zedz wrote:Sloper wrote:It's interesting that some of the most acclaimed TV shows of recent years have been extremely moralistic. The Wire, for instance, is overtly and relentlessly didactic: it has a message to put across about society and human nature, and it challenges its audience not only to follow a complex and multi-layered plot, but also to keep track of the ideas and lessons being explored. No doubt this is part of what makes it hard-going for some viewers, but generally it maintains a level of complexity, authenticity and entertainment that keeps people interested; more than that, though, I think its preachiness is part of its appeal, because the message itself combines topical relevance to the here and now with more universally relevant insights into the human condition. In that sense it's a model example of how finger-wagging and art can enjoy a happy marriage.
Treme, on the other hand, too often interrupted its immersive and authentic portrait of New Orleans life to deliver some cringeworthy lesson with a John Goodman-shaped sledgehammer. There, as with Kramer, it felt like the problem stemmed from the earnestness of the writers and directors involved - ideology trumping artistic quality.
I think it's a comment on the degraded state of popular and political culture that the only model people have for art dealing with ideas of contemporary relevance is didacticism or "delivering a message." I've heard
The Wire in particular tarred with this brush more times than I can count, and I think it's a gigantic red herring. I don't think the show was concerned with (merely) 'delivering a message' at all. Sure, you could say that everything that happened ultimately indicated that "institutions fail individuals and communities", but that's not so much the message of the series as the premise, and what
The Wire is
really about is analysing and exploring the hows and whys of that failure, and that analysis and exploration involved levels of complexity and nuance far beyond those found in most popular culture. That's a valid, maybe even essential, artistic project, and it's about as far from 'delivering a message' as you can get. I don't think it's possible to extract any quick fix solution from the series, or condense the points it raises and processes it exposes into one paragraph or fifty, so if all you're getting from
The Wire is its 'message' in the broadest sense, you're missing 99% of the show's point. And anyway, is "institutions fail individuals and communities" even contentious enough to count as a 'message' any more?
I think Sloper and I are largely on the same page about the show, but I think 'didactic' is the wrong word to use for a series that works with its ideas in such a complicated way. I really don't think people come away from watching
The Wire with a little package of lessons about how to make the world a better place.
What Simon does dramatically that misleads a number of viewers, is has his characters articulate their particular political viewpoints from time to time. This leads the inattentive to raise the red flag of preachiness, but that's an age-old dramatic technique, and the characters who tend to do it are writers, academics, politicians and public figures: it's their job to articulate their views. Sometimes these views presumably coincide with those of the management (Goodman's character in
Treme springs to mind), but even then the views are problematized and undermined by views articulated by other characters and the character's own actions (again, Goodman's character provides an extremely obvious instance of this). And again, in the case of
Treme isn't much of what Goodman was ranting (e.g. the government fucked up bigtime) pretty much objectively verifiable? And when he's harping on the prurient interest of 'outsiders' in the city, that's a topic that's more and more contested within the series (and by its very existence!) and largely espoused by characters who are non-natives.
So, getting back to the question of 'didacticism' in art (which I'm also fascinated by), the problem arises for me not when I catch whiff of a political agenda, but when the argument of a given film never rises above a simple message (my God, if five series of
The Wire really did amount to nothing more than the moral "institutions are fucked, y'all" being gift-wrapped and delivered in the final episode, what a terrible series it would be); when it cheats to make its points (e.g. taking narrative shortcuts in order to ensure the 'correct' dramatic outcome, or messing up the lives of its protagonists simply in order to exaggerate a social evil, or making the local representative of the social evil
du jour a cardboard villain, or forcing the characters to make dumb decisions in order to exacerbate their plight - see any number of Ken Loach films for examples of the latter); or when its argument is illogical or over-egged. Basically, if a film is going to tackle Big Ideas head on, it needs to be able to engage me intellectually. Otherwise, it's probably best to tackle them obliquely and work on engaging me in other ways.
I've tried to be fairly oblique in this post, but there are some SPOILERS, so don't read this unless you've seen the whole of
The Wire. And even if you have, maybe just spare your eyes and don't read it.
