Here we go again..another tired piece about Baltimore and The Wire, this time for that once proud institution Time Magazine. The common theme in these pieces is that fiction is fact and Baltimore just plain sucks. The Wire was great television, but the pseudo-intellectual pieces about its profound statements about America and Baltimore get real old real fast. Particularity since The Wire went off the air seven years ago..this dead horse has been beaten plenty enough already.
The common theme in these works is a painfully skewed view of Baltimore through the HBO lens.
Here are a few examples....
- In season 2, longshoremen are shown a promotional film of robotic cargo handling at Rotterdam, and realize that their jobs will be eradicated by this new technology. They are unable to resist this change. The port was used in The Wire as the symbol for industrial decline. Yes, America and Baltimore's industrial might has waned but the port is doing just fine. The Port of Baltimore recently set a monthly record for containerized cargo, is the number one port in the United States for autos, and is ready for Post-Panamax super container ships.
- Which brings us back to the housing project, one of the management systems used. We learn from the show that all residents of are photographed for identification and security. In addition, the police are often watching from rooftops, taking photos: making the housing projects a panopticon in which all are under scrutiny. Supposedly to “detect and punish deviance,” in the words of James C. Scott’s Domination and the Arts of Resistance, CCTV seems to be a punishment in itself, denying people privacy. In The Wire, the opening credit shot shows a more aggressive resistance to this oppression, as the view is shown through a CCTV camera that is hit with a rock, fracturing the lens. Huh? Wow, who knew the projects were such a complex thing. I always thought they were well intended affordable housing for the poor. Somehow housing all the poor together became dysfunctional...who would have guessed. Most of the high rise projects were blown up years ago and replaced with some decent mixed income neighborhoods that, so far anyway, are holding there own. "The Projects" are slowly fading away.
- Anyone visiting Baltimore today can see its waterfront regeneration, which was depicted in The Wire from the perspective of political corruption and a working class forced out by gentrification, but this redevelopment doesn’t necessarily reach the average resident. And the city still feels awkward about its past. It lacks a city museum; H. L. Mencken’s house is no longer open to the public; Edgar Allen Poe’s house has also struggled despite the efforts of fundraisers, its ability to attract visitors no doubt impaired for many years by its proximity to the crime-ridden Poe Homes projects. The biggest tourist draw is Fort McHenry, just outside the city. Oh boy, where to start with this one. Gentrification had practically nothing to do with the Inner Harbor redevelopment. Going back decades the the waterfront was no longer useful for the port as ships grew bigger, and was re imagined as the successful area one sees today. Many of the homes near the harbor were sold for $1 back in the seventies to kick start redevelopment. There wasn't any working class to force out in these areas. This isn't Brooklyn. Baltimore awkward about its past???? If anything, Baltimoreans may be too attached to their past. The National Aquarium is the number one tourist draw and Fort McHenry is well within Baltimore City Limits.
- The Serial connection to The Wire is a head-scratcher . Serial was a documentary podcast about a murder that could have happened anywhere. To make it a Baltimore/ Wire thing because of Leakin Park is a bit of a stretch. As Stephen Colbert said.."Serial takes place in Baltimore, the same fictional city from 'The Wire.'"
- By inviting us to witness those “sharing a dark corner of the American experiment,” as the show phrased it in Season 3, The Wire explains the recent history of Baltimore, a city that has been sidelined in American popular culture of the last generation. And though its story is specific, its broader message is the decline of the American Industrial Empire, and how one of the biggest cities in America became a byword for crime and decay: “Charm City” indeed. Oh my god, did I remember to lock the door?????
