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Originally Posted by demonrail666

I get the feeling The Wire was popular mainly with people who, to a large degree, shared David Simon's politics, whereas I'd say anyone could watch The Sopranos and find something (or someone) they could resonate with.

My favourite character was also Carmela, but I also loved uncle Junior. God knows what that says about me.

i think the wire is popular with people who want more out of tv than just entertainment. people who like nature shows or historical documentaries and things like that--no doubt. it was able to blend highly addictive entertainment with incisive sociological observations. it was interesting and illuminating maybe like a ken burns documentary, but way more exciting.

when i used the word ideological i meant it as examining the assumptions that make up everyday life, and are a little like the air we breathe-- in america things like "freedom" and "democracy" and "free enterprise" and "individual responsiblity" and "equality before the law" and so forth are essential to everyday life. (i think at this point though people know that equality before the law is a huge myth and money buys the best lawyers, but the others myths still stand.)

i didn't mean ideological as trying to advance a political program, the way for example aaron sorkin does. that's more like indoctrination. just meant it as questioning the dominant ideology.

but yes, the wire actually taught me things about the world-- or put ideas together that i had only as vague intuitions. and yes some of it resonated with my experiences-- i've had real interactions with high ranking bureaucrats whose firm belief was that their job was that of juking the stats--one even said so to me in a job interview. and yes i've seen generations upon generations of idealists trying to make a difference only to end up bitter and empty handed.

i'm not a communist in the least, i'm not even sure i'd qualify as a leftist, but i find lukács's ideas on realism in the novel interesting. he followed the marxist notion that the social is the reality we inhabit and worked in literature to show that a certain type of novel portrayed this reality best (e.g. balzac, who was actually a royalist) as opposed to, say, romantics or surrealists.

one doesn't have to be a marxist to see how artificially placing everything on the individual limits art. looking at the social isn't the exclusive province of marxists. but it's rarely the province of american entertainment, which is always about the struggles of "the hero"-- and this hero cult gets tiring.

the universed is crisscrossed by huge, impersonal forces, from gravity to collective stupidity, and it's refreshing to have a mass entertainment that deals with those forces one every decade or so, just like it's great to have shows about astronomy or those richard attenborough documentaries. something that illuminates reality with the light of intelligence beyond our everyday habits of thought. even if that reality is not pleasant. which reminds me i need to catch the new ken burns documentary on vietnam.

(sopranos too dealt with themes beyond the individual-- things like family systems and dysfunction being handed down from one generation to the next-- but it ultimately all revolved about the individual tony soprano and his inability to change. what can i learn from it? "avoid the baddies, they can't be fixed." and i do. really enjoyed the show though. just didn't learn anything from it. my favorite character... hm... silvio! also furio. also junior was hilarious yeah.)