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2013 WRITING BOOK (VOL 10) - 12-2012_WRITING BOOK 2004 2/4/13 6:04 AM Page 91 The Hook behind the Rapper: The Tension in a Diegetic Rhetoric of Music in The Wire Sam Borowik Pennsylvania State University, Berks The Wire, often considered one of the best shows on television, utilizes long-form storytelling tech - niques to great success. Scholars have often looked at the show from the perspective of cultural the - ory and rhetoric, often considering both at the same time. However, one rhetorical element of the show is often overlooked: its music. This is not surprising, since the show primarily utilizes diegetic music—that is, the music is part of the narrative and not used as a direct emotional manipulator or hailing device, which is often the case in other TV shows. In this essay, I argue that music is an important rhetorical device in the show, one that displays a tension between its use as a purely diegetic sonic prop and its function as a device that draws the audience into a deeper, subtler rhet - oric occurring between characters. The Wire, a show that first aired in 2002, followed the wave of long-form storytelling in American television that began in the 2000s. HBO, which aired The Wire, led this wave, with shows like Oz, The Sopranos, Six Feet Under, and Deadwood . The show received numerous accolades despite its not-quite-stellar ratings—though after its cancellation, HBO’s DVD sales were high (Mittell, “All in the Game”). It was, and still is, frequently called “the best show on television.” 1 As a long-form TV narrative, the show is quite complex. It would be unfair to describe the show as merely about the power struggles of drug dealers and how the Baltimore Police Department deals with them. While drug dealing and the war against drugs play large roles in the narrative, matters of politics, human trafficking, education, and drug legalization all play a role in what the show’s characters call “the game.” The show portrays a wide variety of characters, 2 from all sorts of socioe - conomic backgrounds—from the state senator Clay Davis to the errant junkie and police informer Bubbles. The show focuses on Baltimore’s institutions, their dysfunctionality, and how that dys - functional power or power (im)balance governs the lives of Baltimore’s citizens, mostly in a nega - tive way. As will be discussed, there is a great tension within the use of one specific rhetorical device in the show: music. There is a tension between music as merely a prop (since music in The Wire is only diegetic, it is part of the narrative world) and music as something more than that, as a device that hooks the audience into a deeper rhetoric between the characters. At this point, it may be useful to mention the various critiques leveled not only at TV narra - tives about the U.S. underclass, but also at the academic theorists who attempt to interpret them. For example, discussing Raymond Chandler’s detective-hero Marlowe, in Form and Ideology in Crime Fiction, literary critic Stephen Knight claims that the detective’s elitism “proclaims itself; it basically resides in intellectual and emotional superiority, but the blank disinterest in poor and black citizens” reveals the author’s “strong underlying political attitude, that of the educated mid - dle-class” (176). A more caustic critique comes from anthropologist Philippe Bourgois, who deplores the entertainment industry’s “voyeuristic celebration of street dealers and inner-city street culture.” In his view, academic theorists who address urban poverty and its media representations through the lens of postmodern theories may actually do more harm than good: Deconstructionist “politics” usually confine themselves to hermetically sealed academic discourses on the “poetics” of social interaction, or on clichés devoted Borowik 89 2013 WRITING BOOK (VOL 10) - 12-2012_WRITING BOOK 2004 2/4/13 6:04 AM Page 92 to exploring the relationships between self and other. Although postmodern ethnographers often claim to be subversive, their contestation of authority focus - es on hyper-literate critiques of form through evocative vocabularies, playful syn - taxes, and polyphonous voices, rather than on engaging with tangible daily strug - gles. Postmodern debates titillate alienated, suburbanized intellectuals; they are completely out of touch with the urgent social crises of the inner-city unem - ployed. Scholarly self-reflection often degenerates into narcissistic celebrations of privilege. Most important, however, radical deconstructionism makes it impossible to categorize or prioritize experiences of injustice and oppression. This subtly denies the very real personal experience of pain and suffering that is imposed socially and structurally across