Mayor Carcetti's The Wire

Television is often regarded as a fun way to cool down after a long day. Some, however, are known to be tools to bring awareness to topics that are in need of drastic reconstruction. One show that did just that was the HBO original, The Wire. The Wire critiqued policing and corruption in inner city Baltimore, a rarity in television. The show was dense and had many plotlines, but it was obvious to every viewer, that the creators took very specific positions on the problematic climate that Baltimore faced, and still faces today. By focusing on politicians, policemen, and drug dealers the show portrayed how life works in such a hostile city. The show appeared to have subversive tendencies throughout its 5-season run. These subversive tendencies

Mayor Carcetti, a well-to-do white man who becomes mayor by the end of season three is thought to be a breath of fresh air. A new hope. However, after his first year in office, his views begin to shift like many of Baltimore’s mayors before him. Carcetti entered politics as a way to help those in need, and ended up keeping many citizens in a spiral of crime. In season five, episode one, Carcetti desperately finds a way to reduce spending and appease those in power. Instead of actually finding a way to reduce crime in Baltimore, he forces the police to cook the crime stats, as a way to make it appears as if crime has been reduced. By arresting drug dealers and drunks, instead of arresting killers, he leaves Baltimore in a tumultuous state. This form of media manipulation alludes to Antonio Gramsci’s History of the Subaltern Classes, when he writes, “[The] attempts to influence the programmes of these formations in order to press claims of their own–conserve the assent of the subaltern groups and to maintain control over them”. Upper-class citizens hold almost all control over the “subaltern” class that resides in inner city Baltimore, and nothing is done to help them, which perpetuates a cycle of violence and corruption. In fact, in the earlier seasons, the most prestigious politicians work with dangerous mob bosses for monetary gain, while completely overlooking what happens to their own

The writers of The Wire are presenting an ideological position that is subversive. By claiming that even politicians are corrupted in a city like Baltimore, challenges a large power that is rarely contested. One of the show’s creators, David Simon, claims that "all the things that have been depicted in The Wire over the past five years – the crime, the corruption – actually happened in Baltimore". Taking this into consideration, it’s clear that their position is critical of the political landscape of Baltimore, but it’s a reality that needed to be presented to