Interesting and challenging comments, zedz; I thought I'd better respond here rather than in the 1950s thread.
I don't really understand what distinction you're making when you say that 'institutions fail individuals and communities' is not so much the show's message as its premise. Isn't it both - especially if, as you say, the series ultimately 'indicates' this? In any case, if this is the premise of the show, the assumption or thesis upon which it is grounded (which I'm sure it is), how does that undermine the notion that it's didactic? A text has to take the message 'there is only one God' before it can work to impose this message on the reader.
I also agree that the show works very hard to show 'the hows and whys of that failure', but again this doesn't conflict with its didacticism, it reinforces it: the message is communicated all the more powerfully for being illustrated and reinforced by details.
For me the problem is that you seem to see 'didacticism' as an inherently dirty word (and 'delivering a message' as a dirty phrase). You defend the show against such terms by pointing to its complexity, so I assume you think of 'didacticism' as a simplistic endeavour, or one not naturally conducive to 'intellectual engagement'. But as anyone who's ever tried to teach anyone anything knows, it's generally more effective to engage someone's intellect (and emotions), if you want to teach them something, than it is to simply stand over them telling them what they ought to know. David Simon doesn't sit in front of a camera telling us that institutions fail individuals and communities, he (and his collaborators) spend sixty hours
showing us how and why (and indeed that) institutions fail individuals and communities.
Having said this, I actually think you've simplified the message of the show with that phrase. It's impossible, of course,
not to simplify it without actually spending sixty hours re-enacting the series, but I do think your formulation misses an important point, and one which highlights the didactic nature of The Wire. An 'institution' is not capable of making moral choices, but individuals are, and the show ultimately focuses on those disastrous moral choices made by individuals within institutions. For me, one of the big turning points of the show, and the point where I lost some of my respect for it, was the end of Season 4, where Tommy Carcetti is faced with a dilemma: he literally has to choose one of two courses of action.
One will help Baltimore and enable him to keep the promises he's made to Daniels and others (note the focus on a relationship between two individuals there, not just two institutions), but will hamper his political career; the other will enable him to keep his personal dignity and further his career, but will mean breaking those promises. He chooses his pride and career over the good of the city.
Now at the time when he's faced with this decision, there's a sense that the choice is more complex than this, and that it really is hard to determine which is the morally right course of action; but as Season 5 goes on, Carcetti recedes into the background and is more or less written off as just another compromised and dishonest politician, who immediately chooses the path of self-interest, spin and political expediency as soon as he gets into office, and can scarcely look the outraged Daniels in the eye - let alone take responsibility for what he's done. The way Carcetti responds to the phantom serial killer, and the way he responds when it turns out the killer was made up, just reinforces all this. Someone who had been one of the most complex and nuanced figures throughout Seasons 3 and 4 has become a caricature, simplified to serve the needs of the show's message.
The message still isn't a simple one; I would say it's inviting us to look back at Carcetti's previous behaviour and realise that the kind of people who rise to positions of power tend to be very good at saying the right thing and looking the right way, winning over everybody (including themselves to some extent) into thinking they're going to do the right thing when they're finally able to - but by the same token, such people tend to be more concerned with image than with substance, and ultimately will choose to look good rather than do good. (It's almost too obvious to say, but I'm sure lots of people have applied all this to Obama.) The point is, I don't think we're given much of a choice as to how we evaluate Carcetti once Season 5 is underway. He's an individual who has made the wrong choice, and everybody suffers because of this. The show clearly wants us to think that if Carcetti had chosen differently, things would most likely have turned out better.
Nearer the lower end of the hierarchy, we have McNulty at the end of Season 5 deciding that, however fucked up the police force may be, he still has the option of being nice to his fellow man. (His final action is similar to Colvin's adoption of Namond; Colvin and McNulty complement each other in all kinds of ways - they both try to deal with problems through extreme and in some ways misguided measures, and eventually opt out of institutions altogether, not in despair but in order to focus on family and friends.)
