The Wire: The Show You’re Not Watching, But Should Be
by Matt Hogan on March 21, 2007 in Culture
I had some reservations about arguing that “The Wire” - HBO’s critically acclaimed but popularly ignored urban crime drama - should be required viewing for Kennedy School students interested in urban policy. After all, graduate students at Harvard are supposed to learn about government from the likes of De Tocqueville and former Cabinet members, not a television show that features Method Man playing a recurring character named “Cheese.”
My reservations diminished after reading a KSG course text on government organization that devoted pages to such valuable nuggets of wisdom as “organizations ignore feasibility at their own peril” and “priorities shape implementation.” Suddenly, the notion that Kennedy School students could learn from a television show seemed much more plausible.
“The Wire,” after all, is no ordinary television show. What began as a series about cops and drug dealers in Baltimore has evolved into what Newsweek describes as “a sprawling, visual novel about the decline and fall of an American city.” Its portrayal of the inner workings and dysfunction of the city’s institutions - including its police department, schools, unions, gangs, and city council - is so provocative that the show could be its own STM-101 class.
These depictions have resulted in such fawning reviews that they read as if they’ve been written by the creators’ own mothers. The New York Times declared “The Wire” to be “the closest that moving pictures have come so far to the depth and nuance of the novel,” while the San Francisco Chronicle called it “a masterpiece…that must be considered alongside the best literature and filmmaking in the modern era.” The New York Post was more succinct, proclaiming it “the single finest piece of work ever produced for American TV.”
Much of this critical acclaim can be attributed to the real-life experience brought to the show by co-creators David Simon and Ed Burns.
Simon is a former police reporter for the Baltimore Sun and Burns was a Baltimore Homicide Detective for 20 years before becoming a social studies teacher in the city for another seven years. Both are Baltimore natives whose first-hand experience with the city, along with secondary characters played largely by non-professional actors pulled from its streets, gives the show a level of realism that makes ‘Law & Order’ look like ‘Matlock’.
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