European Journal of American Culture - Volume 34, Issue 3, 2015

This article responds to the numerous comparisons between The Wire and realist or naturalist novels. It argues that The Wire’s mimetic qualities depict many of the problems facing Baltimore and, by extension, neo-liberal America. However, it argues that the show does not just articulate complaints, but also proposes solutions, and that these solutions can be identified through two other concepts associated with the novel: polyphony and minor literature. The article uses Mikhail Bakhtin’s concept of polyphony to examine that way that different voices compete and interact in the series, but notes that, where the relationship between discourses remains conflictual, long-lasting or fundamental change remains unlikely. The article suggests that where more significant change does take place is through the creation of the collective voices associated with Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s concept of minor literature.

David Simon’s The Wire (2002–2008) focuses on Baltimore, Maryland, an American city hollowed out by the globalized economy. Simon, drawing from Harvard sociologist William Julius Wilson, portrays a city where the economy has left behind blue collar workers who are trained for jobs that no longer exist. These workers, in Simon’s view, do not have a place in a post-industrial economy. This view is challenged when confronted with Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri’s conception of immaterial production. Under this economic model, the urban poor are responsible for creating an immaterial social product that is then expropriated by David Simon for The Wire.

Drawing upon theories of aesthetic realism, this article argues that The Wire develops a tension between the kind of representative typicality characteristic of realism and the exchangeability of labourers and goods in a capitalist system. By developing this tension, The Wire offers a nuanced critique of the ways in which capitalism renders individuals and geographical places as interchangeable placeholders, like pawns in a game of chess. The Wire’s use of realism retains the individualism of person and place, even as these figures represent something more than themselves in the fictional space of the show. I conclude by arguing that The Wire’s realism is mingled with an affective sentimentality associated with the idea of Baltimore.

The Wire: Race, Class and Genre, Liam Kennedy and Stephen Shapiro (eds) (2012) Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 312 pp., ISBN: 9780472071784, h/bk, $75.00 US; ISBN: 9780472051786, p/bk, $30.95 US

The Wire: Urban Decay and American Television, Tiffany Potter and C. W. Marshall (eds) (2009) New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 264 pp., ISBN: 9780826438041, p/bk, $34.95 US

On The Wire, Linda Williams (2014) Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 280 pp., ISBN: 9780822357179, p/bk, $23.95 US