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Prof. Linda Williams
Spring 2010
Film Studies 108; Rhetoric 119
What's So Great about The Wire?
"But to tell the truth, I no longer watch many films, only those by friends or curiosities that an American acquaintance tapes for me on TCM. . . . I feed my hunger for fiction with what is by far the most accomplished source: those terrific American TV series like Deadwood, Firefly, or The Wire . . . There is a knowledge in them, a sense of story and economy, of ellipses, a science of framing and of cutting, a dramaturgy, and an acting style that has no equal anywhere, and certainly not in Hollywood."
Chris Marker
Discerning critics and avid fans have agreed that the five-season run of Ed Burns and David Simon's The Wire was "the best TV show ever broadcast in America"--not the most popular but the best. But what exactly is this portrait of Baltimore as seen through six distinct but interrelated institutions: police, drugs, the docks, city government, public schools and newspaper--the media that reports, or fails to report, on all the others? The 60 hours that comprise this episodic series have been compared to Dickens, Balzac, Dreiser and Greek Tragedy. Such comparisons attempt to get at the social complexity of the series, its depth, its bleak tapestry of a decaying American city, its diverse social and racial stratifications and its sense of "fate." Though valuable, none of these comparisons quite nails what it is that made this the most compelling "show" on TV and better than many of the best movies. This class will attempt to understand what is special about this series that grapples with the institutional totality of what ails contemporary America, most importantly a failure of justice that transcends a "law and order" or "CSI" context. Looking especially at the first, third, fourth and fifth seasons, and at their journalistic, novelistic, dramatic and televisual roots, this class will dig deep into the question: What's so great about The Wire?
It is not possible for us to screen all 60 hours of this series in our two hours of screening allotted each week. A set of the entire series is available for viewing (but not for taking out) at the MRC and I will happily lend individual disks for preparing sequence analyses. We will usually screen two episodes a week and those screened episodes will be the main substance, along with reading and lectures, for our discussions on Thursdays. Occasionally I will excerpt episodes in order to squeeze more of them into allotted screening time. In class we will screen most of season one, almost none of season two, most of season three and four and only a few episodes of season 5. You are strongly encouraged to watch all five seasons, especially the season and episodes we will skip, on your own.
Format and policies: I will lecture on Tuesdays and then we will screen two episodes. Thursdays I will only briefly lecture and most of the class will consist of discussion of readings, lecture and screenings for that week. Since we are on a very tight screening schedule all classes will begin promptly at ten after the hour. Please know that no food or drink (besides water) is allowed in the classroom. No late assignments will be accepted.
Requirements: a collectively written and orally delivered book report with hand-outs and/or visual aids on either Homicide or The Corner (15%); a very short sequence-analysis from an episode of The Wire, delivered in small groups (15%); a midterm (25%); a final paper (25%); class participation (attendance and quality and quantity of your total contribution to class discussion: 10%); summary reaction (quality and quantity of contribution to class discussion on one assigned day 10%).
Required Reading: All books are for sale in bookstore and on reserve in Moffit; Course Reader (R) is available at Replica Copy, 2140 Oxford. Please buy it now!
Tiffany Potter, C.W. Marshall, eds. The Wire: Urban Decay and American Television (New York: Continuum, 2009).
David Simon, Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets (New York: Holt, 1991, 2006)--one half of class reads this.
David Simon and Ed Burns, The Corner: A Year in the Life of an Inner-City Neighborhood (New York: Broadway Books, 1997)--other half of class reads this.
Recommended Reading: Mark Leverette, et al, It's Not TV: Watching HBO in the Post-television Era ; Gary Edgerton and Jeffrey Jones, The Essential HBO Reader; Richard Price, Clockers; Charles Dickens, Bleak House; on reserve in Moffit. Aeschylus, The Oresteia. See also (posted on b-space): Selected Bibliography to be used for researching your papers.
