The Wire’s Realism

One of the issues that came up in Baltimore at the conference I was at is the realism of The Wire.

I say The Wireis about 75% – 80% realistic. Not 100%. But 74% ain’t bad. And being “real” three out of four times is still about three times more realistic than any other cop show ever made.

But I’m judging The Wirefrom the perspective of a Baltimore Police Officer. And a former officer at that. So I loved it. But is it real? Well, from a police perspective, mostly. But I always wondered if The Wireis realistic from the drug dealers’ perspective? I don’t know. I’m not a gangsta. And neither, for that matter, were any of the writers.

Sure the guys on the corner looked real to me. That’s how they look from the window of a police car. But what about from dealers’ perspective? What do theythink of The Wire. Sudhir Venkateshasked them.

He wrote about it for his blog. I didn’t read it at the time because I didn’t watch The Wire till it came out in DVD. I didn’t want anything spoiled. Then I forgot about Venkatesh’s blog.

I still haven’t read all nine posts yet.

[spoiler alert, but not for Season Five of The Wire but instead for those who want to read Venkatesh’s postings from the beginning.]

If you want to cut the chase, here’s the last post:

The Thugs informed me that they werenotinterested in watching the last 2 episodes of season 5 ofThe Wire….

“We’ve seen this s–t already,” Shine told me. “This is fun if you work all day behind a desk, or you’re sitting in some suburb. But for us, it’s like watching somebody make a movie about you — someone who doesn’t really know all that much about your life.”

It reminds of how when I was a cop the joy was taken from two of my favorite TV shows: COPSand Jerry Springer.COPSbecame a superficial portray of police work, often done very poorly. The Jerry Springerset was actually a very realist. Those people acting stupid and fighting? Yep. That’s what police deal with most of the time. Both shows reminded me too much of work.