The weakness of The Wire's portrayal of woman characters, driven most likely by a lack of women on the writing staff, has been widely noted but it's worth being clear on how this gives a distorted view of the entire ghetto. It was a particular failing, I think, in season four which was all about putting the cops-and-robbers stuff in a broader sociological context but also seemed to rely heavily on Demon Mothers rather than real people to drive the plot.
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Wire Women
11 Mar 2008 02:11 pm
Comments (18)
I wasn't the biggest Six Feet Under fan, but one thing I appreciated about it was the importance and complexity of female characters.
I don't know, I think the Wire portrayed women as pretty strong characters.
-Kima got the most face time, and she was good police who didn't take anyone's bullshit.
-Both Naimon's and D'Angelo's mothers were strong women.
-Most all of the teachers in Season 4 were strong positive women.
-Beattie
-D'Agostini won Carcetti's mayoral election for him.
-Alma was a force for good in the Sun plot.
-the women on Omar's crew
The only straight out bad/weak female character that comes to mind was Michael's mother. Considering the environments generally depicted by the Wire (ie. homicide squads and gangsters), I think there were plenty of women shown, and of those shown, they got positive portrayals.
What about the women from The Sopranos? Hello...Livia, Janice, Lorraine Caluzzo, Carmella?
Talk about "ladies' (in)visible" violence!
But I agree about The Wire...that universe is very male.
What about the women from The Sopranos? Hello...Livia, Janice, Lorraine Caluzzo, Carmella?
Talk about "ladies' (in)visible violence"!
But I agree about The Wire...that universe is very male.
What? You mean to tell me that "The Greatest Show In Television History And If You Don't Agree, You're An Idiot!" didn't have well-written female characters? That's unpossible!
Mike
Isn't this kind of focusing on what a show doesn't do well, rather than the many, many things it does do well? Because the Wire covers such a broad field of ground, I think you wind up asking too much of one little show. An amazing show with a broad sociological sweep mind you, but the Wire is not some vast computer/wiki where you take any concept in the world and if you can't find some reflection of that concept in the Wire then that is some failure on the part of the Wire. I don't see a lot of people asking about the Sopranos failure to include non-Italian mobsters, or addressing Seinfeld's failure to joke about Israel.
you are now on the record. rest well.
For those interested in filling the void:
American Dream by Jason Deparle and Random Family by Adrian Nicole Le Blanc are excellent books that portray women in the ghetto.
You mean the high-end blogosphere is dominated by males who like male-oriented shows? Shocking ...
I guess they just never got around to having a season about the women.
The simple fact is that the drug game, the unions and the police department are male dominated. In my own experience, Kima and Snoop were believable and fact based representations of women in these organizations.
Another simple fact is that "Demon Mothers" do exist in large numbers and contribute considerably (far more than education systems or police) to the poor upbringing of black youth, and were rightfully showcased in The Wire. Demon Mothers are real people. But don't rely on me, ask an honest NYC (or other city) public school teacher who does her job and interracts with parents.
The whole point of Tony-T's comment, though, is that by failing to reflect the prominent role women actually play in the ghetto, The Wire inaccurately depicts the slice of life it's chosen to portray. That women are viewed as distant from the world of The Wire as non-Italian gangsters are from The Sopranos is a great example of how things have been distorted by the marginalization of female characters.
Even Simon admits that he writes female characters poorly.
I think "The Corner" shows that Simon and crew can handle female characters pretty well, and that they recognize their importance in actual inner city life. By contrast, The Wire, for all its wider social commentary, is first and foremost a cops and gangsters show, and those are both male dominated occupations.
For what it's worth, Amanda Marcotte disagrees: check out her comments here:
"It’s B.S. to say the show just carpets over women. While there is no fantasy world where women share power equally with men, the show also reflects reality in that some women have wedged into the masculine arenas.
The major issue in the male-dominated entertainment industry is that women are portrayed through their relationships to men solely—they’re all mothers, wives, or girlfriends instead of characters in their own right. If you want to make the case that “The Wire” only allows women to be wives or girlfriends, you’ll have to ignore:
Kima Greggs, who is not only a stellar homicide cop but is one of the most straightforward queer characters I’ve ever seen on TV. Even her wife is not The Wife, but an interesting character in her own right. The entire season finale pivots on a professional decision made by Greggs.
Rhonda Pearlman, prosecuter and eventually judge. Her interests also dictate what happens in the final episode.
Snoop, hitman and a bona fide butch right there on TV.
Alma in the newsroom, who plays the “good” reporter.
Marla Daniels, initially The Wife to Cedric Daniels, but then shown to be a Hillary Clinton-esque politician who sees her marriage as being as much a business unit as a romantic thing.
