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Originally Posted by Severian
SYMBOLS YOU WROTE SO MUCH AND I’M ON MY PHONE SO I CAN’T REALLY GO THROUGH IT ALL BUT I’M GONNA REPLY TO THIS AT LEAST. LOVE YOU! (OK IT WAS WEIRD TO SAY “LOVE YOU,” BUT WE’RE MATES SO JUST ACCEPT IT.)
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haha, accepted of course, but only really if you read it complete
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Originally Posted by Severian
In fact, so far (to me), it seems as though the show’s central philosophical stance is that American social systems in general are irrevocably tainted by those in power, and that crime, civil unrest, apathy, amorality, etc. are functions of this. Which is true.
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well yes and no. the wire has that but is about more than that, way more. you'll see.
and sure, mad men has more sex appeal. and frankly, i could just watch joan walking up and down her office corridors on an infinite loop all day, being her glorious self, and i'd proclaim heartily: "best show on tv, better than the original mad men!"
https://youtu.be/b93d782eOMQ
that truly would be a tv apotheosis for me, i'm serious, but even that would not be the best in the way i mean that the wire is the best.
the wire is incredibly well made, has great craft, the camera is genius, first rate storytelling, etc, but also yes it looks just like the ordinary world. because this is not a show about pleasure, or for pleasure. the jokes are there so that you don't kill yourself in despair while you absorb things. and the show is not even really about emotion either. it has emotion, but it's not made just to tug at your heartstrings for an hour or whatever.
so if the wire is not meant to floor you with deliciousness, or with sweet scenes, or with fear and pity like a tragedy, what is it about? well, ultimately it is meant to floor you with a more comprehensive and actionable understanding of how the world in which we live
actually works. no gimmicks, no extraordinary coincidences, no whitewashing or sweeping under the carpet or glossing over.
the wire is really made for your intellect and your understanding of some very real subjects. its ultimate appeal is epistemic. like avant garde poetry wants to do, it teaches you a new mode of perception, a new mode of knowledge. it seems ordinary, but it's not.
there are only 2 shows i know that do that. one is "the wire," the other is an 80s british sitcom called "yes minister".
those two shows basically explain the world, hahaha.
i don't mean they explain "persons," like a psychologist would. i don't mean the world as cosmos or biology or the domain of the sciences. i don't mean interpersonal social relationships like in jane austen (and thank you, jane austen, for opening my mind to my own youthful fuckups and other things i used to be blind to).
i mean that it explains the larger (transpersonal? suprapersonal?) world that transcends the individual, but at the same time controls the individual with an iron fist, beyond laws of nature, beyond mores and manners. it explains the enormous machinery that we have built and now inhabit, a machine that rolls on, blind to the individual.
the show does that in the context of a city, but the city stands for the world. and a city size is maybe the minimum necessary to just begin to comprehend-- any smaller, and it's easy to miss the point and fall into the usual mental habits of tv tropes about individuals, their character traits, their moral choices, and glossy presentations.
nothing like it before, and nothing like it since. so, lacking prior cultural referents, it takes an extra effort for the public to fully understand it. its clearest ancestors are in literature. this actually is a realist novel of the 19th century, written at the outset of the 21st, a time (20 years ago already!) when we no longer read such novels (and of course we still don't).
see:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honoré_de_Balzac