Recommended Screening: Spike Lee, Clockers; BBC Bleak House (2005);Steven Soderberg Traffic, Barry Levinson prod. Homicide: Life on the Street (NBC 2003), The Corner (HBO 2003)
Useful websites:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_The_Wire_episodes (credits and summaries)
http://www.slate.com/id/2181449/entry/2181450/--- http://www.hbo.com/thewire/episode/season1/episode01.shtml
http://www.viceland.com/int/v16n12/htdocs/david-simon-280.php
http://www.movingimagesource.us/articles/extra-credit-part-1-20080728
http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/01/09/what-do-real-thugs-think-of-the-wire/
http://blogs.blackvoices.com/2008/01/03/andre-royo-dishes-dirt-about-the-wire/
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/personal-view/6089733/Whats-The-Wire-got-to-do-with-us.html
Syllabus
What's So Great about The Wire?
1/19 Introduction
Screen: 1.1 "The Target"; 1.2 "The Detail"
Sign up for either Homicide or The Corner
1/21 Read: David Simon, "Introduction" and "Letter to HBO" (R)
Marsha Kinder, "Re-Wiring Baltimore: The Emotive Power of Systemics,
Seriality, and the City" (R).
1/26 What Beast is This?
Read: In Potter, Potter and Marshall, "'I am the American Dream': Modern Urban
Tragedy and the Borders of Fiction"
Screen: 1.3 "The Buys"; 1.4 "Old Cases"
1/28 Read: Andrew Dignan, "The Wire and the Art of the Credit Sequence" (R)
Sequence analysis for credit sequence and part of 1.4 "Old Cases"
Brief meeting near end of class with groups for next week's presentations
How The Wire Grew
2/2 Read: Homicide (pp. 1-343 and pp 400-414, 459-509. Or The Corner ("Winter" pp.
1-182; "Spring" pp. 198-212; pp.221-236; 360-390; "Epilogue" pp.521-543
depending on which group you joined)
Screen: 1.6 "The Wire," 1.7 "One Arrest"
2/4 Group presentations on Homicide and/or The Corner
2/9 Read: Lawrence Lanahan, "Secrets of the City: What The Wire reveals about
urban journalism" (R):
Screen: 1.9 "Game Day," 1.10 "The Cost" (excerpt), 1.12 "Clean Up" (excerpt)
2/11 What ends? What continues? The End of a Season. Excerpts from 1/13
[Jimmy and Rhonda in parking lot; D'Angelo and Briona reversal; last 5 minutes]
First summary reaction day
"It's not TV..."
2/16 Seriality, Televisuality, HBO, the Missing Season
Read: Gary Edgerton, "A Brief History of HBO"
Jeffrey Sconce, "What If? Charting Television's New Textual Boundaries
Recommended: Avi Santo, "Para Television and Discourses of Distinction"
Screen: 3.1 "Time after Time," 3.2 "All Due Respect" [note new writers
getting into the series 3/2 is Richard Price--3.3. will be Dennis Lahane
2/18 Read: in Potter, Ted Nannicelli, "It's All Connected: Televisual Narrative
Complexity"
Guest lecture by Jen Malkowski; no summary reactions
2/23 The "classicism" of The Wire
Read: Dana Polan, "Getting High with the Sopranos" (R) on The Sopranos
Michael Newman, "From Beats to Arcs: Toward a Poetics of Television Narrative"
(R)
Screen: 3.3 "Dead Soldiers" (second half) 3.4 "Hamsterdam" (all)
2/25 Read: Christopher Anderson, "Producing an Aristocracy of Culture in American
Television" (R)
Second day of summary-reactions
Surveillance
3/2 Why The Wire is Called The Wire
Read: in Potter, McMillan "Heroism, Institutions, and the Police Procedural"
Screen: 3.6 "Homecoming," 3.8 "Moral Midgetry"
Recommended: in Potter, "Dislocating America: Agnieszka Holland Directs
'Moral Midgetry'"
3/4 Read: in Potter, Ryan Brooks, "The Narrative Production of 'Real Police'"
and Peter Clandfield,"We ain't got no yard": Crime, Development and Urban
Environment"
Recommended: in Potter, David Alff, "Yesterday's Tomorrow Today: Baltimore
and the Promise of Reform"
Prompt for midterm passed out
Third day of summary-reactions
3/9 Screen: 3.9 "Slapstick" (excerpts) 3.10 "Reformation," 3.11 "Middle Ground"
3/11 Midterm Exam
Trageo-Drama
3/16 Lecture: Tragic Endings, Melodramatic Homecomings
Screen: Segments of 3.12, segments of 2.12
Read: in Potter, "'The Dickensian Aspect': Viewer Engagement, and the Socially
Conscious Text"
3/18 Read: Blake Ethridge, "Baltimore on The Wire: The tragic moralism of David
Simon" (R)
Fourth day of summary-reactions
Pass out possible paper topics
3/23-3/26 Spring Break. Formulate paper topics.
