The Wire is over - discussion, spoilers inside

benjybars

village elder.
i have a friend who's going out with someone in the wire which is just weird.

who?!

please let it be prop joe...

actually it's probably cool lester smooth.. he lived in london for ages innit? (AND HE WROTE 5 GUYS NAMED MOE!)
 
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nomadologist

Guest
Ok, here is where the fact that slang doesn't translate becomes ever more obvious.

In American slang, using "girl" "boy" "son" "man" "dude"--it's all the same, and it's used ALL the TIME in much the same way "like" is used, as a flavoring particle that is used to personalize speech, as a casual way of referring to someone.

Somewhat like "mami" or "papi" is used in Puerto Rican Spanish.

The addition of the word "girl" to that sentence is NOT a reference to her femininity, which I can state emphatically and without ambivalence based on the fact that I know and use American slang and it is completely natural to me. I understand it.

What "girl" in the context of the of the discussion in question actually signified was the intimacy between the two characters even as he was about to kill Snoop. It would be like saying "Don't hate me for this, baby" before killing your boyfriend or girlfriend.

The Snoop assasination scene was about how in a "dog eat dog" world like the ghetto you can't even be too angry with your best friend for stabbing you in the back, quite literally, or in this case shooting you in the head.

In the end, I probably agree with you: considerations of queerness can be completely left out of the discussion, along with discussions of "femininity", because neither have anything to do with the pathos of that scene.
 
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nomadologist

Guest
i have a friend who's going out with someone in the wire which is just weird.

yeah my boyfriend's good friend's dad is also in the wire--frankie faison. maybe they know one another.
 

booky

Member
There's no need to resort to epistemic privilege here. It's about interpreting the scene. I think an argument can be made either way. That's what's interesting about the scene--and the show, frankly. It opens itself up to multiple readings...

p.s. I know and use American slang too--and I disagree with your explanation. But that doesn't make your reading wrong.
 
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nomadologist

Guest
From Wikipedia:

Pearson was born premature to two drug-addicted and incarcerated parents and reared in an East Baltimore foster home. Hours old and about 3 pounds, doctors didn't expect her to live. She was so small she was fed with an eyedropper until she grew stronger. Days went by and she continued to survive, so Snoop was made a ward of the court and reared in an East Baltimore foster home. While other 12-year-olds were in school, Snoop was learning the drug game. At 14, Snoop was sentenced to 8 years in prison for the second degree murder of Okia Toomer. She said her life turned around at 18, when a man she called Uncle Loney, a local drug dealer who looked out for her and sent her money in prison, was shot and killed. It was he who had given her the nickname "Snoop" because she reminded him of Charlie Brown’s favorite beagle Snoopy in the comic strip Peanuts. She finished school while behind bars. After earning her GED in prison, Pearson was released in 2000. She landed a local job making car bumpers, she said, but was fired two weeks later after her employer learned she had a prison record.

Pearson is openly gay.

She met the producers and writers of the Wire through the man who plays Omar, and they cast her for obvious reasons--she wouldn't need to go too far into method acting to get into her character. I think it's implied that she is a lesbian but not dwelled on because sexual orientation is largely irrelevant, although gendering oneself "male" is awfully helpful in a hierarchical, male-dominated business. The question remains whether this is necessary only insofar as it is a survival mechanism, or rather a set of biologically mandated preferences. Personally, I tend to think sexual preference is just that, the latter.

You could have an interesting discussion weighing the two options.

I prefer not to toss around words like "femininity" without qualification. To me it does sound sexist to refer to some fantom notion of what *true* femininity is--especially when that entails the same old cliched bullshit like "how do I look?" The implication when you conflate Snoop's interest in looking her best with femininity is that you believe in "femininity" in a traditional sense. Maybe you don't. But it sounded like you did, to me.
 
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nomadologist

Guest
There's no need to resort to epistemic privilege here. It's about interpreting the scene. I think an argument can be made either way. That's what's interesting about the scene--and the show, frankly. It opens itself up to multiple readings...

p.s. I know and use American slang too--and I disagree with your explanation. But that doesn't make your reading wrong.

So let's turn the tables--say there's a character in a show who is male but genders himself "feminine" according to socially constructed norms. Say he's about to be shot by his best friend and says "Do I seem tough?" The friend says "Yeah you seem tough, dude" and proceeds to shoot him.

