http://blog.commarts.wisc.edu/2015/04/28/the-wire-freddie-gray-and-collective-social-action/ Responses to Media and Culture Fri, 12 Feb 2016 19:35:04 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=4.7.5 http://blog.commarts.wisc.edu/2015/04/28/the-wire-freddie-gray-and-collective-social-action/comment-page-1/#comment-441558 Tue, 05 May 2015 13:34:28 +0000 http://blog.commarts.wisc.edu/?p=26211#comment-441558 Thanks for the comment, Noel. I think you’re right that it’s too much to expect a television show to prompt activism. The Wire was remarkably successful in showing us the problems existing in Baltimore, in detailed and powerful ways. But if we want social action to occur, we need to connect the fictional show to the real world. That connection can’t be made by the television show itself. The show did its job–what’s missing is rhetoric that connects it to the real world, that issues a call for action, that compels us to act.

]]> http://blog.commarts.wisc.edu/2015/04/28/the-wire-freddie-gray-and-collective-social-action/comment-page-1/#comment-441553 Mon, 04 May 2015 15:35:43 +0000 http://blog.commarts.wisc.edu/?p=26211#comment-441553 While I can appreciate the ideas at the root of this argument, it does seem to me a lot to ask that a fictional series, powerful and unusually analogous to real-world situations though it is, be a focal point for protest seven years after its last new episode was shown. I admired it greatly and believe I learned something from it, but I am no more likely to drive to Baltimore to protest police brutality than I am to drive to New Jersey to march against Mafia control of the sanitation business.

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