i think MOST of the women of color on the wire were bold, bright, strong, intelligent. some were way too fierce though (i forgot the character's name. it was a boy whose dad was in jail and his mom was the wicked fierce one. she was forcing him to sell drugs. calling the kid out. telling him he wasn't a man.)
anyway, the women characters were ALL strong. and yes, that woman i described above was in NO WAY a GOOD mother. i'm acknowledging that
what i AM saying though, in relation to the MEN characters, the women were NOT represented equally. there were
on the hbo wire cast page
there were about 83 characters totals
74 men
and that leaves
9 women
that ain't good
The Wire's gender problem
Posted by Rose Afriyie
The Wire, the HBO series that ran for five seasons, will apparently live on, despite its shelf life, in a class at Harvard. And Professor William Wilson, the self-admitted "huge fan" who will be teaching the class, is high off of The Wire's Kool-Aid:
"I do not hesitate to say that it has done more to enhance our understanding of the challenges of urban life and the problems of urban inequality, more than any other media event or scholarly publication," Wilson told the audience before poking fun at himself, "including studies by social scientists."
As a racial justice advocate who loves politics and sexually diverse representations of people of color, one can't help but be a sucka for The Wire. (Also, I am not going to lie. I might have dedicated a Facebook status, or ten, to good-God-what-have-you-done-to-me Idris Elba.) But when you fasten your feminist goggles and take another gander, you are bound to get bamboozled, psyched out and sucka-punched by yet another attempt to be progressive -- hold the feminism...............
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4 comments:
I never thought about The Wire in terms of white/black or men/women. It was such an amazingly BRILLIANT show.
i didn't either EXCEPT after i read that article.
there were good peeps, bad peeps, peeps who were a bit of both OF ALL COLORS AND GENDERS.
it was THE most brilliant show on tv. period. hands down.
season one when they had deangelo (not sure of the spelling and i'm not going to look it up) explaining how to play chess to a couple of his 'neighborhood yos' (i took that term from the show itself by the way). that dialog was to kill for. that was sheer brilliance.
Best. Show. Ever. Very much agree.
I've sat through the whole thing twice....and yes, that speech stands out.
To me, the entire fourth season dealing with the public schools and all is the finest television ever.
Compared to other shows that even attempt to be "gritty" or "important", that season of The Wire shows that television CAN be intelligent, funny, fascinating, and a work of art all at once.
If anything, the sheer scope of the story just goes to show how BAD most other television is. Nothing even comes close.
oh hell yeah
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