The Wire part 2

I’ve taken more than the week mentioned in my previous post to formulate my thoughts, but that’s what happens in the final months of a graduate degree. Or it did in mine.

The main thing weighing on my mind regarding The Wire, and TV in general, is people’s false belief in the “reality” of TV shows. The word “reality” is thrown around so carelessly, and as far as I can tell, it’s taken quite literally. When a person hears a TV critic or a fellow TV watcher describing a show as “realistic,” they take it to mean that what they see on the screen is reality. Now of course I know there is a separation for people between what they see on the TV and what they experience in actual life (or at least I hope it’s still there for most of us), but the current use of the word “reality,” and the seemingly hell-bent aim of show and film producers to achieve that end has blasted massive chunks out of that wall. 

This applies to The Wire in a most dangerous way. People who live everywhere but the ghettos of Baltimore, or places like it, get to visit the place for an hour at a time. They get to see what drug dealers and addicts look like. They get to hear the lingo. They get to hang on the corner, flex their muscles at their rivals, and evade or stand up to the police. But after they switch off the TV, they look out their window at the quiet suburban cul-de-sac lined with BMWs, Mercedes, and Lexuses. They look out their window at the rolling fields of corn that are due to harvest soon. They look out their penthouse apartment at streets chaotic not because of the drug trade but because of urban traffic and the excesses of capitalism. The point being that this “realistic” TV show is not reality at all. Perhaps we can say that shows like The Wire attempt to mirror reality as much as it can. OK, I can accept that. But even that demands consideration.

Shows like The Wire play on two things: your sense of realism and your imagination. The sense of realism is tricky. How do we know what we’re watching is real? I’m not trying to get into some silly pseudo-existential discussion about the nature of reality, but something more practical. I don’t live in a neighborhood like those depicted on The Wire. I’ve been to them, and I’ve seen drug deals, but I’ve never seen anyone shot. I’ve never seen anyone OD. I’ve never seen on a daily basis the excessive hopelessness that poverty, drugs, and violence bring. So how do I know that what I’m seeing is realistic? If I was able to purge my memory of every TV show, movie, book, magazine, newspaper article, and every other exposure to issues dealt with in The Wire which I haven’t personally experienced, what would I think of the show? Would I think it was some horror story set in the future intending to correct a nascent societal ill? Or would I think that whoever created this show is just a very troubled individual?

I can be more precise here. There is a distinct difference between a story told as pure imagination and one that attempts to deal with real issues. For example, CSI. The crime solving methods used on that show are not real. Many are impossible. But it makes for good entertainment. No one (hopefully) watches that show and thinks the police man in the patrol car that passed them on the highway that afternoon is out using the same methods, procedures, or equipment used on the show. On the other hand, The Wire. The Wire attempts to address the ills of urban America, taking a look at them from various points of view (of the people responsible for creating them, and those for solving them. Often the same, by the way). Is this a significant component of a definition of reality?

If it is, we’re in trouble. Because even though there is a definite difference between the two shows above, that difference lends authenticity to the one that is more realistic. One of the main characters in the series is Avon Barksdale. Season 1 focuses on him as the major drug dealer in Baltimore. I liked him. Here’s a character who sold drugs to whoever, causing and perpetuating crime, death, broken families, lost potential, and on and on, and maintained his empire through violence in the midst of a neighborhood full of innocents, and I was disappointed when he went to jail and thus exited the story line. I wanted to see this guy. I wanted to see this mini dictator lording over his empire with style and fear. I wanted to hear him worry about a potential problem and order it fixed with murder. I assure you I don’t feel this way about the real Avon Barksdales of the world. When I read in the newspaper about a drug kingpin who has finally met his fate, I’ll admit I’m fascinated, but I’m happy he’s dead or in jail for a long period of time because there’s nothing entertaining or satisfactory about the realities of drugs. So by lending authenticity to a story that tries to address real issues, we’re allowing entertainment to mix with reality and our perception becomes warped. We accept the Avon Barksdales of the world when in fact they should be publicly hanged.