Would "dude" be the operative word here? Would it be a reference to the "masculinity" of the "feminine" male character? I think it's pretty obvious it wouldn't, according to the semantics of the phrase. The "dude" would be a way of softening the statement, of creating one last friendly moment, a way of acknowledging the friendship bond they'd had.
 

booky

Member
But didn't you find the use of the "cliched bullshit" ironic? It seemed to play on the "traditional sense of femininity" that you are critiquing. The moment between Snoop and Michael--a man and a woman in a car, in the dark, with "Bartender" on the radio--it's quite a stereotypical heterosexual "romantic" scene. He says "You look good, girl" and shoots her, point blank, in the head. I think the scene challenges femininity, cliche, and expectations in a parodic manner. Again, the Wire is brilliant.

Check it--both of you are right!
 
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nomadologist

Guest
A man and a woman can't be in a car without sex being imminent and ineluctable?

Whaa...?

In the context of the scene, two close friends and business associates experience a situation that one would have thought should have been a surprise for Snoop. One would have thought that as Michael let on that he intended to shoot Snoop--when he asked her to pull over and reached for the gun--she would have been frantic, begging for her life, or at very least somewhat surprised.

In context of the scene, "How do I look?" is brilliant because what it really signifies is that Snoop saw this coming, that she saw it as inevitable. When the inevitable moment came, she wanted to go out in style. Who doesn't?

It was really a tribute to her keen sense of the character of others, and her knowledge that even seemingly good-hearted kids can shoot their surrogate mothers in the face for a few thousand dollars under the right mix of circumstances. I see Snoop more as a surrogate mother figure for Michael, if we're going to talk about female gender roles.

She was wise, not necessarily"feminine."
 
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nomadologist

Guest
Yeah call me crazy but I don't necessarily think of sitting in a car in the dark with a T-Pain song on as being particularly "romantic"...
 

booky

Member
Oh goodness, I wasn't suggesting that AT ALL.

What is the point in discussing multiple readings if you're simply going to insist that you're right? I think what you're saying is totally valid, I just don't think it's the only way of looking at the scene. I simply presented a different reading--a reading that plays on the image of a man and a woman in a car. The Wire plays on stereotypical images--from crime dramas, detective novels, various movies...at least in my opinion.

Of course "a man and a woman [CAN] be in a car without sex being imminent and ineluctable".
 
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nomadologist

Guest
But didn't you find the use of the "cliched bullshit" ironic? It seemed to play on the "traditional sense of femininity" that you are critiquing. The moment between Snoop and Michael--a man and a woman in a car, in the dark, with "Bartender" on the radio--it's quite a stereotypical heterosexual "romantic" scene. He says "You look good, girl" and shoots her, point blank, in the head. I think the scene challenges femininity, cliche, and expectations in a parodic manner. Again, the Wire is brilliant.

Check it--both of you are right!

He says "You look good, girl" after she asks him if her hair looks good. I think that's a pretty gangsta way to go out, asking the person who's about to shoot you how you look.

It's pretty much a gesture of resigned defiance.
 
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nomadologist

Guest
Oh goodness, I wasn't suggesting that AT ALL.

What is the point in discussing multiple readings if you're simply going to insist that you're right? I think what you're saying is totally valid, I just don't think it's the only way of looking at the scene. I simply presented a different reading--a reading that plays on the image of a man and a woman in a car. The Wire plays on stereotypical images--from crime dramas, detective novels, various movies...at least in my opinion.

Of course "a man and a woman [CAN] be in a car without sex being imminent and ineluctable".

Sure, there can be multiple readings of anything. I just think this reading you've been suggesting doesn't really stand up under scrutiny.

The gender performance of Snoop from the Wire is a really interesting subject and you could go on at length about it, but I really don't think that the writers were trying to set up any sort of underlying romantic tension between Snoop and Michael in that scene. Maybe some familial Oedipal type.
 

booky

Member
Well, there you go. I agree. I don't think the writers were inferring romantic tension either. I just think it was a parody of all that.

Sure, oedipal tension could work too.
 
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nomadologist

Guest
I'm not trying to pick on you personally, UFO, but when someone--anyone--starts going back to socially constructed gender norms and seems to conflate those with womanhood or female sexuality in reality, yes, I do bristle at that. It's annoying. Probably in much the same way it would be annoying for me to refer to the same old stupid cliches about what being "masculine" is supposed to be about according to traditional roles. (Like being too "strong" to cry or communicate emotions effectively...or being a quarterback and date raping the nearest sorority sister with roofies or whatever for shits and giggles...)

I get really sick of the idea that being a real woman entails caring first and foremost, or at least a whole lot, about how men think of your appearance. I get really sick of that. I get sick of hearing people say things like "all girls dream of their wedding day from the moment they're born" or "all girls want to be a princess!" etc
 
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