Peaches has been raving about The Wire for a while now, which has made me pay attention to when other people rave about it. A while ago I read an interview from David Simon, the producer, and was blown away by his thoughtfulness and deep grounding in the history of narrative. For instance: he pointed out that most dramatic structure we see these days is Shakespearean, where the characters are central and the transformation of character drives the story. Think Hamlet. Think any movie you’ve ever seen, or that I’ve ever seen, where you follow somebody’s foibles, and they succeed or fail because of them. This has become such a common part of our atmosphere it’s hard to even see it’s there. Like mosquitos in Minnesota summer.
But that’s not the only way. The other model, Simon pointed out, was Greek, where the characters were pawns in a story moved by larger forces. For the Greeks it was the gods and manifested in the fate they decreed or the caprices they indulged. The Greek message was: you’re not in control. Bigger things are at work, here.
Anyway, I’ll try to dig up that interview (Peaches, I mailed it to you once upon a time) but the point is that this was so keenly observed, and so absolutely _correct_, that I’ve never gotten over it. I think about that digital classification – Greek vs. Roman – all the time, in the course of my own work. It seems to me the pivot on which narrative philosophy turns.
But this post isn’t about that.
This post is about this, which is another guy’s observations about the clash between with the philosophy of what an artist believes to be true, and how that philosophy manifests in his art. In particular, wrt The Wire, if you believe the world is built from massive systems churning away, grinding some people into oblivion and exalting others into the kind of pseudo gods who are never touched by the fallout of their actions – examples of which figure very prominently in the news these days, like AIG – then how are you a regulator, at heart? Like Hanson says:
[...] I just don’t see how this picture fits at all with the world I see depicted in the show. It seems pretty hard to imagine a new episode staying in character while depicting more funding for a government program making things lots better. In The Wire’s world, it seems to me that money would be diverted for political purposes, stats would be “juked”, brown-nosers would be promoted, and people really trying to help would be marginalized or fired.
This is a really smart and far-ranging discussion that touches every part of political and artistic life. Highly recommended you read the linked article, and surf from there.