Rarely, if ever, has a television drama constructed a narrative with such a strong thrust toward meta-narrative. The Wire’s intricate and interwoven story lines dramatize the interaction between individual aspirations and institutional dynamics. These build into the larger story of a city, not only the story of Baltimore in its particularity, but with a metaphoric drive toward the story of Every City. Each character and story line pulses with symbolic resonance about the nature of contemporary capitalism. While the text itself does not name the system, the meta-text does with extraordinary clarity and force.
David Simon, the primary voice of this collective creation, has engaged in a powerfully polemical discourse articulating the worldview that underlies the drama. The meta-narrative, the story about the story, is implicit within the drama, but explicit in the discourse surrounding the drama, going way beyond that of any previous TV drama.
Shakespearean is a term often used to describe what is perceived as quality drama, and it has often been used to describe The Wire. Simon was, however, quick to correct his interviewers with regard to its dramatic provenance:
The Wire is a Greek tragedy in which the postmodern institutions are the Olympian forces. It’s the police department, or the drug economy, or the political structures, or the school administration, or the macroeconomic forces that are throwing the lightning bolts and hitting people in the ass for no decent reason.
This larger theme recurs across numerous interviews: The Wire is not a drama about individuals rising above institutions to triumph and achieve redemption and catharsis. It is a drama where those institutions thwart the ambitions and aspirations of those they purportedly exist to serve; one where individuals with hubris enough to challenge this dynamic invariably become mocked, marginalized, or crushed by forces indifferent to their efforts or to their fates; where truth and justice are often defeated as deceit and injustice are rewarded.
Of all the forces in motion — in politics, education, law, and media — most crucial are the macroeconomic ones, which underpin and determine the operation of the other institutions. For David Simon, “[c]apitalism is the ultimate god in The Wire. Capitalism is Zeus.” The worldview underlying ancient Greek tragedy is one in which individuals do not control the world. They are at the mercy of forces beyond their control. The Wire is a drama of fated protagonists, a rigged game, where there is no happy-ever-after ending.