Why The Wire Resonates More Today than When it Aired
With the news that the two deputies seen at the scene of Tyre Nichols’s beating will not be facing any charges nor losing their jobs despite violating a total of seven policies, it seems an appropriate time to reflect on how issues of police corruption and racial inequality has been portrayed in the media, and no other series has depicted these subjects quite as authentically as the HBO series The Wire.
Created by former BPD cop Ed Burns and former Sun journalist David Simon, The Wire acted as something of a deconstruction of the police procedural genre in how it unapologetically portrayed the various institutions in America as intrinsically corrupt and impossible to reform. These systems include the police, the education system, the American political system, and the media. All of these institutions were inextricably connected to each other, with the corruption of one bleeding into the other so the problems they experienced were kept in a perpetual cycle.
This is seen through how the show deals with the War on Drugs, with the notion it’s ultimately a total failure with its present logic of locking up all drug dealers and throwing away the key. This idea that the War on Drugs was in fact harmful came to prevalence in the decade following the one the show aired in. In 2017, United States Attorney General Jeff Sessions withdrew the Obama-era policy of decreasing penalties for low-level drug offenders, encouraging the implementation of harsh mandatory minimum sentences that have historically primarily affected people of color with Black Americans 21 percent more likely to receive these mandatory minimums.
In The Wire, we see the way the failings of the education system contribute to young people of color getting involved in the drug trade. In the fourth season, we are introduced to a group of young friends; Duquan “Dukie” Weems, the youngest member whose parents are drug addicts, Michael Lee, a victim of sexual abuse with a drug-addled mother, and a younger brother to look after, and Randy Wagstaff, a foster child and business-minded youth.
With Dukie, the school bureaucracy mandates that he graduates to high school instead of holding him back a grade even though his academic struggles and vulnerable nature render him incapable of handling high school and the abuse he faces. He drops out as a result and turns to drug dealing alongside Michael and when this falls through, he tries and fails to find honest work for himself, only to end up working with a junkie scrap metal thief. When he is last seen in season five, he manipulates his teacher Pryzbylewski, the only teacher to invest in and care about him, into giving him money, and is later shown shooting up in the final montage.
There’s an undeniable parallel between Dukie and the character of Reginald “Bubbles” Cousins, a homeless drug addict who is actually quite affable and intelligent but is constantly victimized by others on the street and who ends up a junkie working by selling aluminum scraps. Dukie is demonstrated to be actually very intelligent and insightful as well and he could have been more successful if he had been privileged enough to be born into a different life.
Randy is a young boy characterized by his entrepreneurship, keeping his ear to the ground in search of ways to make money, which leads to him hearing about rising drug lord Marlo Stanfield’s love of pigeons and trapping several so Randy can then sell them to him. He is later used by the Stanfield gang as a patsy to lure a disobedient dealer to his death, and after Randy finds out that those murdered by the Stanfield gang are in abandoned rowhouses, he talks to the police.
When Thomas “Herc” Hauk questions a suspect in relation to the murders, he inadvertently reveals that Randy is his source of information and in retaliation, the Stanfield gang tells everybody that Randy is a snitch leading him to be ostracized and abused by his peers. Lieutenant Ellis Carver tries to provide Randy with police protection but this doesn’t do enough to stop his house from being firebombed, leading to his foster mother being hospitalized. He eventually ends up in a group home where he is beaten by the other residents. In season five, Randy is shown to have transformed from a warm-hearted young boy into someone filled with rage after being failed by the Baltimore Police.
Randy’s own story resembles that of another character, that of Preston “Bodie” Broadus. He’s a child who lost his mother early in life, whose abilities are disregarded and unappreciated, and who is repeatedly failed by the system, leading him to assume a thuggish, violent attitude. Bodie and Randy are people whose intelligence and ambition could have led them on successful paths instead of in the drug-selling business. They are both examples of how police’s inability to defend citizens, and how society’s lack of compassion for and investment in its underprivileged members leads to the creation of criminals.
Michael is heavily implied to have been sexually assaulted by his stepfather as a child. When he starts boxing with Dennis “Cutty” Wise, a former soldier and enforcer of Barksdale’s gang who is reformed when he gets out of prison, Michael shows promise but is uncomfortable with Cutty’s fatherly attitude because of his trauma. This leads him to distance himself from boxing and start dealing drugs, catching the attention of Stanfield. When he asks Marlo’s enforcer Chris Partlow to kill his stepfather to protect his younger brother Bug, he is then recruited by Partlow to work for the Stanfield gang.
Michael frequently questions his boss and this leads to Marlo suspecting him of having talked to the police, so he is sentenced to death. Michael kills his would-be assassin and is last seen on the run from Marlo’s people, and becomes a stick-up boy.
Michael’s path is similar to Omar Little, as Omar acquires a reputation for robbing and shooting gangsters, and Michael himself is seen shooting someone in the knee during a robbery. Early on Michael had shown promise as a boxer, and Omar is clearly a lot more intelligent than he might initially seem as he demonstrates knowledge of Greek mythology, recalled from middle school, and even fondly remembers his student years. Both are individuals who were quite talented and intelligent with no opportunities to pursue further education.
The fact that most of these characters are black is not a coincidence. The education system’s and society’s refusal to invest in communities of color creates severe income inequality and poverty. The series demonstrates the cyclic nature of crime and policing in the US. The War on Drugs provides police an excuse to disproportionally employ the “Stop and Frisk” policy against people of color, which leads to more black people being arrested and when they are released from prison they are unable to find work because of their prison records, which leads them to drug dealing for money, which leads to encounters with the police.
These issues have existed for centuries in America. But with the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement, calls to defund the police becoming more common, and millennials and Generation Z generally showing higher concern for social issues, it’s clear that The Wire is a show that resonates more now, with the current generation, than it ever did before.