This leads us to our imaginations. The human imagination is a powerful, beautiful thing. Since I’m discussing The Wire here, I’m focusing on visual forms of media. A TV show or a movie demands less of the audience’s imagination than something one reads. When you watch a show or movie, you are ingesting the product of one person’s imagination (or more than one on collaborations, which I suppose all shows and movies are). Think of a time you saw a movie based on a book you read. Most of the time the movie is vastly different than what you had in mind. You’re merely consuming what one person saw, and your powerful imagination lies stagnant. But this lack of use doesn’t mean it is completely stagnant. Something as powerful as the human imagination never sleeps. What fills the imaginational gap as we watch a TV or show, instead of creating, is a false sense of placement. We place ourselves into this world imagined by one person. I can become Avon Barksdale. I can lament the fact that a rival gang is infringing on my profits, and I can order my muscle to go deal with it. I can bask in the glory of that power. I can flex my muscles in the comfort of my couch as the birds chirp outside and little children play in the street without fear of Avon Barksdale’s muscle spraying the street with bullets in an attempt to gun one person down. This is the essence of unreality. I am not Avon Barksdale. I do not, can not, and will not sell drugs or murder people. But because I’ve tapped into the imagination of one person brought to full “reality” by the magic of electrons bouncing off crystals of gas ( I think that’s how this new TV I bought works. For all I know it’s Devil’s magic), I can be anyone I want. Or even worse, I can think I know something about the realities of the world, especially the unsavory ones I don’t ever have to deal with. It’s false knowledge, and it is so powerful, it sucks someone like me – someone who is deeply troubled by the thrill I feel at watching drug dealing, violence, and poverty – into it’s invisible, but all too real, grip.

Wherein Failure’s Effect is Not My Cause

It begins the night before.

9:00 p.m. Fall asleep like an exhausted soldier after a tenacious battle. I normally fall asleep somewhere around midnight, usually after. Not sure why I fell asleep so early. Weekend tomfoolery catching up to me; exhaustion from the day? I cast all these aside and label myself an old pussy.

6:00 a.m. Wake up, regrettably. Late, unregrettably. Rush to find something to wear, make lunch, gather computer, clothes for practice, and example of a project I assigned.

6:32 – 7:20 a.m. Drive 35 miles. Sit in roughly six miles of traffic. A normal day on the road. Listen to the news on the radio about how the world has already ended, but as some cruel joke, still continues to spin. Listen to music: “You can’t go around just saying stuff because it’s pretty/ And I no longer drink enough to think you’re witty.”

7:20 a.m. Five minutes late to work. No one notices or cares.

7:20 – 7:50 a.m. (Brief chronological note: Perhaps because the world has already ended, the school I work at is the epicenter of the world’s demise, or systemic apathy, negligence, and poverty have colluded to make it so, but the clocks in my school run roughly five minutes fast. I say roughly because one room can run only five minutes fast, while others, like my own, run a little over seven minutes fast). Attempt to use the alloted time to look up standardized test scores on designated website and input those scores on an Excel sheet that is due sometime in May. No time allocated for this monumental project besides these thirty minutes. Inferior technology wastes roughly half the time. At least I tried.

7:50 – 9:44 a.m. Students arrive, and I conduct my first class. Student 1 has immense issues and talks all class long. No exaggeration. Does not need someone to talk to. His self serves just fine. At one point in the class he begins to sing “My Little Pony.” At another point, after presumably losing his rubber band that he was using to shoot wadded-up pieces of paper at girls, he sings, “Where is my rubber band?” to the tune of “My Little Pony.” He uses all reflective surfaces, such as the two TVs, to gauge his performance. He sticks his face right up to the screen and sings. This is one reason I don’t watch American Idol.

The students main task today is to preview five novels. This involves looking at the front cover; reading the back cover; skimming the first few pages and a few pages in the middle; answering four simple questions about the previous activities; and turning in a sticky note with their rankings, based on their preference for reading, of the books. What should take thirty minutes max is not finished within the forty-five minutes I eventually allot. My deepest apologies to all their future employers or government subsidy programs that demand prompt adherence to deadlines. It just ain’t happening.

9:47 – 11:20 a.m The three minutes between classes are lost in some unknown dimension even the Devil fears. Second block of the day. Class slightly dumber than the first. I know there are tales to tell of stupid questions, stupid antics, and simply stupid kids. But perhaps my defense mechanisms, mainly those that desire to feel as if I service human beings and to believe that mankind just can’t be in this poor shape, are dutifully effective.