As always, the message sounds corny and mawkish when you put it into words, but at the end of a sixty-hour series I thought the focus on individual acts of kindness was well-earned, and wholly appropriate to the show's humane focus on the suffering of individuals. If I had to boil the message down, I guess I would say it's about the imperative (especially for people in positions of authority) to make choices that are based on a concern for other people, rather than on their own selfish interests.
On a deeper level,
The Wire shows how those wrong decisions made by people in authority ultimately put less powerful characters (like D'Angelo, Brodie, Michael, Duquan and Randy) into positions where they don't get to make any moral choices, or any real choices at all, but simply have to do 'the wrong thing' in order to survive. Prez's final ultimatum to Duquan was a really telling moment here: the kid doesn't really have the option of using that money for a good purpose, and the point is that those social evils perpetuated by the decisions of people like Carcetti not only inflict misery on the disempowered, they also disempower people like Prez, Carver and McNulty who are supposed to be able to help. Again, there's nothing simplistic about this message - the show doesn't just say Duquan does the wrong thing because he's a scumbag, instead it insists that many (if not all; Cutty is an interesting example here) of these gangsters are formed by circumstances beyond their control, circumstances created by powerful people who ought to have known better.
One more specific example of didacticism - again at the end of Season 4, we see Colvin shaking his head and walking out of the lecture being given by the academic, and again I don't think we're given the option of thinking that some good may come from this kind of scholarly approach to the problem. The academic, however good his intentions may seem, is simply too detached from the 'real world' to have any real impact on it. Maybe I'm biased, but to me this does feel like a slightly reductive moment, but again by the end of such a rich and complex season the show has earned the right to be this insistent.
So, in the first place, I don't agree that the show's complexity can work as a defence against accusations of didacticism. In the second place, you also say
'And anyway, is "institutions fail individuals and communities" even contentious enough to count as a 'message' any more?'
and
'And again, in the case of
Treme isn't much of what Goodman was ranting (e.g. the government fucked up bigtime) pretty much objectively verifiable?'
Your point seems to be that the show is not 'didactic' because its message, insofar as it has one, is uncontested and indeed incontestable, and is therefore less a message than a simple observation. One of the reasons I enjoyed
The Wire so much, and could stomach its didacticism, is that I could easily buy into its message. I'm sure much of what it's saying about politics, law enforcement, journalism and so on is true; it accords, to a great extent, with the way I see the world.
[Naive side note: I lead a very sheltered life, but I see many of the issues this show raises afflicting the institution I work in - academia - where decisions made by those at the top of the ladder force everyone else in the institution to make compromises and manipulate figures; for instance, universities have to buy in academics with good research profiles just to boost their standing in the upcoming Reseach Assessment Exercise (RAE), which has actually been renamed the Research Excellence Framework (REF), presumably on the basis that a good acronym is one that doesn't mean anything. It's one of those dumb ideas that's supposed to enable us to measure the extent and quality of our research, but in practice it turns everyone into a box-ticker. The 'research' an institution takes credit for is not the research it's been nurturing; indeed, it's stolen from another institution, which then presumably gets less funding, or has to buy its own academics... It's just like Season 3 of The Wire. I have of course written to David Simon suggesting he take the subject up. I expect he'll get to it when he's finished with New Orleans.]
But
of course this is a contentious point of view, and
of course it counts as a 'message'. For instance, if you look at
The Thick of It and
In the Loop (and, presumably,
Veep), you'll see a vision of political corruption which, rather than focusing on the bad moral decisions made by powerful figures, tends to emphasise incompetence: ultimately, a lot of the bad stuff in these shows happens because the people involved are just not very good at their jobs. This isn't really an issue
The Wire foregrounds, except briefly with Prez's early days on the force, and perhaps also with figures like Burrell and Herc. Simon's ideology is a much more optimistic one, in that by focusing on moral choice he insists that change is possible - these powerful figures are capable of doing the right thing, they just choose not to. To focus on ineptitude instead is far more cynical, pessimistic, and arguably apathetic and lazy, since it suggests that there isn't really a solution to the problem. As Ianucci might say, 'we're all twats', and there's not a lot we can do about that. It's probably because I'm apathetic and lazy myself that I incline more to this point of view, but I do suspect that a lot of 'social evils' result more from the actions of people who are just not capable of doing their jobs well than from merely self-serving behaviour.
