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thevisibilityarchives · 3 years

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The Wire, 2002-2008

BIPOC, LGBTQIA+

When discussing the greatest shows of all time, two answers consistently come up: AMCs period masterpiece Mad Men, and HBO’s crime drama The Wire. While Mad Men captivated audiences through heavy nostalgia, blissful costuming, and the allure of Jon Hamm, The Wire offered up something different: a brutal and realistic depiction of crime in Baltimore, perpetrated by antagonists on both sides of the law. Gritty, witty, and often satirical, the show delved deep into the moral complexities of crime at a time when most shows centering around police continued to advocate the “Hero Cop” trope.

There’s a great irony in this. The shows writer, David Simon, came to HBO as a veteran of the 90’s police procedural Homicide: Life on the Streets. Based on his own experiences as a crime reporter, Homicide helped build the millennial generation’s fixation with police drama portraying cops as beleaguered heroes. Detective John Munch (portrayed by comedian Richard Belzer) would go on as one of the most beloved characters of Law & Order: SVU. Homicide made a name for Simon, and it’s fascinating that The Wire doesn’t fixate on cops as heroes, but characters steeped in corruption.

A big part of the legacy of The Wire comes down to its enigmatic characters. At a time when polling indicated many Americans against the idea of same sex marriage, the show took bold steps in its depiction of queer characters and their relationships. In three of these, we find three distinct portraits of how LGBTQIA+ portrayals have transformed over the years, and what the good, the neutral, and the problematic all look like.

Perhaps the most notable queer characters in the show are Omar Little (Michael K. Williams), Detective Kima Greggs (Sonja Sohn), and Snoop (Felicia Pearson). Omar stands as a Robin Hood-esque gangster both as menacing as he his charismatic. Kima, Omar, and Snoop are a trinity of the tropes that long defined queer characters onscreen, though the importance of their existence cannot be understated. Together they show us how far representation has come, and how both positive and negative aspects of writing can have such a tremendous impact.

On the side of negative representation, there is Kima Greggs. Kima epitomizes the representation of a queer woman written by a straight man. She is a beautiful woman, with just enough feminine detail to make her desirable to her male counterparts, but with masculine energy that makes her an ideal candidate for slamming Hi-Lifes at the strip club with male coworkers amidst a sea of chicken wings. Her sexuality is questioned by male coworkers, one of whom shows up to her door late at night for a presumable one night stand she never indicated she was remotely interested in.

Whether it is an occupational hazard of working amongst men, her characterization leans towards excessively masculine. She behaves identical to her male coworkers, deploying the exact tactics they use to cheat on their own spouses, and towards the end of the show epitomizes the “deadbeat dad” trope. Without a personality of her own, Kima’s partner is transformed effortlessly into the nagging wife who is too dominant, too controlling, too whiny for deigning to express concern at her girlfriend’s willingness to work in a field that endangers her life. Most disturbing is the fact that for the nine months and following year of her partner being pregnant then having their son, Kima is visibly discomforted – yet does nothing to express the fact that she doesn’t even want children. Her entire presence is summed up as a brainchild of the Blue is the Warmest Colour scissoring scenes and the endless harpy wives of men like Kevin James and Ray Romano: an amalgamation of what a heterosexual man believes a lesbian woman should be, rather than what she is.

This isn’t to say there is a single lesbian out there like Kima who doesn’t exist. 2020 was undoubtedly the Year of the Stemme, and the rise of nonbinary language and culture reflects evolving ideas in how we define masculinity and femininity. But in Kima very little feels authentic, and she is nearly as predictable as the alcoholic spirals of her coworkers who seem to shoot first, seek therapy never.

Part of why Kima’s writing is so startling of course is because the other named characters in this post appear so differently. Snoop is butch through and through, a masculine presenting street enforcer portrayed by an out and proud butch lesbian herself. Her character is semi-biographical, with Snoop itself being the nickname Pearson was bestowed during her days on the street. Snoop’s sexuality is more of an afterthought than a central point of her character, and with good reason: because it doesn’t matter. While Snoop makes her first appearance in the show in Season 3, it’s not until the end of Season 4 that her sexual orientation is even brought up. Even then, it’s simply in passing, a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment of snarky dialogue that has seemingly no impact. Nothing about how she is perceived changes. She doesn’t endure insults or come ons from the guys she surrounds herself with. She simply is, her sexuality a part of the background whereas Kima’s dominates her entire character.

