sobotka

Years later, I’m a (New York Times best-selling) author of three books—relaxing in the back of this horrible spoken word event, waiting for the host to school me on why I should have a problem with the greatest television show in American history. We never had the conversation. She came to greet me, and we took a picture. While she checked out our image on her phone, making sure the lighting was right, I asked, “So what’s up with The Wire?”

”Oh, I didn’t really watch it?” she said. “It’s too negative, and I can’t give it my energy.”

”So why the hard opinions? I mean, if you never saw the show, how do you know it’s so negative? How do you know it’s not funny and creative and informative?”

The young lady didn’t have an answer for me. Not only was she not from the city, but she didn’t even watch The Wire. I imagine that someone who also probably did not see the show shared their opinion with her, and because she may have had trust for that person, she carried their argument as if it were her own. Seeing a person stand on their own critique of something they’d never seen is extremely scary, so scary that I wanted to know more. What other things do you have baseless opinions on? But, lucky for her, we were pulled in different directions by other people who wanted to catch up with us and, of course, take more pictures. I tried to find her as the venue started to clear out, but she was gone.

If I could have caught Miss Tee, I would have explained that The Wire is the exact opposite of copaganda. The phrase copaganda definitely deserves to be attached to many television shows and movies that only portray offices as pure heroes, hungry to save citizens in an urban area. Simon and The Wire's writers took the time to detail the complexities that exist inside the police department. You had cops that wanted to be heroes and tried to do their jobs, and you had cops that were beyond lazy. You had officers who were racist but didn't know they were racist. You had officers that were flat-out racist. You had officers who were extremely intelligent. You had officers that were extremely stupid. There were officers with good hearts who made bad decisions and officers with bad hearts who made good decisions. The officers were Black, white, fit, little, or wildly out of shape.

Every single officer was carefully developed with an unprecedented amount of authenticity. How can you use a word like copaganda when the horrors of their brutality and their inability to put down cases were on front street in multiple seasons of the show?

D. Watkins, The Wire: The Complete Visual History by D. Watkins (2022).