by this over at Wax Banks' humble abode, along with the following great pieces:

An excellent, lengthy New Yorker piece on the show which has several tidbits revealing just how true-to-life The Wire is.

Another fairly lengthy Columbia Journalism Review piece which does a good job providing both sides of the debate of the media's role - i.e. Simon vs. his old Sun bosses.

Simon in Esquire talking about what journalism means to him, and what is happening to ink-and-paper media in this country.

Interesting pieces all, providing some background, legitimacy, and even a bit of criticism of Simon's moral quest. I will blatantly rip off Wax here by quoting, as he does, the closing of the CJR piece, because really, it's just so damn perfect:

Simon, like [current Sun editor Tim] Franklin, wants his portrayal of Baltimore to be judged against the future, but his idea of the future is darker. The Wire, he says, is about the decline of the American empire. It might have sprung from a journalistic impulse, but he says he has moved beyond simple reportage. “Consider it a big op-ed piece,” said Simon, “and consider it to be dissent. What I saw happen with the drug war, a series of political elections, and vague attempts at reform in Baltimore….What I saw happen to the Port of Baltimore, and what I saw happen to the Baltimore Sun—I think it’s all of a piece.” Should his premonition of the American empire’s future—more gated communities and more of a police state—come to pass and were someone to say he didn’t know it was coming, Simon said, it will at least be possible to pull The Wire off the shelf and say, “‘Don’t say you didn’t know this was coming. Because they made a fucking TV show out of it.’” 

Read it all. And enjoy the remainder of The Wire.