In fairness, Snoop is not as much of a major character as Kima. We don’t learn much about her home life, her background, the traumas that haunt her or what happens when she returns to the place where she lays her head. We don’t know if home is four walls, or the arms of a woman (or many women). But what we see is a complete juxtaposition to the way in which Kima’s sexuality is written under the male gaze, while Snoop’s is simply a small part of who she is.

To round these characters all out of course we have Omar Little, to date “a Top 10 all-time TV character” according to Hollywood Reporter’s Daniel Fienberg. Omar is more or less synonymous with The Wire, and the character solidified Michael K. Williams as a lovable criminal much as Henry Hill did Ray Liotta. The Wire depicts the ways in which crime is not a choice, but an inescapable force for many of its characters, and Omar leans into that by becoming a man who steals what has already been stolen. His love of money for the sake of it isn’t reflected in flashy cars or clothing, and yet he seems unable to help himself from carrying out elaborate schemes to rob local gangsters, including pretending to be a blind elderly man in a wheelchair.

We first see Omar strolling the streets of Baltimore, whistling his trademark “The Farmer and the Drell” as he carries out a robbery with his boyfriend Brandon and his sawed off shotgun. Among the cruel and sadistic characters we have already seen, Omar reveals himself to be a brother among them, capable of maiming, and killing with seemingly no remorse. But that coldness quickly thaws in the intimate moments captured between him and his various partners over the years (romantic and platonic). The horrifying death of his lover Brandon rocks him to his core, and he displays a deep and abiding love for his friends and partners that we don’t really see any other character exhibit in the show.

As an out gay man prowling The Hood, Omar’s name is almost always brought up in the context of homophobic slurs and slogans by other characters who define him by his gayness more than his thievery. Homophobia within the black community is currently loaded and layered topic, with some arguing it is merely a stereotype used to politically villainize blacks (c’mon, Pete Buttigieg lost because he’s Pete Buttigieg, nothing else), and others noting the data that indicates blacks are not on par with whites when it comes to marriage equality support (https://www.huffpost.com/entry/the-truth-about-homophobi_b_9824122). Chances are, if you identify as black and queer, at some point you have felt alienated by your community. Our voices in this matter tend to get lost in the shuffle, but there is no denying that in communities with significant populations of black Christians and Muslims, homophobia remains a serious issue, and transphobia a deadly one.

When The Wire first aired in 2002, the HIV/AIDS epidemic had slowed down significantly in America. Within the show, we hear the disease more often referenced within the realm of intravenous drug use than we do related to gay characters. The black community’s struggles with the epidemic have also left a scar on its relations to the LGBTQ community, with gay, bisexual, and pansexual men viewed with bias. All of this is without delving into the ways toxic masculinity plays a role.

Omar rejects all of these stereotypes. He is referred as everything from a pedophiliac pimp to a bottom (oh, the horror!). Yet he is a man feared by his enemies, admired by local street children, and who is unequivocally three-dimensional – perhaps more than anyone else on the show. Omar stands to show us all that gay characters can be in a world that stops spitting out tales on gay trauma, tropes, and stereotypes, and instead portrays members of the LGBTQIA community as exactly what we are: well-rounded people from all walks of life.

These characters have had a big impact on many of us, who grew up in a world with no representation, or representation layered with problematic themes depicting us as one sided. As a member of the black queer community, they helped reinforce the notion of solidarity at a time when we saw so little of ourselves on television and movie screens period. The Wire will be remembered throughout history for many things, and its queer characters should undoubtedly be a part of that.

**Note: Michael K. Williams passed at the age of 54 this past Monday, September 6, 2021. He was anticipated to likely win an Emmy for Lovecraft Country in which he played another black gay man. While he never identified as anything—gay, bisexual, or straight—his contributions to the black queer community have been monumental, his performances as a whole colossal. Rest in power.

#thewire #queer representation #black representation #baltimore #dmv #michael k williams #omar little #kimagreggs #lgbtq #hbo #queer characters #black and queer #gay #lgbtq visibility #thevisibilityarchives #television #tv

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mavwrekmarketing · 7 years

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WASHINGTON President Donald Trump thinks he is a master of flattery, intimidation and dealmaking. He also apparently thinks hes a New York natural at handling belligerent world leaders.

He may be right about the first three, but he is taking the planet on a hair-raising ride into a perilous unknown as he tests the fourth.

Almost overnight, Trump has transformed himself from a churlish, know-nothing isolationist into a wheeling-dealing Kissinger on Mountain Dew: speed-dating China, embracing NATO, fleet-trolling North Korea and dispatching Secretary of State Rex Hoss Tillerson to Moscow to talk nasty to putative pal Vladimir Putin.

