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.
By:
Linda Williams
Imprint: Duke University Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions:
Height: 210mm,
Width: 149mm,
Spine: 15mm
Weight: 635g
ISBN: 9780822357179
ISBN 10: 0822357178
Series: Spin Offs
Pages: 288
Publication Date: 08 August 2014
Audience:
Professional and scholarly
,
Undergraduate
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active
"Acknowledgments vii Introduction 1 Part I. World Enough and Time: The Genesis and Genius of The Wire 1. Ethnographic Imagination: From Journalism to Television Serial 11 2. Serial Television's World and Time: The Importance of the ""Part"" 37 Part II. Justice in The Wire: Tragedy, Realism, and Melodrama 3. ""Classical"" Tragedy, or . . . 79 4. Realistic, Modern Serial Melodrama 107 Part III. Surveillance, Schoolin', and Race 5. Hard Eyes / Soft Eyes: Surveillance and Schoolin' 139 6. Feeling Race: The Wire and the American Melodrama of Black and White 173 Conclusion: Home Sweet Baltimore 211 Notes 223 Bibliography 247 Index 255"
Linda Williams is Professor of Film Studies and Rhetoric at the University of California, Berkeley. Her books include Screening Sex and Porn Studies, both also published by Duke University Press; Playing the Race Card: Melodramas of Black and White from Uncle Tom to O. J. Simpson ; Viewing Positions: Ways of Seeing Film ; and Hard Core: Power, Pleasure, and the Frenzy of the Visible. In 2013, Williams received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Society for Cinema and Media Studies.
Reviews for On The Wire
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. Linda Williams's kaleidoscopic study compellingly considers The Wire as art, as rhetoric, and as political intervention. Her absorbing argument for the series as 'institutional melodrama' upends conventional discussions not only about this narrative but about the broader practice of contemporary television drama. We understand The Wire not as tragedy, not as a novel, not as a piece of journalism; rather, we see and feel the show at the intersection of home and the world, as the orange couch in the courtyard of the low rises.
