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The Wire
"After five seasons, what’s clear is that the messed up situations in places like Baltimore, or Oakland for that matter, have been untreated for so long, life seems hopeless."
By Orlando Campbell
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The Wire has received critical acclaim for its realistic portrayal of urban life and uncommonly deep exploration of sociological themes, and has been named the best show on television by several magazines and newspapers. Youth Radio’s Orlando Campbell explains why the Baltimore-based drama, whose series finale airs this Sunday, has relevance to his childhood in San Francisco.
When I saw The Wire for the first time, I thought finally, a show about us. HBO’s groundbreaking series brought me to a place I knew all too well. The show is about the inner workings and struggles of people in a city on the decline and how the police and government respond to these realities.
The characters were like my friends. They were products of the 80’s and early 90’s. They were the sons and daughters of crack heads, single parent homes, and living in an environment that forced them to adapt for their survival.
One of the main characters is Mike, a teen born and raised in West Baltimore. From an outside perspective, he’s a menace to society. At just sixteen, he’s the muscle for the biggest drug dealer in Baltimore. But instead of portraying him as some lost child stereotype, The Wire takes us deep into his world. We see his ability to overcome the sexual abuse of his step-father, and provide for his little brother, all while his mom is out selling any food in the house for crack. On The Wire, no character is one-dimensional.
And the show doesn’t make the mistake of giving solutions to the problems it addresses. After five seasons, what’s clear is that the messed up situations in places like Baltimore, or Oakland for that matter, have been untreated for so long, life seems hopeless. Many people I know feel that same hopelessness and The Wire gives viewers a tablespoon taste of that feeling.
That’s the show’s greatest feat. For the uninitiated, The Wire gives a glimpse into a world many Americans would never dare to understand. And for those of us in that world, the show provides validation. It tells outsiders that there’s more to us than the ghetto stereotypes in their heads.
It gives a story behind the headlines we see in the papers, faces to the statistics, and reasons for all the violence.
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