Im flexible, and Im proud of that, the president said the other day.

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie has a bridge to sell you if you think this is only about Trump suddenly being moved to tears by dead Syrian babies.

Its partly about turning around his dismal domestic polls. Trump is not just wagging the dog; he is wagging a whole pack of them. Have you heard much about Obamacare or the wall lately?

Talking tough has a related aim: to undercut the idea that Trump is a Putin plant, aided last year in the campaign by Russian bots, fake news sites and email hacks.

Trumps new embrace of world affairs also has to do with putting White House chief adviser Steve Bannon in a corner. Yes, the meister was laughing in the front row of Wednesdays press conference with the head of NATO. But it was a chuckle of the condemned. Everyone in town saw the presidents dismissive distancing of himself from Bannon in Trumps hometown newspaper, the New York Post. Everyone also has seen Tillerson, Defense Secretary James Mattis and National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster shred Bannon to pieces for the amusement of vengeful First Son-in-Law Jared Kushner.

But Trumps real motivation, as with everything in Trump World, is ego gratification. Its WAY more of a rush to get on the phone with new BFF Xi Jinping than to read rising Gallup numbers.

STR via Getty Images

Nuclear-armed North Korea launched four ballistic missiles on March 6 in a challenge to President Donald Trump.

Like other presidents only much faster, since he is so impatient Trump has found Congress tedious, bureaucracy boring and the press corps somewhere between annoying and treasonous.

Barack Obama was no master of world affairs either when he entered the Oval Office. But Obamas form of hubris to lecture the world on its moral failings was less perilous, at least in the short run.

Trumps form of pride is the opposite. He doesnt care about framework. He wants to make deals of all kinds, everywhere, Now. Yalta on cell and tweet. And that is a far riskier route.

Making snap judgments about world leaders with nuclear weapons or even claimingthat you are making such judgments can complicate things quickly, and do irreversible damage in societies that dont get that the tweet-paced palaver is show.

The possibility of fateful escalation in this social media age is extreme.

Sending the Navy to troll North Korean leader Kim Jong-un may feel like fun, but what if Kim decides to attack nearby Seoul with conventional weapons?

Trumps developers penchant for wanting to make deals at any cost comes with an equally evident willingness to welch on deals if it serves his purposes.

But its one thing to stiff a subcontractor. Its another to stiff, say, the Chinese. They have methods of getting payment that far exceed that of a floor-tile jobber on a highway in Paramus.

It looks as though Trump indeed made a quick deal on the phone with Xi, and it was a disastrously bad one if you care about China overwhelming the American economy with underpriced goods.

Maybe its a coincidence, but Trump has decided to stop calling China a currency manipulator; China, for its part, at the United Nations abstained from voting against an American resolution condemning Bashar Assad for his gas attack on Syrian civilians.

I was honored by the vote, the president said, as though accepting a gift from China. It seems that Xi also made some promises about helping out on North Korea by stopping coal shipments.

Were either of things worth the abandonment of the main American economic argument against China? Probably not. Did Trump run the traps of his national security team before cutting a deal with Xi? Probably not, since it all happened in a couple of hours.

Jonathan Ernst / Reuters

President Donald Trump speaks by phone with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Jan. 28.

Putin is a bully, but if you answer him with bullying of your own you had better be patient, consistent and unflinching. Tillerson demanded that Moscow accept responsibility for the gas attack in Syria. But back in Washington, Trump was milder in tone on that topic.

Like Henry Kissinger back in the 1970s,Trump seems to think he can corner Russia by siding with China. But unlike Kissinger, Trump knows next to nothing about either country. And a one-week flirtation with Xi is not enough to scare Putin.

The last problem is that Trump mistakenly believes he knows the world because he has built hotels and licensed his name all over the globe. But in most places, he only learned what he had to learn to close the dealwhich consisted largely of knowing which local officials to flatter, cajole or threaten.

Does he know anything about the history and culture of China, Russia, North Korea or Syria? Another businessman, Henry Ford, said that history is bunk. To Trump, that is an overstatement.

As for NATO, Trump stood in the East Room Wednesday and pledged his new-found love of an alliance he denounced during the campaign as a bunch of deadbeats who were crying wolf about Russia, but who were unwilling to pay to protect themselves.

Its an enduring partnership, Trump said Wednesday, and a great alliance. Jens Stoltenberg, the stolid Norwegian who serves as NATO secretary general, stood on the stage with the president. He didnt smile much, which was smart. For there is no guarantee that Trump will say the same thing tomorrow.

Tomorrow is another episode.