In ‘Remarks to the American Society of Christian Ethics’ (Library of Congress MSS Box 70, p. 011828)¹, Hannah Arendt notes, Each time you write something and send it out into the world and it becomes public, obviously everybody is free to do with it what he pleases, and this is as it should be.Continue reading “Hannah Arendt On Our Creations’ Independent Lives”
Tag Archives: The Wire
Hating On The Phrase ‘All Lawyered Up’
You’ve heard it in police procedurals on the television and the big screen. I know I heard it in The Killing and The Wire. A couple of weary beat cops or detectives, battling crime on the streets, fighting the noble War on Drugs perhaps, keeping us law-abiding citizens safe from the depredations of the big,Continue reading “Hating On The Phrase ‘All Lawyered Up’”
The Killing and the Death That Dare Not Speak Its Name
One important feature of AMC’s The Killing, (the subject of yesterday’s post), which it inherits from the Danish original Forbrydelsen, is its focus on the effect of the central murder on the victim’s family. In so doing, the show manages to be, besides the imperfect police procedural, a painful examination of the most commonly ignoredContinue reading “The Killing and the Death That Dare Not Speak Its Name”
The Killing as Cautionary Police Procedural
If Wikipedia’s entry for “police procedural” is any indicator, AMC’s The Killing is not commonly thought of as one. But despite being a traditional whodunit, it has many of the features of that genre; it depicts “a number of police-related topics such as forensics, autopsies, the gathering of evidence, the use of search warrants andContinue reading “The Killing as Cautionary Police Procedural”
Breaking Bad and the War on Drugs
A video made by the Brave New Foundation and titled ‘What Breaking Bad Reveals About the War on Drugs‘ is making the rounds these days. It is brief, well worth a watch, and made up of rapidly edited clips from the show. It features the following screen legends–designed in Breaking Bad’s trademark ‘chemical elements letters’ style–thatContinue reading “Breaking Bad and the War on Drugs”
Why The Talking Dead is a Bad Idea
Last night, I declined to watch the Oscars and chose The Walking Dead instead. If you’re going to watch zombies, why not watch a more interesting group of them? Snark aside, I had not seen most of last year’s crop of nominees, other than the mildly diverting Argo, and more to the point, I’ve burned outContinue reading “Why The Talking Dead is a Bad Idea”
Gus Fring: Breaking Bad’s Management Consultancy Guru
Yesterday, while writing on the corporate deadliness of The Wire‘s Stringer Bell, I noted in passing, some structural resemblances between that character and Breaking Bad‘s Gustavo ‘Gus’ Fring. But, in many ways, Gus goes well beyond Stringer in bringing the corporate to the corner. In particular, in his channeling indiscriminate violence into murderously well-directed andContinue reading “Gus Fring: Breaking Bad’s Management Consultancy Guru”
Baltimore Dispatches – III: Stringer and the Deadly Suaveness Of the Drug Trade
In New Zealand, you can get GPS-guided tours of locales used for Lord of the Rings action; tourists snap them up by the dozen. In Baltimore, the city of The Wire, you can get walking and driving tours that take you to Wire locales (like Season 2’s union-run shipping docks, for instance). It’s a pity theyContinue reading “Baltimore Dispatches – III: Stringer and the Deadly Suaveness Of the Drug Trade”
David Simon is a Little Too Proprietary About The Wire
David Simon has made some waves recently in a series of interviews regarding the Wire (here; here; and here), viewer’s relationships to it (and its characters). I’m not going to repeat or reproduce Simon’s remarks here; please do chase down the links. But in a nutshell: Simon (was) is unhappy about the ‘pop’ understanding ofContinue reading “David Simon is a Little Too Proprietary About The Wire”
Samir Chopra 