[Again, this is something I find myself helplessly observing more and more as I get older; especially in the last year or two, I've been beset on all sides by universities, banks, housing associations and, quite frankly, family members, who are just too irredeemably inept not to fuck up absolutely every little thing they do.]
Beyond that, if you think it's an objective and uncontested fact that institutions fail individuals and communities, or even that the government fucked up over New Orleans, you must be ignoring a vast number of people who would contest both these things. I can't/won't speak to the situation in America... But I know someone (here in the U.K.) who works for the police, and vividly remember talking to him about
The Wire (he's a fan) when I was nearing the end of Season 1. I was saying how shocked and upset I was by the death - especially the manner of the death - of a certain character, and this guy responded by saying 'Why? He was a scumbag drug-dealer.' This man is an avid Daily Mail reader; as far as he's concerned, anyone who sympathises with criminals and talks about them as though they were victims of circumstance is 'a commie Guardian reader'. (To be fair to him, he's not being totally un-ironic when he says stuff like this, and in practice, most of the time, I think he's a fairly good and sympathetic person. But it was an interesting, and short, conversation.)
Or, to give a better example, consider the riots we had here last summer. Amid all the media noise that followed, the only voices that made sense to me were the ones saying that, well, of course the so-called 'underclasses' (and not just them) were rioting, given that these days they have 'no real stake in society'. But for a lot of people, the incident simply showed how little respect the youth of today have for authority. Are those people simply wrong? Is it helpful to insist that my own point of view is simply right?
The University of Birmingham has now responded by setting up a 'Jubilee Centre for Character and Values', apparently aimed at fostering gratitude in the populace - Gratitude Britain is the phrase they've been rather hesitantly pushing. Gratitude for what? When I was reading about it the other day the whole thing seemed to have been set up by conservative Christians, mostly old white men from the House of Lords; I'm finding it hard to locate this information now. They're talking about the failure of institutions to set a good example, but I get the feeling this enterprise is designed by and for people who think that 'Honour thy father and mother' is the most important commandment. (I've always thought Moses could have saved us all a lot of trouble if he'd scraped 'Thou shalt not fuck up thy children' onto the tablet on his way down the mountain.)
Anyway, my convoluted point is that the vision of society
The Wire presents is not objective, uncontested fact, it's an interpretation. Given the prevalence and power of conservative views that would contest his vision, it's not surprising that David Simon occasionally sacrifices authenticity for the sake of the message (there's some interesting discussion on this very point on p. 3 of this thread). The characters and their stories are all geared towards proving a point - a complex one, and one that I sympathise with, but not by any means the only available and legitimate one. I brought all this into the discussion of
The Defiant Ones because I think that too is a film convinced that the importance of its message warrants a few sacrifices on the level of authenticity and artistic quality.
The Wire, you might say, simply does a better job of balancing message, authenticity and quality - and it does - but I think it also has an urgency and relevance for our time which makes it easier for us to get on board. Your own view that its 'message' is simply 'the truth' is proof of that.
As for
Treme, you're absolutely right, and I did post at much greater length about it (and in particular the complexities of Goodman's character) on
the relevant thread. The complications worked into that character, in my view, only accentuate the show's didactic awkwardness. Still, it made me stop and think, which I suppose is a good thing.
On a more trivial note, I've found that watching
The Wire has an unfortunate side-effect. My wife is a connoisseur of bad movies, and almost every time she sticks one on, I see familiar faces. With dismay. There's Maurice Levy in
Liar Liar! There's McNulty in
Mona Lisa Smile! There's Frank Sobotka in
Fools Rush In! Carver in
Did You Hear About the Morgans?! Bunk in
It Could Happen to You! Lester Freamon in
Notting Hill!
It's a kind of Hell.
