Race on The Wire: a metacritical account

Abstract

This article draws on critical responses to The Wire as a way of reflecting on how race is reproduced. It focuses on how calls for better stories and images on television are not reconciled with the ontological distinction between representation and reality and the fact that there is no unitary racialised subject to represent and looks at how a narrow set of racialised relations are invoked to explain interpretations of black culture, despite a more complex set of viewing positions and practices. It argues that rather than the erasure of race becoming more prevalent, normative racialised assumptions and narrow conceptions of subject and viewing positions continue to inflect commentary about popular culture. It also proposes that the achievement and cultural value of The Wire exemplify a shift in the way stories are constructed in the contemporary media landscape from linear, morally prescriptive narratives to complex, morally ambiguous accounts of social worlds. In doing so, the politics of representation and thus how appetites for complex narratives and characters are being attended to by shows like The Wire become more visible without invoking race as the final arbiter of authentic storytelling.

Keywords:

• representation
• racialisation
• post-race
• television

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. The Wire is a television drama that uses a police investigation of a West Baltimore drugs network to illustrate how the dynamics of social and political institutions (and their failings) create the context for urban decay and social disadvantage. Over the course of five seasons, a complicated, hard-hitting account of life in Baltimore dramatically unfolds. The first season focuses on the police investigation of the drugs in West Baltimore, and from here, the story extends beyond the experiences and activities of the police, dealers and drug users to other inextricable dimensions of Baltimore life throughout the following seasons. From what appears, therefore, to be a drama focusing on the policing of drug dealing/use and related criminal activity, unfolds a complex story tracing the cultural, educational, financial, legal, political and social dimensions of everyday life for Baltimore’s citizens and public officials and the institutions they are operating within.

2. HBO refers to a premium cable and satellite channel that started in the 1970s and is responsible for some of the more recent ground-breaking drama and comedy to emerge from the USA receiving widespread critical acclaim.

3. The Black and White Minstrel Show was a British light-entertainment show from 1958 to 1978. The show typically presented traditional American music hall, minstrel and country songs, but the white performers themselves were ‘blacked up’ and portrayed black characters in a stereotypically racist way. Mind Your Language was a British comedy show that aired from 1977 to 1979 and was set in an adult education college centring on foreigners taking English language classes. The show was dependant on the reproduction and circulation of stereotypes.

4. Sudhir Venkatesh, for instance, sought to examine whether ‘real life thugs’ believed The Wire was authentic by watching episodes of Season 2 with “a group of high ranking gang leaders/drug dealers in Chicago” (Venkatesh, cited in Dubner, 2007) and Season 5 of the show with a number of former criminals (mostly drug dealers) in New York.

5. A scene in Season 3, Episode 5 in The Wire illustrates how racial stereotypes are deployed and undermined through the narrative, whilst simultaneously highlighting the constructed nature of the idea of race. The scene depicts one of the routine short-cons used by Bubbles and his friend Johnny Weeks to secure money to buy heroin. When choosing the role to play in their con, which involves one of them shaking a ladder upon which a workman is standing whilst the other comes to his rescue by chasing the “crazed” drug addict away, Bubbles says, “I’ll be the bad guy, let’s not confuse this white man”. Thus, the way to ensure that the con will work is to satisfy stereotypical expectations associated with racial binaries of black and white. Hence, Bubbles plays the threatening character because he is black and the role of the helpful bystander is played by Johnny as he is white. The viewer has the opportunity to observe how racial stereotypes are dispassionately deployed for a specific purpose, whilst at the same time, they are reminded of the social constructedness and moral assumptions associated with race categories.

6. Thanks to Ben Pitcher also for his constructive comments on an earlier draft.