There is a lot to say about the intentional scripting and design of the show The Wire. Clearly an experienced and informed individual is behind every scene, line and character. I took this into consideration as i reflected on 'D' and McNulty's shared, lone role as father. These characters are the only to have their interactions with their children captured in the scenes of the show. While the drug game is a family operation it is not past down father to son. Not to say I am surprised because I have not seen anything counter to this reality in the urban settings I've encounters which reflect that which is seen on The Wire.
"In June 2008, National Fatherhood Initiative released The One Hundred Billion Dollar Man, a ground-breaking study that showed that the federal government spends $100 billion each year supporting father-absent homes."
It isn't a new problem but it tends to only catch the majorities attention when there are financial ramifications for tax payers. it certainly is relevant for more than just a financial reason but i find that The Wire's depiction of this reality is more disheartening and upsetting than rough nature of 'the game'. Omar references his honor in maintaining a certain limit in his criminal activity - "i don't kill no one who's not in the game" this is followed by Bunks reply "A man's got to have a code". In a culture that relies on codes and loyalty where is that found in fatherhood? What is so heartbreaking about watching these lives and characters unfold is that conscious understanding that if a handful of those characters' fathers had been the slightest bit more selfless the criminal issue would be drastically different. Sure someone else would be dealing and Baltimore would still see dead bodies on their streets with glass vials encrusting the soles of their shoes. But the game would have spared the life of Wallace whose juvenile mind and heart are in trauma from the violence he is witnessing, incapable of comprehension he deals the way the only men in his life have shown him and enable him to, he gets high.
Nice post and nice link. In looking at that link, you see they have a piece of the fact that the U.S. doesn't have paid paternity leave (and is the only country in the world to not have mandated parental leave of any kind!). This, in itself, is only marginally related to what you are writing about here. But it is indicative of a culture that puts economic productivity (and money, materialism) ahead of family and raising children. Thus, it's not hard to understand the deterioration of family structure (in different ways among different strata) that occurs at a more micro-level. This is in line with the Rosenfeld and Messner piece on institutional anomie theory we're reading for next week.
ReplyDelete