The Wire

Urban Decay and American Television

Tiffany Potter, C. W. Marshall, Tiffany Potter, C. W. Marshall

• Publisher: Continuum
• Year: 2010
• Print ISBN:
  9780826438041
• eBook ISBN:
  9780826434777
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Television History & Criticism

The first collection of critical essays on HBO's The Wire - the most brilliant and socially relevant television series in years

The Wire is about survival, about the strategies adopted by those living and working in the inner cities of America. It presents a world where for many even hope isn't an option, where life operates as day-to-day existence without education, without job security, and without social structures. This is a world that is only grey, an exacting autopsy of a side of American life that has never seen the inside of a Starbucks.

Over its five season, sixty-episode run (2002-2008), The Wire presented several overlapping narrative threads, all set in the city of Baltimore. The series consistently deconstructed the conventional narratives of law, order, and disorder, offering a view of America that has never before been admitted to the public discourse of the televisual. It was bleak and at times excruciating. Even when the show made metatextual reference to its own world as Dickensian, it was too gentle by half.

By focusing on four main topics (Crime, Law Enforcement, America, and Television), The Wire: Urban Decay and American Television examines the series' place within popular culture and its representation of the realities of inner city life, social institutions, and politics in contemporary American society. This is a brilliant collection of essays on a show that has taken the art of television drama to new heights.

Index

9/11 163–4, 173

adolescence 91, 119, 137, 166, 168–70, 172, 184, 200

African-Americanism see race, African-American identity

AIDS 97, 183

alienation 20, 28, 96, 109, 203, 223

America

American culture 2, 14, 111, 120, 144, 203, 223

American dream 3–4, 7, 12, 132, 224, 228–30

military of 28–9

Annapolis 28, 35

audience 7–9

composition of 9, 52

education of 102–3

response of 4, 9, 93, 177–80, 183, 185, 188–9, 192–3, 204

and social reform 218–19, 224–6, 228–30

Baltimore passim

accent 76n

budget of 34–5

conflict with Maryland 28, 32, 35

East Baltimore 15–16, 18, 20, 140–1

economy of 33, 37, 38, 137, 143–4, 147

fire of 1904 26, 29–30, 33

history and narrative of 25–31

Inner Harbor 26, 31, 33–5, 45, 126, 137, 186

Lucky's Bar 16–17

Milton Avenue 16–19

names of 25–6, 29

reform and renewal of 24–6, 31–3, 35, 39, 42, 44, 47, 49, 163–4, 193

representation of 13n, 26, 28–9, 35–6

as subject of The Wire 41, 137

suburbs of 30, 33, 40, 42, 49n

West Baltimore 3, 23–4, 31–2...

Table of contents

• Coverpage
• THE WIRE
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• I. Baltimore and Its Institutions
• II. On the Corner
• III. Twenty-first-Century Television
• Works Cited
• Episode List
• Notes on Contributors
• Index