What's in a Name?

One of those ****Spoiler alert**** entries.





I'm currently reading Barack Obama's first book, Dreams From My Father (I must say, it's way, way better than The Audacity of Hope which was halfway decent) and a passage struck me.

Much of the book is about Obama's struggles at defining himself, and indeed African American males defining themselves against the duality of being Black in America. Of course Obama had a slightly different experience considering his literally Black African-White American heritage. This particular section comes during his first visit to Kenya, while waiting in the airport to see his family after his father has passed away. Permit me to reproduce the passage in its entirety:

I Completed the form and Miss Omoro gave it the once-over before looking back at me. "You wouldn't be related to Dr. Obama by any chance?" she asked. "Well, yes- he was my father." Miss Omoro smiled sympathetically. "I'm very sorry about his passing. Your father was a close friend of my family's. He would often come to our house when I was a child." We began to talk about my visit... I found myself trying to prolong the conversation, encouraged less by Miss Omoro's beauty- she had mentioned a fiance- than by the fact that she'd recognized my name. That had never happened before, I realized; not in Hawaii, not in Indonesia, not in L.A. or New York or Chicago. For the first time in my life, I felt the comfort, the firmness of identity that a name might provide, how it could carry an entire history in other people's memories, so that they might nod and say knowingly, "Oh, you are so and so's son." No one in Kenya would ask how to spell my name, or mangle it with an unfamiliar tongue. My name belonged and so I belonged, drawn into a web of relationships, alliances, and grudges that I did not yet understand.

While this passage concerns The Wire very little, it made me think about the struggles of each character, defining themselves against their names and legacies. Let's look at a few of the characters/families as examples.

Of course there is Avon Barksdale. The Barksdale name signified power and prestige that came with the family's business. What else could Avon do but run one of Baltimore's largest drug organizations. Avon defined himself by carrying on what his name signified for his community.

Then there is Namond Brice, the son of Wee-Bey Brice, a Barksdale hit man. Namond tried to define himself with the name Wee-Bey had created on the streets. He worked for Barksdale's organization, then tried to run his own crew, but his heart was never with the corner. No matter how much he tried, and how much his mother yelled at him, Namond was not one a corner boys. He had to define himself despite his father's name in order to achieve success after being adopted by a former police commander.

Then there is the man without a name, Marlo Stanfield. Marlo runs a drug organization that rises meteorically due to its cold calculating approach.  Marlo even eclipses Barksdale by the end of season 3. Where Avon is interested in continuing the family business and Stringer is interested in profit and business, Marlo wants power and reputation. By gaining these, he will make his name in the community.

Nothing makes this priority more clear than when Omar attack's Stanfield's reputation on the street.  When word of this gets back to Marlo, we see his most passionate outburst of anger in the show.

MY NAME IS MY NAME!

At the end of season five, the police have enough evidence to convict his organization but some of it is illegally collected. As a result, Stanfield walks free and gets introduced to the very businessmen that Stringer wanted so much to be himself. Yet, this sort of reputation is not what drives Marlo who slips away from a cocktail party to attack two men on a corner. Though his adversaries are armed with a gun and a knife, Stanfield takes the corner. Stanfield is cut severely but he's happy that "his name" and reputation have lived on to echo in the streets.

Other characters and situations reflect this name/legacy/identity theme. "Cheese" Wagstaff (played by Method Man), Prop Joe's right hand man, is the absent father of Randy Wagstaff from Season Four. Both are very interested in business, but the family connection is mostly missing. Name and family dominates season two as well. Ziggy Sebotka never fills the role his father Frank wanted for him as head of the stevedores union. The Greek's are most concerned with keeping their name quiet.

Many of these situations demonstrate the human dilemma inherent in finding identity that go beyond Barack Obama's specific difficulty with race and culture. Marlo's singular drive to make a reputation based on power is not confined to west Baltimore. Avon's attempt to perpetuate the family business mirror Frank Sebotka's. Yet Obama points out the particular difficulty of finding identity for young African American males. A teacher he meets in Chicago says:

At least the girls have older women to talk to, the example of motherhood. But the boys have nothing. Half of them don't even know their fathers. There's nobody to guide them through the process of becoming a man... to explain to them the meaning of manhood. And that's a recipe for disaster.

Though Barack's actual difficulties didn't provide inspiration to Simon, these issues live in places that many of HBO's viewers don't. Simon shows how he has a finger on the pulse of American urban life by bringing this theme to the fore.

