I’m the marketer, okay? I know our audience. Men. Red-blooded, testosterone-crazed American men do not give a fuck about some kind of anthropological bullshit.. We want hot lesbian sex, and we want it now!

—

The L Word - 2x09 - “Late, Later, Latent”

Yeah, ok, so my first-week-of-summer-all-i-have-to-do-is-go-to-work decompression involves watching The L Word while eating Tofutti Cuties. WHATEV.

Oh, and, you know, true. Except, IRL, no one gives a fuck about some kind of anthropological bullshit amiright?

A truly free market would be of precisely no use to capitalists, as Marx himself understood quite well: the goal of the capitalist is precisely not to create the telos of a level playing field, but to warp existing economic structures so that they structurally advantage one’s own interests. Capitalism reproduces itself as a social system, in other words, not by attempting to bring into existence a particular ideal form, but by creating structures which selectively inhibit other social actors than yourself. Which is why Marlo is the The Wire’s figure for the savagery of unfettered capitalism: he becomes as powerful as he does not by evading the structures that regulate market society, but by employing and subverting the ones that already exist to work in his own favor. He therefore takes control of the co-op by transforming it, he fills the wire with noise so that nothing can be heard, and he leaves bodies in the vacant spaces left by others. He wins the game by embracing Weber’s spirit of capitalism, by replacing consumption with capitalization, and by subverting and repressing all forms of desire — especially that of reproduction and the attachment of family — he becomes a faceless agent of endless expansion, successful precisely to the extent that he lacks any standard by which his failure would even be legible.

— Zunguzungu [via]

…my provisional thesis is that The Wire has to be contextualized as a 21st century engagement with New Deal liberalism, which then both addresses the problem of its failures through a patina of nostalgic anger at disappointed idealism (Why aren’t things better! They should be better!) and a gloss of cynically arrogant disinclination to care, contemptuously dismissing idealism as naive (Society will never change! Why bother?). It is therefore deeply invested in the mythology of industrial US society, taking cowboy stories seriously and (to steal something Scrimshander said) “attributing the seemingly occult causality of capitalism to a nearly omniscient” character like Omar or his evil doppleganger, Marlo. And, at the same time, and without apparent cognitive dissonance, it wants to tear down every idealism, every myth, every ideology it can, in service of an awesome and cynical faith in realism.

— I’m still addicted; one last re-up

Discerning critics and avid fans have agreed that the five-season run of Ed Burns and David Simon’s The Wire was “the best TV show ever broadcast in America”—not the most popular but the best. The 60 hours that comprise this episodic series have been aptly been compared to Dickens, Balzac, Dreiser and Greek Tragedy. These comparisons attempt to get at the richly textured complexity of the work, its depth, its bleak tapestry of an American city and its diverse social stratifications. Yet none of these comparisons quite nails what it is that made this the most compelling “show” on TV and better than many of the best movies. This class will explore these comparisons, analyze episodes from the first, third, fourth and fifth seasons and try to discover what was and is so great about The Wire. We will screen as much of the series as we can during our mandatory screening sessions and approach it through the following lenses: the other writing of David Simon, including his journalism, an exemplary Greek Tragedy, Dickens’ Bleak House and/or parts of Balzac’s Human Comedy. We will also consider the formal tradition of episodic television. Please come to the first class having already viewed all of season one on your own. It is available at the MRC.

— What so great about The Wire?
Film 105
Instructor: Linda Williams
W: 3:00pm - 6:00pm, 226 Dwinelle
Enrollment limited to 20 [via]

I never get to take these ‘quirky’ and ‘timely’ courses. TOO BAD YOU REJECTED ME UC BERKELEY DON’T WORRY I AM NOT STILL IRRITATED ABOUT IT OR ANYTHING.

Then I could be taking this RIGHT NOW instead of reading Durkheim. All this semester I have been thinking “Hey, maybe instead of reading about protein energy malnutrition or whatever, I should just watch The Wire. Try incorporating that into anthropology already!” Clearly I am on the right page.