Nerese Campbell, the city council president who is shown to be the most savvy politician on the show and inevitable as mayor.
And that’s just a few. Unlike most TV series, the majority of female characters on “The Wire” are characterized in the same way with the same hand as the male characters. We see them primarily through a professional lens, and their personal lives are no more or no less a factor than with the men."
This final season insulted the intelligence of viewers on so many levels! It was too predictable, forced and unnecessarily cruel to the most vulnerable characters, specifically. Dookie.
Are we too believe that a dude with the instincts of prop Joe would not have seen Marlo's move coming from a mile away? Just like a Wall Street titan doesn't give away his trade secrets, neither would a Baltimore street king. It made absolutely no sense that he would have schooled Marlo to the level he did, effectively ceding his power.
Are we to believe that a predator with the senses of lion on the hunt like Omar would not have seen that setup at the apartment? Come the fuck on!
Clay Davis's case went to trial in matter of weeks? You can't even get a damn gun charge through a city court in six months.
A veteran homicide detective with hundreds of unsolved cases and no money would ctually give a fuck about a dead, ex-con, child molestor? Bunk "finding his way" to Michael's stepfather's case file was way too convenient and contrived.
Now to Dookie. Yes, the Wire was an unflinching look into the window of reality of life on Baltimore streets or any crime plagued inner city, but Dookie could have easily been a saving grace rather than tragedy. There are safety nets, no matter how fragile. Every hood has a Miss Mary that takes in kids. Just as easily has he went with those fiends, he could have reached out to Cutty for a job at the gym and place to stay. And it was completely unrealistic that he would have started shooting up that soon. He would have been sniffing for some time, years, before he probably started skin popping. Nobody just starts shooting up.
OK, this is dumb.
Tony T isn't sitting in a room full of women when he watches the show with his fellow dealers. The drug game is a world that is governed by violence and physical intimidation. The show isn't about "the ghetto" or "all problems of inner city blacks in America." It's about heroin trafficking in Baltimore, and the assorted city organs that fail to contain it. Season 4 focused on 4 boys because they were the new recruits to the game. The nature of the show required that it focus on a male-dominated universe. That wasn't an artistic choice; it's a fact about this world that the show seeks to portray. It would undermine the show's relevance to tack some sort of unrealistic gender balancing onto these male dominated institutions--cops, drug gangs, etc.
That's to say nothing of the point that Tony T is wrong in his specific criticism. Who's Nerese? She's the exact kind of figure he refers to. And the political plot line took up less than 10 minutes of screen time per episode. What's the remedy here? All would be forgiven if Carcetti was a female? And what about the settings where women are represented, like the schools? What about the prominent female characters in the police department and the court house?
And just because female characters are not as central does not relegate them to being meaningless or unimportant. Brianna Barksdale was a fascinating character because she had learned to navigate and manipulate this explosive, male-dominated world so effectively. Namond's mother was compelling and terrifying because she had internalized the streets' code as the right and proper way to raise her son. And the more central characters in the narrative, like Kima, Rhonda and Nerese, were all the more interesting in terms of gender specifically because they had to find space for themselves in this male-dominated universe. It was a much more interesting portrait of gender and its relationship tp self-identity than you would ever expect to see on a female-centric hour-long drama like Grey's Anatomy and its fairy tale of perfectly gender-balanced work places, because it cast female characters in the familiar position of being outnumbered. The Wire is just more relevant and realistic in that respect.
So it may be the case that Simon writes women poorly (although I think that could just be his ample white, jewish guilt talking), but at least some of the show's writers can write women well because there are far to many interesting women on the show for it all to have just been a lucky accident.
thinking about this as I watched season 4 tonight and I realized I think it doesn't do so badly. kima, rhonda, snoop, the great teachers. and surely the dragon lady mothers have male equivalents.
also notable that kima was originally a man's role but that they changed it to a woman when Sonja Sohn showed up.
And then there's Cameron...
Heh, heh.
Or for that matter, Sarah, who walks into the bathroom, pulls the curtain back on Derek in the shower, and informs him that if he ever lies to her again, she'll kill him.
And he takes that seriously, having seen her knock out two cops in the City Hall underground, not to mention having fought her himself when they first met.
But she can't cook a roast...
Comments closed March 25, 2008.
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Heads in the Sand
I think this is a problem with lots of high-end cable TV shows. Rome, for example, was a pretty good show except for its lead female characters, who tended to be psychopathic Demon Mothers or back-stabbers. The most positive characters in Rome were male soldiers who embodied the virtue of brotherhood; a virtue that specifically excluded women.
Posted by Jeet Heer | March 11, 2008 2:30 PM