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I interned at a DA's office in a major metropolitan city right around the time of the Ferguson protests. I was sitting outside of a courtroom waiting for a trial to begin when a group of about 6 patrol police, some of them relatively high ranking officers, sat down next to me. One of the officers began telling the other 5 a story of the previous day's events out on the streets. The officer had encountered an alleged low-level drug dealer in the middle of a transaction, making sure to emphasize the race of this individual. When the alleged suspect noticed the officer, he panicked and began trying to escape, ignoring the officer's command to halt. The officer shot the offender with a tazer, bringing him to the ground in a gruesomely described display of convulsions. It turned out the alleged suspect's mother was nearby, and probably owing to the chaos of the scene, believed the officer had shot and killed her son with a firearm and collapsed beside him in a fit of hysterics and prayers to God. I guess that final sentence was the punchline to the officer's joke or something because all 6 of them proceeded to burst into laughter, some of them laughing so hard they collapsed onto their sides on the bench, red in the face, gripping their stomachs. I felt like I was going to throw up. In my frequent interactions with the police in the course of my work, this experience was not an outlier by any means. The culture very much reinforces an "us vs them" mentality, and those that don't buy into it are shunned out or leave of their own accord. As it stands, there is no room for empathy in that line of work. People cannot be remembered or humanized in any way. The nails only exist to be hammered
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Mar 26, 2019 11:44
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regarding number 3, you don't stop being a soldier when you get locked up. I'm assuming the bounty was out, and it was all hands on deck with everyone ready to shiv at a moment's notice. if it wasn't the guy in the lunch line it woulda been someone in the showers or the library or whatever.
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Dec 13, 2019 23:12
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barksdale crew did have some socialist trappings, but never went full dictatorship of the proletariat. that left the door open for the manifestation of purestrain sociopathic capitalism to wipe them the gently caress out
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May 3, 2020 17:12
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excellent example of a pimp roll (or gangster glide) in this clip. i know it's been said a million times but the attention to detail on this show is pretty incredible. i spent a fair amount of time studying gangs in college, and the only piece of media other than the wire that has ever really impressed me with both the accuracy in depicting how gangs operate and its seamless presentation in the story was the movie Green Room my favorite example is when imogen poots is looking through the door vent, notices a bunch of boots with red laces, and then panics and announces to the group they're about to be murdered (in traditional skinhead groups, you only earn red laces on your boots when you're a soldier who has drawn some blood. the attack force)
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May 4, 2020 01:45
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escape artist posted:can you tell us what a pimp roll / gangster glide is? it's a really pronounced, almost too relaxed swagger, often employed with a unique "hop" or even a limp. it's a projection of total confidence. someone walking that type of way is sending out some huge flags to people adjacent to organized crime or aware of its players (everyone living in a black neighborhood in Baltimore in this case). At least it was in the 90's/00's, not so sure it's a contemporary street gang social trapping anymore. StashAugustine posted:Apparently in some parts of Europe red laces denote lefty skinheads so that scene didn't work lol well this movie took place in the pacific northwest lol it's actually a perfect setting for neo-nazis, as when they were having their big cultural moment and recruiting drive in the 80's and 90's, they were aggressively ejected from communities all over the country through a combination of zoning/police enforcement measures. because of oregon's famously lax attitudes about building communes and compounds off the grid, a lot of nomad groups just kind of naturally consolidated out there (among other focal points) of course you would have some independent nazi compound out in the woods in Oregon. that's where they all are! if that punk band didn't stumble their way into a scandalous murder at that compound, they would have stumbled their way into a scandalous murder at the hippie compound next door and lived through Midsommar instead