race, class, gender, sexuality, and other power-ridden categories. (12) Even in this surge of new ways to tell stories on television, and perhaps aware of some of the critiques of the phenomenon, The Wire was the odd one out. Unlike other shows also running at the time, it was not written by television veterans but by a journalist turned television writer, David Simon. As Jason Mittell notes in his article “ The Wire in the Context of American Television,” The Wire is unique in that it pursues a different naturalistic style that “draw[s] upon the conventions of documentary and social realism to match Simon’s own background in non-fiction journalism.” Mittell argues that Simon’s background as a journalist trained to report facts and to render situa - tions accurately led to a narrative style that, although it depicts a fictional world, presents its envi - ronment and characters realistically. Even though other contemporary shows like The Sopranos purport to offer “realist” narratives, The Wire is different, in that it has a naturalistic tendency, rein - forced by its distinct “visual style,” and does not use flashback, montage, or narration. 3 A unique “visual style” is not The Wire ’s only distinguishing trait. It is, after all, a multimodal text: utilizing multiple media, such as images, sound, and script, to convey its author’s message, instead of relying upon a single medium as a printed text, such as a novel or poem, does. Many crit - ics notice The Wire ’s naturalistic visual style, but its music and sound are often overlooked. The Wire ’s music and sound are diegetic. They are native to the show’s environment, Baltimore, and crucial to the show’s overall style. There is no background filler music. Like its set, the real Baltimore, the music appears to be part of the scenery, fulfilling the needs of viewers who expect the show to be realistic—especially since The Wire was part of HBO’s wave of shows that had a similar realistic feel. 4 In other words, the show’s music and background noise are diegetic, part of its narrative universe—heard by characters as someone actually on the scene might hear it—emit - ted from car stereos, police radios, and boom boxes. Given Simon’s naturalistic style, one may assume that he made a rhetorical choice to include only diegetic music; it was no accident. Music does play a more significant role in The Wire than many viewers might at first think. The Wire does not seem to use music as a rhetorical device to manipulate emotions and to work as a hailing device (Gorbman 16), luring and cueing the audience to the show and also giving the show an identifiable aural feel—as when a show has a specific soundtrack for the moment when characters unravel the episode’s mystery, letting the audience members know, even if they are out of visual range, that a specific event is happening. For example, when the main characters of a police procedural show such as CSI or NCIS uncover the mangled remains of the episode’s victims, the music will intensify in a way fitting to the characters’ reactions; likewise in a scene where there is a lot of action. The Wire, by contrast , has no nondiegetic music to enhance a scene’s emotional content. 5 The music of The Wire seems just to be there. It does not cue the audience to anything specific—at first, that is. Music and sound can tell us where we are —the street corner boom boxes and the police radios—but it cannot immediately tell us what is happening. As Adrienne Brown says of The Wire, music is both everywhere and nowhere. She also argues that music in The Wire 90 Young Scholars in Writing 2013 WRITING BOOK (VOL 10) - 12-2012_WRITING BOOK 2004 2/4/13 6:04 AM Page 93 is used as a tool for characters to develop social and personal connections (445) and that the show denies that music can be used by the underclass as such a tool (456). Music is everywhere “in that to deny its presence would damage the show’s claim to realism.” It is also nowhere, “meaning that the show does not have to portray music beyond the level of authenticating sonic prop” (445). Music has to be everywhere because it authenticates the show’s naturalistic intent. If Simon and company had chosen, as other HBO dramas did, to use music as an enhancement of the narrative, the show could not claim its naturalistic status, showing reality in its “antiromantic convictions” (442). Music is also nowhere in that it often seems as if it were a prop. But the show does not use music merely as a prop, as an incidental detail. Instead, I propose that music in The Wire is used as a rhetorical device, serving to legitimate the show’s status as a realist work with naturalist tendencies and to show characters’ attempts to individuate themselves, or generate individual identities.

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