The Wire

One of my favorite TV shows have got to be the HBO series 'The Wire'. It is unlike any other typical 'cop-drama' on air. It is set in Baltimore city, and it really chooses to reflect on reality, rather than just 'for the sake of creating another cop drama'. What happens in this series is what happens in real life. Most of the time we do not see or realize these things are actually going as we walk, talk, eat or sleep. This is because of how the media tries to cover up unpleasant reality. That is why I have given up on watching unrealistic 'good-cop-always-wins' type shows. Endings in those type of movies are often the same. The creator of 'The Wire' has done a good job on exploring 5 different facets of Baltimore City in 5 seasons. There is the Drug-ring, the port, the city bureaucracy and the print news media. Despite its presentation as a crime drama, it is really about the American city. Its about how institutions have an effect on individuals, and how, regardless of what job you're in,  you are ultimately compromised and must contend with whatever institution you are committed to. 

I think it is important to portray reality in the media . Unfortunately, a lot we see on TV these days are just a fragments of a fantasy world. Media has shaped culture. We think or hope that everything in the world we live in is like what we see on TV and the movies. We forget that as we worship a celebrity walking down the red carpet, say, at the golden globe, another person is dying from starvation. Take Sex and the City for instance (just because that was the latest movie that i watched ).  Yes, it defines the importance of female friendship and brings out the underlying moral that as a girl, nothing is more important than your girlfriends. But is life really that simple? If that had been reality, like at the beginning of a movie, would a penthouse right in downtown Manhattan be purchased without a mere consideration? Or would everything end up the way it did in the movie? It is like a beautiful painting. It is attractive to your senses but but it is not real.If you haven't seen it, you can read the synopsis for the movie here. 

I guess in most of the things we see on TV, its main purpose is solely to entertain. Nothing much else. We all need forms of entertainment, I do not deny that, but if entertainment is always about good looking people, happy endings and unrealistic goals, then the media would shape our culture in that way and it makes us not look beyond that. It makes us not look deeper into sociological problems that we might or already face.

Hence, I am hoping to see more of 'The Wire' type shows on TV. I am still in search of them.