"Don't matter who did what to who at this point. Fact is, we went to war. And now, there ain't no going back. I mean, shit. It's what war is, you know. Once you in it, you in it. If it's a lie, then we fight on that lie. But we got to fight."
Thus does Slim Charles explain to the king, Avon Barksdale, the immutable law of war.
Stringer Bell has just been shot to death, and Stringer Bell was Avon Barksdale's right hand man. Everyone on the street assumes he has been shot in the escalating exchange of violence between the Barksdale organization and the rising young gang headed by the ruthless, ambitious and relentless Marlo.
Of course, Barksdale knows the truth: Stringer was killed, with Barksdale's own complicity, in retribution for Bell's own duplicitous play to eliminate Omar Little using Brother Muzone as the executioner. But Omar and Brother figured out the ploy and cornered Bell, leaving his riddled body for the street hoppers and touts to ponder, to explain and to conclude Marlo was the killer, and that meant the war which was smouldering is now going to explode into a major conflagration. All Barksdale need do is to give the word, or even to not give the word, but simply to say nothing and his outraged troops will boil over and bring the war to Marlo.
Barksdale, hesitates. It does not feel right, to unleash this onslaught when the target is actually, in this case, uninvolved. Slim Charles explains how irrelevant the truth is, when it comes to war.
Of course, The Wire is not really talking about the complicated world it has created; it is talking about the real world; it is talking about invading Iraq, hunting down Saddam Hussein for unleashing the attack on the World Trade Center and for plotting to use his weapons of mass destruction. We know all this, watching, because The Wire is airing in the years when Bush and his party went wild on Iraq, blundering into a fight with the wrong shooter.
Thus is the power of fiction to reach people who would never even want to think about Bush, Iraq, politics or the eternal war this country has decided to wage. We can see real life and think, "This somehow seems familiar, and wrong. I know it because I've seen it before..." In The Wire.
Enough with The Wire. Not that many people watched it. Real world events are just as educational and can surely serve to educate us if examined carefully.
ReplyDeleteAh, but that is like saying, "Enough with Shakespeare." It's true, I don't read much fiction any more, but mostly because it is usually so disappointing.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, I work with a young woman who will not read newspapers or listen to radio news or listen to NPR. She finds it all irrelevant to her life. But, if she thinks she is being entertained, she'll watch, and learn and she is very bright and will make connections. So, there is another avenue to the public consciousness.
Besides, it's great art. It's as rich as Shakespeare and Dickens, and it will like be as enduring. That few people have seen it is not the fault of the art--that says more about the US.
--The Phantom
OK, I'll give you that one. On the other hand, I find it difficult to believe that your sheltered NH co-workers watch The Wire - surely too gritty for them. Maybe Housewives of New Jersey.
ReplyDeleteSad to say, you are right on the money there. Housewives of New Jersey and, I learned today, Jersey Shore. Some have tried The Wire, but they could not understand the dialect and gave up. (I actually watch it with subtitles.)
ReplyDelete--The Phantom