Professional Documents
Culture Documents
In an April 2011 interview with Bill Moyers, The Wires David Simon commented that the people in the urban underclass of Baltimore have been ignored by institutions because theres no profit to be had in doing anything other than marginalizing them and discarding them. In Baltimore, market forces started a ripple effect that caused thousands of employees from Bethlehem Steel to lose their jobs, pensions, and health benefits most likely because their jobs had become obsolete. The grain tower that Frank Sabotka tried to save in season two was razed by developers who built luxury housing and renamed the area Silo Point. Yachts and power boats replaced shipping lines. Baltimore is no longer the same viable and vibrant economy it once was when Bethlehem Steel was at the top of its game. Some of the former jobs of the former union members, the longshoremen and the stevedores have been replaced (at least in West Baltimore) by criminal activity. In David Simons introduction to The Wire: Truth be Told, he writes that our economic and political leaders are dismissive of the horror, at points even flippant in their derision towards the bottom rungs of society. Simon points out that Margaret Thatchers suggestion that there is no society to consider beyond the individual and his family speaks to the contempt for the ideal of nation-states offering citizens anything approximating a sense of communal purpose and meaning. Season three addresses the belief that under capitalism, the only value recognized is money,
not people. For example, Stringer Bell learns too late in the game that he has been scammed out of 1
of season three is to shine a light on the forces of capitalism that involves not only the incarceration of narcotics violators, but also the dehumanization of an urban underclass that society no longer relies on as a source of labor. In season three, there are several examples that serve as a lens through which the themes discussed above are examined. In the prologue to Simons The Wire: the Truth be Told, he writes that the ex-steelworkers and ex-longshoremen, street dealers and street addicts, and an army of young men [and women] hired to chase and jail the dealers and whores and johns that all of them are unnecessary and apart from the New Millennium economic model that a long time ago declared them irrelevant. Howard Bunny Colvin is a seasoned police officer who realizes that the system is broken when he says to Sergeant Ellis Carv Carver, Soldiering and Policing aint the same thing. Likewise, James Jimmy McNulty has an
existential crisis and admits to Kima, I feel like I don't even belong to any world that even fucking matters. Both Bunny and Jimmy feel that the society in which they live does not make sense to them.