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May 4, 2020 02:54
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COMPAGNIE TOMMY posted:What was the point of McNulty crashing his car twice? narratively, it works perfectly to portray mcnulty's stubborn self-destructive nature. like the posters above said but if I'm not mistaken, it's also one those "faithfully adapted from real life" things
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May 8, 2020 14:48
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kaworu posted:
you're looking at it the wrong way, cuz. if you were like me, and hopelessly naive when you first watched through the series, this show was your first really clear look at how the sausage gets made. you were still hopelessly naive after you finished the show, but there were some things in you that were different afterward. some things that grew into greater curiosities to investigate how certain aspects of society really play out. you look back and feel embarrassment now at how little you understood when you first watched, but it's in part because you watched that you even have the insight necessary to make that observation now. all the pieces matter
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May 12, 2020 03:44
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kaworu posted:Re-watching this show at age 34 really is a radically different experience than watching it for the first time at age 20 in 2006, or rewatching it 4 years later at 24 in 2010 after the recession and the spectacular collapse of the multi-national criminal ponzi scheme referred to as "Keynesian economics" I thought that I'd reached a somewhat more enlightened place and I understood the show much more fully. Of course, that was useful bullshit, and now... well... now I'm just very aware that I will always be ignorant and always have more to learn, more to glean, more to understand. It's inspiring that I always find more and more subtleties in great pieces of art like this. me at 18: i have achieved full awareness me at 19: oh, NOW I've achieved full awareness 20-23: crippling depression me at 24: sigh. okay. I'm fully aware now. narrator: no he wasn't
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May 15, 2020 05:12
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Stairmaster posted:I think the majority of goons itt understand the wire better than David Simon at this point. yeah i was amazed to hear David Simon is more or less a neolib who believes all capitalism needs is more regulation. bruh, did you watch your magnum opus. like he gives talks all the time about tricky dick Nixon and ronald reagan and how trivially easy it was for them to not only dismantle new deal policies, but then make that platform politically repulsive for a generation.
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May 15, 2020 23:34
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awesmoe posted:If your takeaway from the wire was “only the current manifestation of institutions are corrupt, we just need different institutions” then it’s not David simon who wasn’t paying attention i agree with pretty much everything you said, including that simon's general outlook appears to be that the only answer to society's ills is real, human compassion. i still think it's reasonable to feel a little incredulous/surprise that someone who made the wire could believe "capitalism, with more regulations" would provide that.
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May 16, 2020 00:44
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replace james franco? lol uhhh gently caress off
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May 16, 2020 01:19
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Jack2142 posted:I think a key concept on the wire is a revolution doesn't really change things. Hamsterdam and legalizing drugs just shuffled where the bodies were buried in the end. hamsterdam isn’t a revolution. at best it’s a Limited Hangout, implemented by a jaded yet still firmly establishment figure who’s too old for this poo poo and not really interested in sweeping systemic reform. What bunny IS interested in is solving one or two social ills with an eclectic patchwork of abolitionist, socialist, anarchist, and utilitarian theories lazily thrown together (the urban police major needed to be reminded of communicable diseases?) another lesson that could be drawn from this, with an eye toward the fact that not even the authority of the commanding officers within the department was legitimately challenged much less that of the overarching economic system that is directly antagonistic in nature to the ideals represented by the existence of hamsterdam, is that siloed and poorly planned/coordinated social reforms will only succeed in changing where the bodies are buried.
