On The Wire

Spin-Offs

by Linda Williams

Many television critics, legions of fans, even the president of the United States, have cited The Wire as the best television series ever. In this sophisticated examination of the HBO serial drama that aired from 2002 until 2008, Linda Williams, a leading film scholar and authority on the interplay between film, melodrama, and issues of race, suggests what exactly it is that makes The Wire so good. She argues that while the series is a powerful exploration of urban dysfunction and institutional failure, its narrative power derives from its genre. The Wire is popular melodrama, not Greek tragedy, as critics and the series creator David Simon have claimed. Entertaining, addictive, funny, and despairing all at once, it is a serial melodrama grounded in observation of Baltimore's people and institutions: of cops and criminals, schools and blue-collar labor, local government and local journalism. The Wire transforms close observation into an unparalleled melodrama by juxtaposing the good and evil of individuals with the good and evil of institutions.
 

Genres: Nonfiction, Film

280 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2014

About the author

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Linda Williams was an American professor of film studies in the departments of Film Studies and Rhetoric at University of California, Berkeley.

Reviews

[Brian · Rating 5 out of 5]

Linda William's engaging look at the importance of HBO's landmark tv series "The Wire" persuasively argues that the series is more than a modern day version of Dickensian narrative focused on social issues and economics. Instead, Williams through close readings of each season of the series via individual episodes and industrial modes shows that what makes the series so important and unique is its embrace of melodrama. In using tropes of TV melodrama Williams argues the series is best positioned to depict and critique the effects of neoliberal economics on American cities and it's citizens.

[Derek Baldwin · Rating 5 out of 5]

A thoughtfully and clearly written critical examination of the justly acclaimed series which Linda Williams argues should be celebrated as, above all else, superior melodrama. It feels obligatory to say 'superior' because 'melodrama' is a denigrated form, feminized, marginalised, the territory of serial dramas (soap operas, predominantly). The author very clearly shows how this form of 'low culture', not a phrase I believe she ever uses let me stress, is as 'artistic' as 'art cinema' and 'tragedy': forms tolerable by critics, academics and the bourgeoise (and white folks) in ways that soap operas are not. Thus, in their rush to praise The Wire, critics and academics have tended to liken it to 'tragedy, or to compare it to a filmic novel... more exalted forms....

She characterises the series also as an anthropological document, a multi-sited ethnography, giving time for stories to unfold in the same way that qualitative/longitudinal studies allow depth to emerge, for it to be clearer that "this is how it is" (in 'the game', one might add, parenthetically). She shows very directly how the very first sequence in The Wire sets this out: the pathetic but so so American death of Snot Boogie. And she quite accurately distinguishes The Wire from, for example, the preachy, documentary style of The Corner: worthy, earnest, sociological, ultimately not really very entertaining or dramatic, and Homicide: Life On The Street: edgy, funnier, but liberal through and through, and condemned to conform to network diktat with the crime of the week driving the narrative.

I think that if you do not know The Wire you are unlikely to find much of value in this book. If you do know The Wire you may find some of the academic stuff a bit abstruse but really Williams wears her learning lightly. There are the obligatory references to contemporary thinkers like Foucault, Deleuze, Jameson and others but these don't obscure the plain-speaking and clear-sighted analysis at the heart of this text. They could very easily have been excised and, with a little editing, this could have been repackaged as something like one of those 33-and-a-third fan studies (which are great, by the way). It is also very free from film studies jargon which is a definite plus.

It's an excellent book.

[Elijah]

Pretty good. The only real odd thing in Williams' analysis is her contention that the show should properly be considered melodrama. I'm not against that. I think that's a useful lens to consider the show's strenghts and weaknesses. There are others as well. I'm less enamored with any critical analysis that seeks to "answer" or simplify a work of cinematic art for the purposes of an academic treatise. I want a witness, not a dissection. I guess I'll keep looking.

[Duke Press]

"I must admit being skeptical of Linda Williams's thesis that The Wire is best understood as melodrama. But after reading her convincing and compelling analysis, I not only came away with new insights into a series that I knew very well, but have fully revised my notions of how serial melodrama applies to contemporary television. This vital book is essential reading for scholars and viewers of both The Wire and television drama more broadly."--Jason Mittell, author of Television and American Culture

[Billy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I usually get enticed into picking up a film criticism book only to be let down. Most film criticism books end up sounding like the author liking the sound of their own voice me. I was very pleasantly surprised by how engaging is Linda Williams's On The Wire. If you are a fan of the TV series The Wire, then I definitely recommend reading this book. Williams goes in depth on the show's origins and looks at the show and its place in wider society with the focus of a surveillance camera. I couldn't put this book down.