THE WIRE: Season 4 (2006)

RATING:	80%
FORMAT:	DVD

(Image: http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/)

Like Shakespeare, the characters here are so well-written that they all speak from their own point-of-view. This show is so good that one wonders why British tv is so poor currently (2006). The answer, of course, is that the latter is frightened to address the issues faced by the modern nation, as British Whites are frightened to understand the Institutional Racism (IR) behind last summer's UK riots.

Despite the variable quality of the actors, the series is very politically-realistic - rather than politically-correct. Whites are shown as lazy beneficiaries of IR; while Blacks must work hard to surmount the obstacles created by IR. This makes the show popular with Blacks, but (apparently) racist to Whites. This is reflected in the fact that the Black actors are uniformly-superb - especially the outstanding ones playing the younger street thugs - and by a Black audience that understands what is being presented (as the White one does not).

The urban decay and blight is shown to be a consequence of a White definition of community that is based on money - with no real sense of empathy and affinity. The lack of help from a White Federal Government is inevitable given the White desire to ensure poor Blacks stay poor so that they never become economic competition for Whites.

The self-contradiction is that such White supremacy is more expensive than diversity, since keeping Blacks in prison is far more expensive than encouraging them to be better citizens. Like the racial slavery that preceded it (abolished because it meant little work for poor Whites), present-day Whites still want to waste money oppressing Blacks.

This is a cop show that is not about good and evil, but about the relationship between economics and politics - and about the way in which this can negatively effect democracy. The importance of the story itself is so great that important characters get killed despite their popularity; making the drama as unpredictable as it is believable. The failings of the White educational system are particularly well highlighted, especially as regards teaching-to-the-test not the curriculum; resulting in the evaluation of teachers but not the students.

Copyright © 2012 Frank TALKER. Permission granted to reproduce and distribute it in any format; provided that mention of the author’s Weblog (http://franktalker5.blogspot.com/) is included: E-mail notification requested. All other rights reserved.