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May 16, 2020 06:18
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Orange Devil posted:Hamsterdam was very likely a net good while not disrupting any of the actual causes of the suffering it alleviates. another consideration should be “localized & temporary net good” vs “universal permanent net good” hamsterdam may seem far fetched on its face to the layman but bored police commanders have a long, storied history of accidentally discovering revolutionary social change while loving around with departmental procedures, for instance what would happen if we just stopped patrolling lol-OH gently caress CRIME IS GOING DOWN ABORT ABORT GET THE CARS BACK ON THE ROAD every single police officer in the US in the past 50 years has studied the Kansas City preventative patrol experiment, despite its results being clearly abolitionist on its face! you better believe that in the world of the wire, the hamsterdam case is going right in every subsequent criminal justice textbook that goes to print. now why would that be? why would the establishment be okay with teaching their entire workforce about social experiments that are essentially existential threats to their authority? because it matters who revolutionary tactics come from. when they teach officers about the Kansas City experiment, it’s an inoculation. if anything similar to hamsterdam (anywhere now, not just in Baltimore) were to naturally manifest among the civilian population later on or a progressive officer starts getting some funny ideas, other officers will instinctively recognize it for what it is and shut it the gently caress down either with some good old fashioned anti-intellectualist rhetoric - and if that doesn’t work - brutal crackdowns and/or reassignment to the pawn shop unit. that’s not to say the bunny’s of the world shouldn’t try; he has obvious positive effects on people around him, and his example could potentially inspire future revolutionaries, but as we can see the population of Baltimore has been successfully suppressed for a long time. they have little to no class consciousness or institutional memory outside of a few pockets. in all likelihood, bunny made revolutionary change less possible God Hole fucked around with this message at 14:24 on May 16, 2020 |
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May 16, 2020 13:49
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when I was in Europe I was struck by how luxuriously long yellow traffic lights were. you had plenty of time to analyze which is more feasible: stopping or rolling through. Studies tell us that there is a direct correlation between how short the yellow light is, and the amount of fatalities that occur at that intersection. yet the yellow lights in the US get shorter and shorter, more and more people get t-boned and die, but those unmanned traffic cameras are rolling in the dough baby!!!
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May 16, 2020 17:37
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kaworu posted:Now this here?! This is some motherfucking BULLSHIT@!!! yeah i was in the middle of season 4 on a rewatch when i got kicked off it on Hulu. luckily you can get a week free of hbogo on Hulu, that should get me through the end. Eifert Posting posted:The big difference to me in rewatches is that I had had a 60-80 hour job by the most recent time I watched the show and related more with the detectives than I ever thought I would. same yo. one line that hit me like a truck this time that i barely registered the first time: season 3 lester is talking to someone about barnard's weekly 200 mile trip down to west virginia to collect burner phones. he seems really upset, and when questioned about it he laments "i just really appreciate the discipline of it" oof.
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May 22, 2020 04:30
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awesmoe posted:how does that mesh with his ending, where he gets basically what stringer (the actual capitalist) wanted and bails on it to go back to the corner? i could confidently state that someone like say nancy pelosi is a "representative of neoliberalism". she's richer than god, about 100 years old, but she just won't loving retire to let someone new come in and give people healthcare. she's already made her nut, it hasn't been about money for her for a long time but about the accumulation and maintenance of power at all costs (and the prestige that comes with it). like marlo's "institution", nancy's is incredibly small and exclusive. they both are loyal to their high command, but if you're not in that little circle, you're nothing** marlo can still take care of his people and not have it be from a place of sentimentality, or resisting the corrupting influences of capitalism. In fact, cynically providing attractive incentives for the people closest to you is precisely what is necessary to maintain such a ruthless and dominating institution. **see: bodie and everyone else who "worked for marlo" but still got arbitrarily walked into a vacant God Hole fucked around with this message at 01:46 on Jun 29, 2020 |
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Jun 29, 2020 01:39
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BiggerBoat posted:My own "I love this show but" thing is: in terms of gangsters, brother mouzone existing in the wire's baltimore is a bit like seeing a wooly mammoth walking around and grazing as if the previous 4000 years of history hadn't happened. guys like him definitely existed and commanded the kind of clout you see exemplified by avon's deference to him, but not since like the 60's. there's no way brother mouzone could walk around scolding everybody like that out in the open without catching a bullet in the modern context. the wire takes place in the 00's, but it's important to remember that simon was an embedded journalist with the BPD in the 80's/90's, and the street changes fast. so when you're watching the wire, you're getting a delayed snapshot of up to 10+ years with a few modern trappings stapled on top.
