Game's the Same, Just Got More Fierce
The Wire may have been off air since 2008, but academics and the show’s former actors are realizing it has a lasting impact.
By Dylan Matthews
October 30, 2009
The Wire’s Omar Little (HBO)
It’s not often that Ivy League academics sit at the same table as a convicted felon, along with actors who played criminals. This strange mix of people gathered at the Science Center on Harvard University’s campus in Cambridge, Mass. last night to discuss HBO’s critically acclaimed TV show, The Wire, and the political, economic, and social factors represented on the show. That impact for some extended beyond television to the lives inner-city youth and the communities in which they live.
The panel was moderated by Evelyn Higginbotham, a history professor at Harvard University and chairwoman of the school’s African-American studies department. She introduced her academic colleagues: William Julius Wilson, a Harvard University professor and renowned sociologist of urban poverty; Lawrence Bobo, a sociologist focused on race and inequality; and Brandon Terry, a PhD candidate in African-American studies and political science at Yale University. Alternating seats with the academics were actors Sonja Sohn (Detective Kima Greggs), Michael K. Williams (stickup artist Omar Little), and Andre Royo (Reginald “Bubbles” Cousins). They even invited a surprise guest, Donnie Andrews, a convicted felon from Baltimore whose life inspired the character Omar Little.
The event had more the feel of a fan gathering than an academic colloquium. Wilson declared that when the show’s creator, David Simon, told him that Wilson’s 1997 book When Work Disappears helped inspire the show’s second season, “that made my week.” Bobo declared the show “the single most important dramatic TV series of all time.”
The academics on the panel felt The Wire depicted scholarly insights. “The Wire has done more to enhance our understanding of the systemic urban inequality that constrains the lives of the poor than any published study,” Wilson declared.
Bobo agreed, noting the show’s focus on the inseparability of the economic, social, and political forces controlling the lives of the urban poor. “It captures the power of context, the power of situation, the situations in their fullnesss that people are embedded in,” he explained. Both Wilson and Bobo singled out the show’s treatment of the drug war and criminal justice issues, saying The Wire illustrated an unparalleled nuance. Wilson admires the show’s treatment of both drug dealers and police as “morally complex characters” who “are often shaped by economic and social forces beyond their control.”
Terry found that The Wire’s rich and metaphorical dialogue helped bring these themes to light. Remembering a scene where Bodie, a dealer working a corner bemoans his poor treatment by the larger organization he serves, declared, “This game is rigged,” Terry said this is an allegory for the economic system in urban areas more generally. Bodie’s quote, he argued, described a system characterized by unfairness to less powerful participants, culminating in this past year’s financial crisis, one where “fairness, loyalty, and justice [were] easily sacrificed in favor of profit and security.” Bodie, Terry argues, is “a tragic hero for our time … and of the wider breaking of the American promise.”
The actors seemed a bit taken aback by the lofty praise. “I don’t think any one of us realized even while we were shooting that it was going to have this kind of impact," Royo said. “It was work. I look out and see all of you people here—I told my people I wouldn’t curse at Harvard—but what the fuck are you guys doing here?”
Williams, his eyes welling with tears, said, “I can’t tell you how humbling it is to be here. I don’t know what I’m doing here, but I’m hoping y’all figure out.”
When Higginbotham announced that next year Wilson will teach a course on The Wire in an attempt to “relate it to real life experiences in the black community,” the room burst into spontaneous applause and hollers. But the actors noted that students could do more to change the world that The Wire presented than just learn about it in a classroom.
Williams read aloud from a letter Sohn had received from a 22-year-old woman who was raped at 13 and again, repeatedly, at 18 by her abusive husband, who would also encourage his friends to rape her. “This is the real Wire,” he declared, “This show was built on the sweat and blood of people who couldn’t make it here. We don’t need no more Wires.”
Sohn talked at length about her organization, ReWired for Change, that seeks to promote mentoring of inner-city, at-risk youth. She said that working with other cast members on the Obama campaign in North Carolina taught her that celebrities can play an important role in effecting social change.
Sohn talked of an incident where Chad Coleman (Cutty) and Jamie Hector (Marlo) joined a pick-up basketball game in an attempt to get the players’ support for Obama. Midway through the match, a player dropped the ball and walked off, telling his friends, “I’m going to go get registered and vote.”
Citing her own experience—she is two months behind on mortgage payments due to her devotion of the past year exclusively to volunteer efforts—Sohn urged Harvard students to give back to the metropolitan area they live in. “Boston’s no different from Baltimore or Detroit. This is the city that you reside in,” she emphasized. “Yeah you got research papers to do; yeah you got a boyfriend or girlfriend, but there’s somebody out there suffering.”
Andrews, who had the most personal experience with the life presented by The Wire, agreed with Sohn, and argued that all Americans must take responsibility if the system described in The Wire is ever to change. “We blame the police, we blame the government, but don’t blame ourselves,” he lamented. “Try to find a solution; be the solution. Get out there and mingle with them kids.”
Dylan Matthews is a staff writer for Campus Progress and a sophomore at Harvard University. Follow him on Twitter.
This article has been edited for clarity.
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