Peer Reviewed

Title: Dispatches - - The Heart of the City: A Conversation about The Wire

Journal Issue: Places, 21(1)

Author: Quinn, Kelly

Publication Date: 2009

Publication Info: Places

Permalink: http://escholarship.org/uc/item/3d33f3wn

Acknowledgements: This article was originally produced in Places Journal. To subscribe, visit www.places-journal.org. For reprint information, contact [email protected].

Keywords: places, placemaking, architecture, environment, landscape, urban design, public realm, planning, design, volume 21, issue 1, Recovering, dispatches, heart, city, conversation, wire

Copyright Information: All rights reserved unless otherwise indicated. Contact the author or original publisher for any necessary permissions. eScholarship is not the copyright owner for deposited works. Learn more at http://www.escholarship.org/help_copyright.html#reuse

eScholarship provides open access, scholarly publishing services to the University of California and delivers a dynamic research platform to scholars worldwide. The Heart of the City: A Conversation about The Wire

Kelly Quinn

and administrators, political candi- dates and advisors, police, and dealers. The show was also grounded in ancient traditions of storytelling. David Simon, its creator, executive producer, and writer, repeatedly referenced Aeschylus, Euripides, and Sophocles in interviews. To tell the tales of postmodern, postindustrial Baltimore, he explained, “We stole from the Greeks and we made the gods into institutions.”2

The Series Simon and his partner, Ed Burns, developed The Wire after both had had careers in public service. Simon had worked as a police reporter at the Baltimore Sun; Burns had been a police officer and schoolteacher. Previously, Simon had authored The Wire was a television series that galleries; in classrooms and corner Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets, ran for five seasons (2002–2008) on stores; in bars, backrooms, and beige a nonfiction novel that served as the premium cable channel Home cubicles; in conference suites, funeral the basis for NBC’s television series Box Office (HBO).1 Its name referred parlors, jail cells, and parish halls; Homicide: Life on the Street (1993– to the surveillance devices that police in cargo containers and abandoned 1999). Simon and Burns had also enlist in monitoring and infiltrating rowhouses; and in public parks and partnered to write an account of life criminal activity. Using the access cemeteries. in an open-air drug market in West these devices provide, viewers traced Formstone and takeaway lake trout Baltimore, The Corner: A Year in the a series of tangled plots through West convey the particularities of Baltimore, Life of an Inner-City Neighborhood, Baltimore, Maryland, crisscross- but the setting is also Everycity, stand- which resulted in a six-hour minise- ing police precincts, hustling down ing for post-Fordist rustbelt Detroit, ries for HBO, The Corner (2000). alleys, swaggering across courtyards, Cleveland, or Oakland. Each season The Wire, like The Corner, was and scrambling over parapets. The addressed an institution of the con- the brainchild of these two roundish show pursued the wire through metal temporary city. Season one introduced white men who, clutching clipboards, detectors at the courthouse and city criminal justice; season two explored hung out on street corners in West hall; in boxing rings and shooting labor issues at the Port of Baltimore; Baltimore listening, watching, soak- season three scrutinized the political ing up the city. They were astute machine of municipal government; observers, passionately devoted to Above: In season five, as the series scrutinized the season four tackled public education; probing the everyday experiences of media, the actor/director Clark Johnson (far left) and season five investigated journalism America’s inner cities. played Gus Haynes, the city-desk editor for the and print media. Their city was not one of glitzy “Baltimore Sun.” The Wire decried the decline of Ostensibly a cop show, the series waterfront redevelopment, corpo- investigative reporting and public-service journalism, rejected the well-worn conventions rate stadia, or luxury lofts. And their indicting newspapers as accomplices in the decline and of the genre. This cityscape was not work repudiated this convivial city in dysfunction of contemporary urban institutions. From one of fancy editing and jump-cut large part because of their disdain for left to right: Clark Johnson, Brandon Young, Michelle grittiness. Viewers could linger in practices they believed have imper- Paress, and Tom McCarthy. Photo by Paul Schiraldi, overlooked places and learn about the iled contemporary urbanism. For courtesy of Home Box Office. lives of longshoremen, schoolteachers Burns and Simon, public policies like

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the “War on Drugs” and “No Child Left Behind” have thwarted human experience. In a lecture at the University of Southern California, Simon once answered a question about the mean- ing of The Wire with the following comments:

It is a political tract masquerading as a cop show. It is an argument that our nation state is becoming less viable and will continue to become less viable. I think that it is one of the most affectionate and funny stories about the end of empire that you could compose. And, I am proud that it is basically an argument that every day human beings matter less.3 of urban reality, or as something seasons on the show. And Johnson The Conference between those two ideals, this sym- described how Simon’s early career as During its five-year run, the posium marks an important moment a journalist and his ear for dialogue series developed a small, devoted for scholars and thinkers to congre- influenced his work, and how the con- following who continue to debate gate…to explore the possibilities for ceit of surveillance was able to offer its meanings in on-line discussions, hope and skepticism forged at once an intimate view of the city. and who remake its scenes, posting through this influential series.” The panels that followed included vignettes, “lost” episodes, and spoofs The first academic conference “Teaching on The Wire”; “Race, on Youtube.com. Scholars have also devoted to The Wire, the meeting Labor, and Affect in the Neoliberal begun to share their private viewing drew fans and critics from many City”; “Sex and Sexuality in the pleasure, and have launched formal fields. More than 250 people assem- City”; “Reading The Wire: The examinations of the series in class- bled to debate the show’s significance Politics of Authenticity in Season rooms and conferences. and legacy, including students, staff, Five”; “Do Right Woman, Do Right It was out of this climate of interest faculty, and members of the public. Man”; and “Hermeneutics of Strategy that the Black Humanities Collective Robin Means-Coleman, a professor and Surveillance.” The conference and the Center for Afroamerican and of communications and Afroamerican concluded with a roundtable about the African Studies at the University of and African studies, moderated the meanings of The Wire in an Obama Michigan decided to host a sympo- keynote conversation between the America. Facilitated by Michigan sium about The Wire January 29 and actress Sonja Sohn and the actor and professor Jonathan Metzl, participants 30 in Ann Arbor. Paul M. Farber director Clark Johnson. Sohn and included the music critic and Vassar and Grace L.B. Sander, its graduate- Johnson swapped memories of audi- student organizers, wanted “to pay tion tapes and moments on the set, proper critical attention to a televi- discussed popular opinion of the show Above: Even as viewers were invited behind the yellow sion series that from its start was too in Baltimore, and shared their views tape, The Wire rejected stylized, formulaic depictions big for Prime Time.” They contin- on the crafts of acting and directing. of crime scenes and urban policing. From left to ued: “Whether you think of The Wire Sohn also reflected on her relation- right: Clarke Peters, Sonja Sohn, Dominic West, and as a work of paramount dramatic ship to Baltimore, the segregated city Wendell Pierce. Photo by Nicole Rivelli, courtesy of achievement, a tactile sampling and her adopted home during several Home Box Office.

Places 21.1 91 College literature professor Hua Hsu, opening scene of season three, the forsaken factories as more than tex- the cultural commentator and Duke ceremonial implosion of Franklin tured containers for adaptive reuse. University professor Mark Anthony Terrace’s highrise towers, to contem- It is a call to link social justice and Neal, the hip-hop scholar and Bucknell plate David Harvey’s writings on of urban design to a larger critique of University professor James Peterson, “creative destruction.” He reviewed life in the United States. and the University of Pennsylvania the decision of the Baltimore As we contemplate how to engage professor and contributor to the the- Housing Authority to eliminate 5,600 the city in this moment of late root.com Salamishah Tillet. of its “severely distressed” units, and capitalism, we often rely on theo- While many presenters examined homeownership in West rists, geographers, and sociologists approached the show as apprecia- Baltimore’s Heritage Crossing, a such as David Harvey, Jane Jacobs, tive fans, they also enlisted a variety project of semi-detached, low-rise Saskia Sassen, Michel Foucault, Neil of disciplinary methods to analyze units that is part of larger initiatives Smith, Robin D.G. Kelley, Clyde and critique it. A few relied on close to remake public space in the neigh- Woods, Sudhir Venkatesh, Iris analysis of the series and its charac- borhoods featured in The Wire. Marion Young, Michel De Certeau, ters to consider issues such as public and Henri Lefebvre. Perhaps it is also education, gender and sexuality. For A Mirror for Urban Places time to turn our attention to David example, Paul Anderson, an associate While several presentations Simon. Study The Wire.5 professor of American cultures and considered housing policy and urban Afroamerican and African studies issues, architects, planners and urban Notes at Michigan, mapped the anomie of designers were conspicuously absent, 1. Although the show no longer airs on television, it is deindustrialized Baltimore. Chris despite the organizers’ efforts to widely available on DVD. Love, a Ph.D. candidate in compara- solicit papers from those working 2. David Simon, “Journalism and the Public Square,” tive literature at Michigan, evaluated and practicing in those fields. It is a March 20, 2008, University of Southern California, its elements of Greek tragedy, pity, because The Wire offers many Gould School of Law and Annenberg School for highlighting the use of epigraphs, insights about urban places. Analysis Communication, http://www.youtube.com/watch? dialogic echoes, and staging. She of the series can advance our under- v=k8E8xBXFLKE&feature=channel_page. Simon argued that “true modern tragedy standing of the death and life of great discussed this at greater length in Margaret Talbot, can be found in Baltimore in the American cities. “Stealing Life: The Crusader behind ‘The Wire,’” [characters of] Barksdale, Bell and The Wire rewarded viewers, in part, New Yorker, October 22, 2007, pp. 150-63. Bunny.” And Leigh Claire LaBerge, because it was excellent television. Its 3. Ibid. an assistant professor of humanities at palimpsestic narrative respected the 4. Robert LeVertis Bell and Paul Farber have edited the University of Chicago, discussed audience’s intelligence, instilled empa- a special edition of Criticism devoted to The Wire; the fictitious serial killer storyline in thy and inspired action. Above all, its many of the conference papers will be featured in the season five as a strategy that chal- sixty episodes insisted that viewers forthcoming Summer 2009 volume. lenged viewers to question depictions engage the city on its own terms, not 5. More on the conference can be found at 4 of reality. those of Hollywood fantasy. http://sitemaker.umich.edu/heart_of_the_city/ Other presenters considered the As Simon asserted, the series was heart_of_the_city. implications and possibilities of the also a lament for the lost urbanism of series as a reflection of contemporary the first half of the twentieth century. urban issues. Shavon Holcomb, a On the street corners of The Wire’s sociology student, and Paul Draus, West Baltimore, the sidewalk bal- an assistant professor of sociology let extolled by Jane Jacobs became a at the University of Michigan- pas-de-deux performed by dealers Dearborn, explained how they used and junkies, a result of failed public the series in an education program policies and frayed social contracts. at Ryan Correctional Facility on the The Wire continues to challenge east side of Detroit. Rob Choflet, a urbanists to focus on postindus- Ph.D. student at the University of trial public spaces. It insists that we Maryland, College Park, used the consider abandoned rowhouses and

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