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Aug 20, 2020 18:06
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General Battuta posted:I think about this a lot, what is 'real power' in the Wire? Is it the protection of the law to hide your crimes behind? Is it being part of the state? marlo is a powerful player in the game that was a breath away from getting wiped out by avon very early in his career. he didn't through sheer chance, outside of his control. is that power? levy, a mid-tier level player in the game came very close to getting indicted on criminal conspiracy charges because of his own carelessness talking over the phone. he ultimately didn't because he has the knowledge and analytical skills to deduce on the fly that the state's case was dirty, combined with a respectable bartering game. compare that with a similar case where the subject didn't have those tools OR the money to pay for a lawyer who did, but still ended up getting away (clay davis) trying to define 'power' is like taking a picture of a river and, using that single frame, trying to extrapolate why this particular area has a more intense whirlpool or how this fish managed to eat a much bigger fish. all the while, the river has long since changed and the fish you were just studying doesn't exist anymore and neither do the circumstances that allowed it to "win"
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Sep 3, 2020 00:23
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BiggerBoat posted:That's sort of where I came down it. ehhh i think they actually did kinda lay the groundwork for lester's arc. rhonda catches him trying to manipulate her into pursuing a case at what she thinks is an inoppurtune time based on when the city elections are and he all but admits it. that establishes that 1) he gets tunnel vision like mcnulty and isn't afraid to crack a few eggs for that omelet and 2) he's willing to break the "rules" to get his case. yeah it's still a huge leap from that to fabricating a serial killer, but at the same time he reallllllly wanted marlo. same. I've watched the series 3 times and i still can't remember whether there was actually a copycate killer or not?? that plotline was closed up really sloppily (excepting that badass showdown between rhonda and levy)
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Sep 4, 2020 05:02
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BiggerBoat posted:
aside from butchie being his bank, he was also known to be a robin hood type figure, giving drugs and money back to the people. this gave him a little more of a barrier against the major players (im thinking in particular of the addict mother that gives him shelter when the barksdales are trying to hit him in season 1) edit: speaking of butchie, i forget, was it just prop joe who knew about his friendship with omar? or was it like one of those things like the sunday truce that are just honorably ignored by everyone until marlo came into the picture? God Hole fucked around with this message at 21:57 on Sep 13, 2020 |
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Sep 13, 2020 20:35
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Happy Thread posted:The police are the most effective gang so long as they're the ones white people feel good enough about to pick up the phone and tip off about anything unusual happening. Having eyes and ears through the entire non-involved population would be a huge advantage versus a large organization that can't get any Intel from the citizens. "the one who wins is usually the one who feeds the masses". the black panthers REALLY started getting attention from the feds once they had begun setting up networks of food distribution in low income and minority communities.
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Sep 13, 2020 22:37
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escape artist posted:like when Marlo gave away money to all the kids? someone never had raytheon come to their high school job fair and hand out cool notebooks and stickers!! General Battuta posted:The scene it adds the most to is Landsman's story about intrusive thoughts about McNulty while he's jerking off. It makes Rawls laughing even funnier because he grasps how horrible that would be on multiple levels! *first watchthrough* huh, kinda seems like rawls really does want to put his middle finger up mcnulty's rear end *second watchthrough* yep. called it.