At the very least, this could be one more reason why Barack Obama's favorite TV show is The Wire.

Westerns

Ok. Anyone who has read my blog previously knows that I'm big on comparing the Wire to Western "classics" and other aspects of this genre. I guess it makes sense that I'll continue doing so in an episode by episode format.

One aspect of The Wire which I enjoy immensely, and I think this is something I appreciate in all creative outputs, is messing with genre conventions. Casting Brad Pitt in a role where no one can understand a word he says (Snatch). Brilliant.When Salvador Dali creates the perfect replica of the Venus De Milo, but as a dresser- I dig that. When Ray Charles played all the biggest hits of Country and Western music- as straight country as Hank Williams ever did, but coming from Ray... Yeah!

I think David Simon digs this streak of individuality as well. In the commentary to the first episode, and in a letter he wrote to HBO begging to give The Wire a chance, Simon sees the show as going beyond "the cop show." This genre was the networks' bread and butter, but TW was HBO's chance to stick it to the big boys. If Simon and his team could create a better show than CSI or Law and Order- well, then "it's not TV. It's HBO."

However, Simon did this by going so far outside of the cop show genre that he was not so much playing against this genre as creating his own by the fifth season.

But genre does mean something. In certain ways we could substitute the word genre for "commodification." If genre is a set of conventions that a creative work reflects or organizes itself around- then genre often translates into how a work of art is consumed. Think of movies (I like comedies, I hate horror) or music (Jazz sucks! Soul rules!). Stores sell art in these packages so people know a little about what they're buying into. Artists often use genre because it's sometimes easier to create a Sonnet than throw a bunch of words together.

Of course The Wire is organized vaguely around season long investigations into drugs, politics, schools, the docks, and the media. But it rejects many of the genre conventions. They "renounced the theme of good and evil," which is the heart of a cop show, because it bored them. In fact, people didn't really live or die based on their good or evil- just how they interacted with institutions. Commercial success is not Simon's primary goal (though I imagine he's doing just fine).

But Simon did play off many other genres- The Western being my favorite to discuss and one of the most prominent (um, also the Greek Tragedy I guess). The Western is such an interesting choice because it represents the two competing myths from my last post. Namely that if you're smart, do it better, work hard, and sacrifice, you can "win." If you don't there's still a place for you. The West symbolized this world of opportunity, individuality, ruggedness, and promise of the "pursuit of happiness." According to Frederick Jackson Turner, it was the frontier- this moving line of settlement- that brought about America's unique democracy without resulting to class or ethnic wars like those of Europe. (It turns out that Turner wasn't quite right about the lack of class/ethnic conflict in the West or really the whole frontier bit, but that's for a blog on another genre, History).

So by making West Baltimore into the new Monument Valley (where John Ford filmed most of his Westerns), Simon creates an anti-Western. By making the good bandit into a short, homosexual, African American- Omar- we get an anti-Western hero. By turning the inner city into a world where the law exists only tangentially, where men carry guns and the will to use them, where you need your wits to survive- well, it ain't Dodge City, but you see where I'm going here. Of course, the whole thing is not one big Western- as much as I seem to think it is. So as I review the episodes, the theme will wax and wane, and how Simon uses it- either the "anti-western" or homage to the Western. I will discuss certain facets of this theme in greater depth:

Trains: I've mentioned this here, but Trains are particularly important to Westerns. The Wire likes (hates) Trains. Trains are also important to industrialization. The Wire loves industrialization (hates de-industrialization).

"Law and Order"- ok, obviously this is more in the cop show genre, but I think Westerns use it a little differently. Because in the West- law and order are just a bit more ambiguous. Not unlike Bill Rawls sexuality.

Guns- specifically how people talk about guns, fetishize guns, etc. My "six shooter" has become my "nine."

The Establishment vs. "the real people"- in Westerns people hated all of those back east. In the Wire, people hate those in DC or NY (or, in an ironic switch, the "county".

Nostalgia- in the West, everyone is always resisting the coming of civilization. It always "used to be better." Civilization could be represented by trains, towns, or people in suits. In the Wire, civilization could be represented by Johns Hopkins, condos, or people in suits.

Characterization- Omar is one such western characterization, Brother Mouzone is another one (the outlaw who is a member of the Nation of Islam and reads Harpers, right). Is Marlo The Wire's railroad baron?

Ok- that's good enough for now. We'll see how it actually plays out and get a read on which seasons featured more or fewer homages to the western.