The Wire and America’s Dark Corners

Essays on a Post–9/11 Urban Dystopia

Buch | Softcover

236 Seiten

2015
McFarland & Co Inc (Verlag)
978-0-7864-7918-4 (ISBN)

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The Wire (2002-2008) was a searing exploration of post-9/11 America. It detailed the struggles of those living in America's disintegrating industrial heartlands and drug-ravaged neighborhoods, as well as those striving against the odds in its schools, hospitals and legal system. In the shadow of 9/11, while all eyes were turned towards Afghanistan and Iraq, The Wire was one of the few attempts to show the realities of America's dark corners.

Dostoevsky and Tolstoy have been evoked in discussions of The Wire, its compelling storylines and memorable cast of characters creating a level of detail previously unseen in television series. However, while the show's scope and ambition garnered critical praise and a loyal following, a discussion of its political aspects, and in particular of the commentary it provided on Bush-era America, is overdue.

The essays in this book examine The Wire in these terms, encompassing the unforseen consequences of the War on Drugs, the division of America's cities, the surveillance state, and the meaning of citizenship. In sum, this book provides new insights into how The Wire shone a light on the hidden realities of post-9/11 America.

Arin Keeble is a teaching assistant at Newcastle University, UK and a visiting lecturer in English at Bishop Grosseteste University in Lincoln, UK. He has published three peer-reviewed articles on the literary and cultural representation of 9/11, is co-editor of a new collection of essays on David Simon’s television series The Wire and is currently working on the cultural representation of Hurricane Katrina. He lives in the United Kingdom. Ivan Stacy is a lecturer in English at Royal Thimphu College in Bhutan. He specializes in contemporary fiction, and his research interests include complicity and the ethics of witnessing and testimony. He lives in Korea.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments v

Preface 1

Introduction 3

Part One. Bad Dreams: American Identity Post–9/11

History, Freedom and Bureaucracy (Andrew Moore) 13

Mythological Fictions and the Game Paradigm (Niall Heffernan) 31

The American Dream: Capital, Codes and Consensus in the Early 21st Century (Michael Gow) 49

“It’s all in the game”: Citizenship as the “Missing Middle” (Michael Lister) 67

Part Two. The Target: The War on Drugs and Its Cost

The Corners of Crime (Robert Andersson, Jørgen Bruhn and Anne Gjelsvik) 81

The Paper Bag Compromise: Hiding the Problem of Drug Dependency in Hamsterdam (J.D. Taylor) 95

Insurgency, Accidental Guerrillas and Gang Culture (Tiffany Potter and Tobias Sirzyk) 114

The War on Drugs and the War on Terror (Arin Keeble) 133

Part Three. The Detail: Domestic Policy in Bush-era America Rethinking Space (Anca M. Pusca) 153

Watching, Policing: Surveillance and Complicity (Ivan Stacy) 170

A Dystopian Fable About America’s Urban Poor (Peter Dreier and John Atlas) 192

Post–9/11 Educational Reform and the Epistemology of Ignorance: A Critique of No Child Left Behind (Laura Bolf-Beliveau and Ralph Beliveau) 208

About the Contributors 221

Index 225

Verlagsort	Jefferson, NC
Sprache	englisch
Maße	152 x 229 mm
Themenwelt	Kunst / Musik / Theater ► Film / TV
Themenwelt	Kunst / Musik / Theater ► Theater / Ballett
ISBN-10	0-7864-7918-3 / 0786479183
ISBN-13	978-0-7864-7918-4 / 9780786479184
Zustand	Neuware