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Sep 15, 2020 04:13
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for the person who was talkin about the towers, i recommend checking out the pruitt-igoe myth. it's a documentary about a housing project in st. louis, but unfortunately the story of pruitt-igoe is also the story of urban black housing projects in post-war america. you'll have no problem picturing some of the scenery that might have been found in the towers after watching. there's even a sickening publicity stunt demolition! for those less familiar about the rise of urban crime, degradation, and white flight to the suburbs in the mid-20th century; it's a pretty nice overview of those phenomena and their causes as well. optional extra credit: show me a hero (also david simon)
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Sep 23, 2020 02:28
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Ginette Reno posted:It sucks that the other kids didn't get the same opportunity but Namond is probably the least suited of all of them for a life on the streets. Bunny isn't being hyperbolic when he tells Wee-Bay that Namond is going to end up dead or in prison if he tries to follow in his foot steps. i would argue dukie was the least suited for life on the streets
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Oct 28, 2020 18:06
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Groundskeeper Silly posted:What was the point of the serial killer plotline? Almost every other major plotline seemed both realistic (enough) and provided insight into some system or structure or group of people. Was it just to show that the newspaper's bosses were eager to print sensational stories, even if they were a little fishy? Surely there were ways to do that that were had some basis in reality. in retrospect the serial killer plotline is very apt. it shows that police departments have to invent enemies from eclectic and unrelated phenomena in order to justify their existence and extract ridiculous amounts of money from corrupt administrations. if it's not serial killers, it's junkies, "superpredators", the presence of broken windows, or even a virus! https://abc7chicago.com/covid-relief-cpd-budget-lightfoot-chicago-police/10350078/
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Feb 18, 2021 19:27
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DasNeonLicht posted:The season five serial killer arc was the one point of the show that stretched credulity a little bit, I don't know — maybe something like that could really happen. milking homicides and organizing media circuses for funding is absolutely a thing cops do all the time, it's just anachronistic watching someone we've followed for years carry it out when he hasn't 'earned' it through his characterization
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Aug 11, 2021 21:42
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZH0ya7oMqDY
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Mar 16, 2022 20:04
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Jerusalem posted:This reminds me of one of the many, many, many, many, many great scenes from this show: hell yeah Lester has some real all-timers this one line fundamentally changed my outlook and consequently the entire direction of my life from that point forward, for the better https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zgTRPjHVrFE&t=134s so loving good
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Mar 21, 2022 20:51
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Eason the Fifth posted:Show Me a Hero and The Corner were so heart-wrenching that I don't want to watch them more than once. I got into Urban Planning after watching Show Me a Hero. I have since given up on Urban Planning.
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Jul 29, 2022 13:35
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BiggerBoat posted:I didn't mind the newspaper and Scott stories but the made up serial killer was loving stupid. Especially when Lester went along with it, which I found completely out of character. I guess you kind of need the red ribbon killer in order to set off the McNulty/Scott thing where they realize they're a mutual hoax but I think there are other ways that could have been done that weren't as goofy. this has been touched on a few times in this thread before, and while I agree that the whole serial killer plot is outlandish and silly, I don't think it was that huge of a stretch and the writers did actually lay some groundwork for Lester's arc for example, sometime in I think season 3 or 4, Rhonda catches Lester trying to manipulate her into pursuing a criminal case at what she believes is an inopportune time based on when the city elections were going to happen. Lester all but admits that he had considered this and she had him dead to rights. this establishes that a) he isn't afraid to use deception and put his allies in jeopardy to get the bad guy b) he's hubristic and gets tunnel vision like McNulty (and in this way his pre-series fall from grace & exile mirrors McNulty's at the end of season one) e: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vUIL8HRJ7MQ God Hole fucked around with this message at 14:58 on Aug 10, 2022 |
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Aug 10, 2022 14:51
