“The Wire” Was Ahead of It’s Time (Part 1)

Note: I am not finished with the entirety of The Wire. Currently I am on season four, episode seven. Why do I love television so much? Because it’s story telling with words and images that is the same every time, there is no variation, there is no retelling, it is the one time presented, and you can analyze it over and over again. It’s not like oral stories passed on, the story itself remains the same but the significance changes over time. It is filmed in one era but can be viewed in another, making the experience different. The technological and anthropological significance of television is one that is truly intellectually underrated.

The Wire might be one of the most bad-ass, gritty, and provocative television series off all time that was not only revolutionary for it’s time, but the social concepts explored in The Wire continue to be possibly more relevant today than at the time of it’s broadcast during 2002 to 2008. The early millennial had not socially approached it’s next revolutionary epoch in America, the likes of which we are seeing in the next wave of liberation movements (gay rights, the fight for racial equality, a focused discussion on what modern feminism is), most likely because Bush was in office and everyone was really patriotic because of the post 9/11 environment and focused on several international wars we had going on. From a national perspective with white Americans in charge, there wasn’t a lot of time to talk about race. So unfortunately for The Wire, while it was critically acclaimed and an arguable work of television perfection, was praised and watched, but the saturated racial environment explored by The Wire wasn’t raw like it is now.

Flash forward, and under our first black President, a barrage of social changes are accomplished. Gay marriage is legal in 36 states, marijuana is fully recreational under one state and medicinally available in 23 states in some form, and there is a frank national conversation about how rape victims are treated in this country from a non-male solipsistic perspective. Granted, this did not all occur at once under President Obama (gay marriage and medicinal marijuana were “a thing” before his administration though clearly the ability of both those movements to gain momentum forward increased dramatically under Obama), but the more liberalized political and cultural environment and clearly brought changes.

However, as a nation, we are seeing a discussion on race relations that still has the ugly unsettled undercurrents and full swirl tsunamis of white supremacy and hatred against non-whites that pervades in the hearts of some in this country. With all footsteps forward come backlashes, and as everyone knows the scope and breadth of hatred is long-winded. Ferguson was a national tragedy, disaster, and embarrassment to justice. It also caused Chris Rock to make one of the funniest jokes I have ever heard concerning how social relations now function in the new cyber world, “I found a new app to tell which one of your friends is a racist. It’s called Facebook”, referring to the number of pro-Wilson sentiments that many white Americans were exposing, some in the process exposing the ugliness and irrationality of their racist thoughts. Indeed, I defriended at least two people as a result of their hateful racism displayed on my Facebook feed.

Back to The Wire, the first season is pure gold. I am a cinema and television junkie, and The Wire proved so masterful in it’s story telling, character building, and plot development, that the next seasons unfortunately haven’t captured the same gold shine, though they do gleam as works of the most advanced and rich television series to date. However, the rest of the seasons are not without merit. The first season is a work of drugs, sex, money, power, politics, and what lays beyond the veil of civilized and polite company. The rest of the seasons tell the tale of how it gets to be that way, and unfortunately some of the sexiness wears off. Season Four is spent examining the broken lives of Baltimore’s children, hardly a “sexy” topic and nor should it be, but one of incredible seriousness that shows the generational impact of times that came before a person was born.

John Rawls is considered a father of “liberal contractionalism”, or the philosophical concept that all human beings have an inherent obligation to one another by virtue of being human. On your first day in Philosophy 101 class in college, you are taught Rawl’s “Veil of Ignorance”, a mind exercise that asks the person to erase any and all concepts of identity. Pretend that there is no civilization, you have no identity, and you don’t know the significance of any identity characteristics behind “the veil”. Now, while you’re behind this veil, you create what you want society to look like.

Is it based on your identity characteristics, and which ones, and why, and for what reason, and how?

Most likely you would say something along the lines of an equal society, because human beings are by virtue, of merit in and of themselves.

What this equal society looks like, is up to your imagination. But remember, when the veil is lifted and you are in a wheelchair, without physical beauty, of the ethnic group out of favor, and of a limited economic status, do you want to be considered of less value than a physically beautiful able bodied person who is part of the majority ethnic group with a lot of disposable income? Remember now, you didn’t know your identity and what it meant under the veil. You were just asked what equal treatment of human beings looks like.

After The Wire runs us into the underworld, introduces us to where political contributions come from in inner city urban areas, what people do when they are put in potentially deadly environments, and a healthy swig of cop culture, it brings us to what happens to the children when they grow up in this environment. And this is what America was not ready for ten years ago, an examination of what police violence, racial tension, economic degradation, illegal drug markets and poor understanding and treatment of people living with addiction can psychologically wreck on children.

Ol Dirty Bastard of the Wu Tang Clan, one of the greatest hip-hop groups to help tell the struggle of the African-American identity and experience in inner city America, once said “Wu Tang is for the Children!”. Most people rarely understood the extreme wisdom of this rambling man, and what he meant was, us, the Wu Tang, we tell the truth. The truth, what you let children know and how you let them know it, is how they know the world. Wu Tang wasn’t about lying to the children, it was about enlightening them to the harsh reality with their story-telling.

In Part II, I hope to offer an analysis of why America needs to rewatch The Wire in order to pull away our veil of ignorance. 

The Legal Cyborg

Disappeared

Unless you’ve been sleeping under a rock or in the mountains without an internet connection, you know all about the hot fuss (rightly) made about the young girls stolen from their schools in Nigeria by the terrorist group Boko Haram.

