This got brought up in class and I thought it was a really interesting idea: What if The Wire was somewhere other than Baltimore? Could it exist? How would it be different?
Noah joined our group for a minute and asked if The Wire would be able to exist in Miami or Los Angeles. It’s a pretty good question. We all agreed that, just like there are no shortages of corners wherever you go, you won’t have a huge problem finding poor neighborhoods consumed by the drug game in Miami and Los Angeles. We also agreed that these communities would most likely be mostly non-white, with more races than just African-American based on the respective geographical locations of LA and Miami. So white people just don’t use drugs and get their lives ruined? That doesn’t sound right.
I stared imagining a Wire 2.0 (because who knows what kind of bills David Simon might have to pay in the future) that was set in the middle of white suburban America. Since the time The Wire started there has been an explosion of meth use in these locations. Unlike crack and heroine, meth is made with ingredients you can find in most pharmacies or supermarkets. Putting the focus on white meth use in the middle of America would be great, but AMC’s Breaking Bad has already been there and is doing that. The show has a clear protagonist, however, and doesn’t have quite the complexity and diversity in cast that The Wire does. Breaking Bad does look at what it’s like on the police end of things (since the protagonist’s brother in-law just happens to be a cop) but it’s just not the same.
I enjoy Breaking Bad and I enjoy The Wire but now that I really think about merging the two I’m realizing I could be stuck with one mediocre show that struggles to make sense instead of two excellent shows that only make total sense after repeat views.
2 responses so far ↓
bopritza // 11 November 2009 at 12.13 pm
I don’t know much about meth addiction, but it seems to me that the Wire is addressing the problem of the 10 % of the population the affluent have chosen to ignore. Drugs are definitely part of that problem, but it comes from the fact that industrial jobs blacks and other minorities used to have went overseas starting in the 1970′s, which essential created these terrible American Ghettos. To me, the Wire is about the same problems happening all over the country in every city, and I don’t think changing the city would change the major themes of the show. I don’t know much about middle america’s meth addiction, but I think, like you said, it’s a very different issue.
heldma // 11 November 2009 at 12.54 pm
I find this question interesting….and while certainly LA has the makings of an ample drug game, I ask…where is the overarching culture? This isn’t me saying that LA is a culture-less city, because it’s not. It just has too large and too shared and clashing of an identity. Different classes and racial identities seem to form specific LA narratives that don’t connect back to the city’s entirety. In contrast, Miami has a city culture that has incorporated race/nationality into its identity.
My point about all this is that Baltimore has a definite culture that exists above its deep-rooted issues with race and class. And by culture, I’m not just talking about images that you put on a shot glass to sell in a souvenir store. There are sayings…”shiiiiit” is a pretty universal one. There’s an accent. Ask 5 different people and they might all say ‘Baltimore’ a different way. There’s a definite religious presence, and not just the old Maryland Catholics, either, all sorts of religion. There’s a city beer mascot and even though it’s the lamest city “branding” campaign ever, the “BELIEVE” logo that has been placed all over the city is actually kind of cute. And it has a beltway!
Ok, ok, my argument is getting a little sentimental, but I think it’s the quirky culture, that good old “charm” of the city, that is necessary to have against a total roast against its failures. So sure, we could move The Wire to another city with a comparable “metaculture,” like, say, Detroit! But the point is that locational identity is what allows such a deep, searing, and somewhat heartbreaking treatment to given to the city. Because otherwise, we wouldn’t care.
Simon has definitely set-up shop in another city with a rich identity that has been failed by more than just its own institutions. It will be interesting to see how Simon’s sentimentality shows for a city that wasn’t before “his own.”