One tale at least. Student 2, like many of his counterparts, involves himself in a continual verbal one-upmanship. He is always right, always better at something – sports, video games, school, life – than everyone else. His fellow scholar, Student 3, is sitting next to a truly awesome girl. Student 3, mouthbreather that he is, does something to bother the girl. She says, “Stop making noise. Why don’t you do something constructive with your time and get your work done.” She speaks with authority and grace. I wish she was my daughter. Student 2 begins to make fun of her, saying something along the lines of “Why do you have to use big words? Why can’t you just speak normal?” The big word he was referring to is productive. She turns on him, telling him that the reason he picks on people is he has no self-esteem. He shuts up. I butt in. “Student 2, is productive that big of a word? Do you need a dictionary for what she just said?” Another girl turns to Student 2 with a smirk, “Do you have low self-esteem?” I laugh heartily. A few minutes later while making my rounds checking student work, I lean into the girl who stood up to the boy (which by the way, during a discussion the previous week about students in the school who liked to tear down others and make it hard for good students to focus and achieve, this girl asked me, in front of the class, how one could stand up to relentless bullies like this. I told her in so many words that you need to be forceful with them. I meant, though I cloaked my meaning, that they needed to get beat up. But afraid I was advocating violence in an environment in which violence needs no advocate, since she understood my meaning when many others didn’t, I made it clear there were ways to be forceful without fists. She merely nodded. Apparently she took what I said to heart), and said, “Good job shutting him up.” She smiled. I smile now.

11:20 – 11:55 a.m. Lunch. I’m reading the authorized graphic novel adaption of Fahrenheit 451. I’m at one with literature and my turkey and cheese sandwich. The only time of the day I pause.

11:55 a.m. – 12:-02 p.m. Because the scheduling in my school makes sense, the teachers on my team and I have to pick up a certain class of students from the cafeteria and walk them to our next class. Don’t ask.

12:02 – 12:56 p.m. My prep. Fifty-four minutes to grade, plan, copy, call, email, reflect, collaborate, file, etc. Fifty-four hours isn’t enough.

12:56 – 2:35. Last class of the day. Nothing remarkable happens. By nothing remarkable, I mean that the pleasant mixture of a volatile boy who nobody can control and who is obsessed with calling everyone gay while maintaining his own strict heterosexuality, which actually has nothing to do with sexuality at all but just one of the ways this boy tries to lord over others; his sycophant friend who looks like someone aged Chris Rock, threw him in the dryer to shrink him, and put him in the seventh grade; a boy who is fifteen years old and in the seventh grade; a future sex offender (future? Hell, he’s doing it now and no one does anything about it); a number of useless inanimate objects masquerading as humans; and a few delightful kids, one whom I’d love to adopt, does not result in some atomic-level catastrophe. I live to see another day.

2:35 – 7:00: Baseball game away. Lose a close one to Delco Christian. Indicates progress though. It’s great to see kids come out to play baseball in an environment in which baseball doesn’t really flourish. Even better to see them begin to excel. Received an email from a principal about a visit to my classroom. I had noticed my students’ almost complete lack of phonics knowledge. Their spelling errors indicated they needed immediate remedial help if they were ever to make any progress in spelling, and by extension, reading. You know, the kind of assessment a professional teacher makes all the time. The kind of solution a trained educator makes as part of his nature. I had visited the education workbook section at my local Barnes and Noble and found some workbooks that would help my students. Just happened that the book that contained the exercises my students needed was a fourth grade book. Yep, they hadn’t mastered fourth grade work yet. What exactly do they do in elementary schools? So in the email, the principal noted that the worksheets the students were working on “did not seem challenging for 7^th graders.” Had this assessment been given by a principal who had extensive classroom experience, I might not have felt like committing violent atrocities. Maybe. But what the out-of-touch administrator didn’t realize was that the worksheets were addressing a specific need. Though the email was not punitive, the fact that it was mentioned without request for input – what amounts to a bureaucratic form being filled out – filled me with disgust and anger and caused me to flirt with apathy towards my job.

7:00 – whenever I succumbed to the exhaustion of the day: The day complete; the work not. Tomorrow is another day just like today. The Lips come to mind: “The sound of failure calls her name/She’s decided to hear it out.” One lesson they don’t tell you as a child that you’ll learn as an adult: sometimes you fail, and many times, your failure is in spite of you, a malevolent force that has no equal, that may or may not exist because of those around you, which doesn’t really matter because failure is failure no matter who its author is. Perhaps what the Devil glees over the most is the binds those of us who try to bring God’s light to this sordid world find ourselves in despite our best efforts, hopes, and prayers.