The #bringourgirlsback hashtag (I know writing out hashtag is redundant, but bear with me for a moment) is a really noble effort to raise awareness about an absolutely grave human rights atrocity by people with limited ability to right a horrible wrong. We should all be horrified that there are men out there who feel  that stealing girls who are in the midst of puberty, or younger, and making them child-brides and find that act disgusting. Absolutely, Boko Harem should be placed on international terrorist watch lists (thanks for coming late to that game, Hilary) and lets all hope the Nigerian government properly allocates the foreign aid it is receiving to fighting Boko Harem.

But those girls aren’t coming back.

Apparently I’m really excited about examining cyber realities, with the last post about how shameful Facebook should find itself over allowing a marine’s suicide photos to stay up, and how birthdays are impacted by social media. This cyber reality, using hashtags on Twitter, Facebook statuses, and other forms of social media to raise awareness about a very serious political issue is an ongoing one with real implications for the real world. On one end of the spectrum, the world witnessed massive social organization with the Arab Spring revolutionary movements aided by the use of cyber networking. On the opposite end of the spectrum is something called “Slactivism” , of which #bringourgirlsback qualifies when used by people like Michelle Obama and Hilary Clinton. Usually, Slactivism is something which ordinary people are accused of engaging in. However, I feel Hilary and Michelle’s actions qualify as slactivism in this case.

Did it make you feel warm and fuzzy when Michelle Obama tweeted this photo? I mean look at her face! She is so super sad about this, that pout and those tragic eyes. Did it move you when Hilary Clinton tweeted
Gee whiz, Hil, really makin’ a statement there.

I’m rolling my eyes while I hold in a silent scream.

How about stop trying to make it look like you care about these girls? How about stop trying to co-opt on the pain of mothers and grandmothers and aunts whose loved young girls are being raped right now by crazy religious nuts? How about you admit that the United States doesn’t really care about certain nations, certain people, and that the only reason you are appearing to care is because you would look like really insensitive jerks if you didn’t (which may be a more accurate reality)? How about you don’t do what Facebookers do by posting a link and feeling like you’ve had a political impact on the world? You both actually have power but it isn’t being used to help these girls. Your power is being used to make it appear as though you care.

Sure, America is giving the Nigerian foreign aid due to this issue. Maybe Boko Harem’s power will lessen and some of them will be imprisoned, and maybe I will be proven wrong and some of these girls will be “brought back”. I’d really like to be wrong on this issue.

It isn’t necessarily “bad” that Slactivism exists, or that Michelle tweeted that photo, or that Hilary commented on a human right’s atrocity via a social media network. But we should recognize the construction of a cyber reality versus the actual attention paid to an issue before it becomes a phenomenon. These politicians with political power issuing by a statement on a social media network are jumping on a popular bandwagon to avoid looking like insensitive jerks. My favorite political scientist, E.E. Schattschneider, essentially proved this point with is publication The Semi-Soverign People. Politicians are suspect and their motivations are rarely pure. In all honesty, I think the average people who commented #bringourbirlsback collectively in the cyber world had more significant political actions than Hilary and Michelle’s questionably sincere tweets. #Bringourgirlsback was started in a desperate effort to get people like Hilary and Michelle to act before it was too late. Those people were sincere, and had very little power. But it probably was too late by the time the United States acted. Instead of trying to save face on social media, maybe be a little more sincere about why Nigeria isn’t a nation that concerns the United States too often.

Cyber Reality

Today is my birthday, and like most millennials, the highlight of having a birthday is seeing how many Facebook posts you get wishing you well and from whom. Before, in the old days I’m going to assume that people called you for your birthday, but now we display publicly how popular we are via social media.

My Facebook page hasn’t depicted my life in pictures in recent years for a number of reasons. I’d like to hope that a lot of that reason has been due to my being more mature, but some of it is due to lifestyle (a vague statement I know but I’m not willing the expand on it). Some of my friends, both actual people I maintain friendships with in real life (IRL) and pure cyber acquaintances, have actively taken up documenting their life through Facebook. I did this in college, when the most exciting thing aside from partying was the hungover morning after the party where we got to see the (and remember) the crazy shit we did and if we looked good while doing it. A bonding experience for the millennial tribe.

By all accounts, this is perhaps the most attractive photo of me ever taken from a night of partying,

Obviously I was being facetious, because my god what drugs was I on to make that face?! (Just alcohol, kids!) This is what I actually looked like that night

There have been a few studies, such as this one about the impact social media can have on us. This study focused on teens, people who will grow up not knowing what it is like to be constantly connected via the internet (unless they are part of an off-the grid family), but I know that sometimes gazing at Facebook when I’m feeling less than stellar about the state of my life has made me feel more sad. It creates a veil of sorts, the appearance of a life lived versus the private reality of the individual who lives that life. Sometime you have that friend who shares posts about their depression or goes on rants about their bad day, to which they are a few. But like the contrast between those two pictures, what the essentialist quality of something (my face) and what something appears through distortion (my face on alcohol and silliness) are two separate realities. Cyber reality fuses the essentialist quality and the distortion effect to create cyborg personalities. My personality on Facebook, this blog, and my two Tumblrs (one about graffiti and one about pornography) are cyborg personalities that I have crafted (sometimes consciously, sometimes absent reflection) that are personas, mirrors of my IRL (in real life) personality. Am I the person I am on the web? Yes and no. Are both those pictures of my face? Yes and no.

I wonder what kind of impact growing up in the internet age is going to have on young people. I do not have children, but I do wonder how I would constructively deal with omnipresent technology and what the best limits would be for children. I wonder if this will change how humans interact with each other on a longer term scale when the people who were not raised in cyber technology die out.

May I be so blessed to have more birthdays to find out.