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Count Roland posted:How effective was policing in communist countries? This is something I've never read about. in urban planning, the concepts of the 15 minute city and crime prevention through environmental design have gained some popularity in recent years, particularly among academic circles. the idea behind them is that how a city is designed foregoes the need for regular patrols and armed enforcement. for instance, a public space will be designed with adequate lighting, amenities, shops, etc. and arranged in such a way that encourages continuous activity so that there are always "eyes" in a place which has a marked effect on the amount of crime that takes place there anyway the soviets had us beat on those concepts by about 80 years and many of their urban areas, particularly soviet microdistricts, were basically 5 minute cities, so the city at large was extremely accessible and most people walked or used public transit, meaning there weren't a whole lot of "dead zones" like in the US where poverty and crime could fester. microdistricts were also regarded as the most basic form of governance within the soviet system, and the residents of a housing block usually constituted a democratically organized administrative unit that handled everything from building maintenance to rule enforcement to investigating claims. basically, you knew all your neighbors and they all knew you, and if you had a problem with someone or you saw some suspicious activity, there were avenues you could take that didn't necessitate a trip to the local police station. that, along with the 1957 Soviet Housing Decree, which guaranteed private accommodations and the basic necessities of life for all soviet citizens, and launched an initiative that provided 70 million homes to over 300 million people by 1990, meant that people weren't really living in dire conditions as they do here. street crime did still happen but compared to the US, it was exceptionally rare. police substations were usually glorified apartment units, minimally staffed and equipped with basic record-keeping equipment. don't quote me on this, but i think i read somewhere that most police didn't carry firearms on patrols (which were usually on foot). Stories of House and Home: Soviet Apartment Life during the Khrushchev Years, Varga-Harris (2015) Socialist Planning, Ellman (2014)
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Aug 10, 2022 21:57
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Count Roland posted:Thanks, that's interesting. oh yeah that's a classic. it's true she popularized the concept back in the 60's but tbh I think you'd be hard pressed to find it being discussed seriously in an american city planning document before the 2000's if you're interested in learning more about the history and logic of housing blocks, this is a pretty informative video from city beautiful https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JGVBv7svKLo&t=531s
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Aug 11, 2022 03:08
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Kazzah posted:I'm willing to forgive a lot of S5's bullshit for that scene where McNulty confesses to Scott, and tells him how high the conspiracy goes, all with a poo poo-eating grin because he knows Scott can never follow up on the story of a lifetime. this and his gleefully vindictive conversation with Brianna Barksdale are all-time McNulty moments Xander77 posted:Don't know about other "street crime", but domestic violence, youth hooliganism (up to and including assaulting people on the streets) were common and often fairly overlooked, particularly during the 80's economic depression. yeah this is true, but I would argue it's more attributable to economic depression and societal collapse in general rather than something peculiar to the soviet policing model domestic violence unfortunately wasn't treated seriously as a legal matter in most developed countries throughout the world until the 1990's. in the US, the Violence Against Women Act wasn't passed until 1994
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Aug 11, 2022 14:48
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drat dookie got fine as hell
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Feb 11, 2023 21:00
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how did Leo Fitzpatrick get typecast as just the nastiest scumbag who ever lived? other than the fact that he sells it really loving well. admittedly I've only ever seen him in the wire, bully, and kids
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Feb 15, 2023 03:45
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Stare-Out posted:S2 of True Detective was trash, I thought. Vince Vaughn’s character would’ve been interesting in another show though. S3 was good but still couldn’t live up to S1. I’m hoping the new season brings something interesting to the table because hell, I don’t mind me some Jodie Foster. I seem to remember someone in the TD thread totally called that Vince Vaughn was going to randomly throw the word "apoplectic" into one of his many overly verbose speeches
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May 5, 2023 22:44
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Ziggy is a dumbass but also a lot of it is performative because he wants to hide that he is a fundamentally sad man, perhaps the only Sobotka who understands his lot in life and the futility of it all. I formed this opinion despite not having seen season 2 in like 10 years btw
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May 8, 2023 14:41
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Jewmanji posted:Why does Brother Mouzone travel with Lamar? Wouldn't it make sense, if Mouzone if Nation of Islam or Fruit of Islam, that he'd just be accompanied by another member of the group? on television when you have a character who is larger than life you need to pair them with a straight man https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nkZftWwBRJc
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May 16, 2023 13:22
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tuning in for my daily episode of All Things Considered as I casually transport drug dealing minors across state lines
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May 26, 2023 11:20
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The real life BPD actually utilized 6 black op torture sites, but according to Simon they changed it to 4 black op torture sites to make it more digestible for television audiences
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Jun 1, 2023 14:40
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