"Schoolin'"
3/30 Lecture: What is Education in The Wire?
Screen: 4.1 "Boys of Summer," 4.3 "Home Rooms"
Read: "After the Towers Fell: Bodie Broadus and the Space of Memory"
Paper Prospectuses Due
4/1 Guest lecture: Mark Berger: "Sound in The Wire"
4/6 Who Learns? Who Doesn't? Screen: 4.4 "Refugees," 4.5 "Alliances"
4/8 Screen: 4.8 "Corner Boys," [just the "special class" discussion] 4.10 "Misgivings"
Read: Michael Newman, "From Beats to Arcs: Toward a Poetics of Television
Narrative"
4.11 "A New Day," ["cold opening" and second half]
Fifth day of summary-reactions
4/13 Omar
Read: Eric Beck, ""Respecting the Middle: The Wire's Omar Little as Neoliberal
Subjectivity" (on b-Space)
Screen: 4.12 "That's Got His Own," 4.13 "Final Grades"
4/15 Read: in Potter, Beliveau and Bolf-Beliveau,"Posing Problems and Picking Fights:
Critical Pedagogy and the Corner Boys"
Discussion of Season 4
Sixth day of summary-reactions
Researching The Wire
4/20 Screen: 5.1 "More with Less," 5.7 "Took"
Conferences about papers (be sure you are signed up this day or 4/22)
4/22 Segment Analyses Season 1, 2, 3
Conferences on papers continued
4/27 Home Sweet Baltimore
Screen: 5.7 "Took," 5.9 "Late Editions"
4/29 Segment Analyses Seasons 3, 4, 5
5/4 Screen: 5.10 "-30-"
5/6 Conclusion and discussion of final papers
Final papers due May 14
Professor Linda Williams
Film Studies 108; Rhetoric 119
What's So Great about The Wire?
David Simon, "Introduction" and "Letter to HBO." Raphael Alvarez. The Wire:
Truth Be Told. New York: Pocket Books, 2004.
Marsha Kinder, "Re-Wiring Baltimore: The Emotive Power of Systemics,
Seriality, and the City." Film Quarterly 62.2.
Andrew Dignan, "The Wire and the Art of the Credit Sequence."
Lawrence Lanahan, "Secrets of the City: What The Wire reveals about
urban journalism." Columbia Journalism Review. January/February 2008.
Gary Edgerton, "A Brief History of HBO." The Essential HBO Reader. Eds. Gary
Edgerton, Jeffrey Jones. Kentucky, Kentucky University Press, 2008.
Jeffrey Sconce, "What If? Charting Television's New Textual Boundaries." Television
after TV: Essays on a Medium in Transition. Eds. Lynn Spigel and Jan Olsson.
Durham: Duke, 2004.
Dana Polan, "Getting High with the Sopranos." The Sopranos. Durham: Duke, 2009.
Michael Newman, "From Beats to Arcs: Toward a Poetics of Television Narrative." the Velvet Light Trap. 58, Fall 2006.
Christopher Anderson, "Producing an Aristocracy of Culture in American
Television." The Essential HBO Reader. Eds. Gary Edgerton, Jeffrey Jones.
Kentucky, Kentucky University Press, 2008.
Blake Ethridge, "Baltimore on The Wire: The Tragic Moralism of David
Simon" It's Not TV: Watching HBO in the Post-television Era. Marc Leverette et
al eds. New York: Routledge, 2008