There was a time in the early 2000’s when HBO was producing four of the most iconic postmodern television shows of all time. ‘The Sopranos’, ‘The Wire’, ‘Six Feet Under’, and ‘Deadwood’ were each benchmarks for the kind of television storytelling we see today. All four dealt with cynicism, and the suffering that can surround the human condition. Some of the suffering was dealt with in a physical sense, while much of it was psychological. Psychological in terms of what Viktor Frankl called, the ‘existential vacuum’. Many of the characters in each show were searching for personal meaning in worlds where there were few remaining traditions, or overall structures to guide them. Each show reflected the metaphysics of the day through various narratives and elements. It was a time when postmodern feelings were peaking, and beginning their turn towards metamodernism. None of the four shows were metamodern in their overall presentation, yet each show did contain moments of earnest, authentic human feeling.
Out of all the four shows, ‘The Wire’ seemed to go the furthest in bridging the postmodern, to the metamodern. David Simon (the creator of ‘The Wire’) shed light on the underlying nature of the Baltimore crime drama in various interviews he gave during its run on HBO. Paraphrasing an answer he gave in 2004, Simon said that the show was ‘cynical about institutions, and their capacity to serve the needs of the individual’. But in terms of the characters in the show, Simon didn’t think the storytelling was ‘cynical at all’. In fact he felt there was ‘a great deal of humanist affection’ throughout. Within the show, the structure of these two sets of feelings was more of juxtaposition, than the oscillation that is a hallmark of metamodern storytelling. Varying degrees of institutional rot served as overarching backdrops during each season. While the dignity and humanity of the characters served as windows into a realm that was separate from the dilapidated world around them.
This juxtaposition of feelings was evident within the first moments of the first scene of the show. The scene opens with blood trails, and a dead body on the concrete of Baltimore’s inner city. Detectives pick up bullet shell casings, young children watch from a nearby stoop, and policemen survey the scene while writing reports. On another stoop near the murder scene, a white homicide detective sits next to a young African American man who apparently knew the murder victim. The detective asks the young man what the victim’s name was, and the young man replies, ‘Snot’. The detective quizzically asks, ‘you called the guy Snot?’. To which the young man replies, ‘Snot-Boogie’. The detective then says, ‘this kid who’s mama went to the trouble to Christen him Omar Isiah Betts; he forgets his jacket, his nose starts running, and some asshole instead of giving him a Kleenex calls him Snot, so he’s Snot forever - doesn’t seem fair’. The young man then replies, ‘Life just be that way I guess’.
The detective then begins to move towards the more pressing matter of who actually shot Snot in cold blood. Reluctant at first, the young man looks over sadly at his dead friend and says, ‘motherfucker ain’t have to put no cap in him though’. The detective replies, ‘definitely not’. The young man then says, ‘I mean he could have whooped his ass like we always whooped his ass’. To which the detective replies, ‘I agree with you’. The young man continues by saying, ‘how you gonna kill Snot, Snot been doing the same thing since how long’. The young man then proceeds to tell the detective how every Friday night him and his friends would shoot dice in the alleyway. He recalls how Snot would play too, until the money in the pot grew and grew. But then, every time, Snot would grab the money in the pot and try to make a run for it.
Upon hearing this, the detective says, ‘let me understand you, every Friday night, you and your boys would shoot craps right. And every Friday night, your pal Snot-Boogie, he’d wait until there was cash on the ground, then grab the money and run away?’. The young man nods without saying anything and the detective responds, ‘you let him do that?’. The young man then tells the detective that they would catch him and beat him up, but nothing past that. With a befuddled look on his face, the detective asks, ‘if every time Snot-Boogie would grab the money and run away, why’d you even let him in the game? If Snot-Boogie always stole the money, why’d you let him play?’. The young man replies, ‘we got to…it’s America man’. And with that, the detective smirks in acknowledgment, and the camera shifts to show the two sitting on a stoop in the background. While in the foreground Snot-Boogie lays dead on the pavement; with his eyes still open. The scene then cuts to the show’s familiar opening credits.
The feeling this scene conveys sets the stage for all five seasons of the show. Amid the overall structure of postmodern institutional decay and hopelessness, the humanity of the characters showed through every minute of every scene. There was a sense of ‘hopeless hope’ that dominated the show's sensibility; which seems very metamodern in hindsight. Whether it was the corrupt urban destruction of the drug war, the failings of the inner city school system, or the decimation of local newspapers - it was all juxtaposed by the dignity of the characters amid these dysfunctional systems. Whether it was a drug dealer, a police chief, a mayor, or a homeless addict; all were portrayed as profoundly human. The characters in the show were not simply empty avatars intended to carry a reductive postmodern, or modernist narrative. Their feelings and consciousness were constant reminders of why the world around them was so deflating and cynical.
This is what made the show a very important bridge between postmodern and metamodern sensibilities. The earnest portrayal of human feeling, and an earnest yearning for ‘the good’. ‘The good’ in this case meaning truth, authentic human meaning, and love. These sorts of constructs are anathema to postmodern narratives, and used as naive veneers in modernist narratives. Yet in metamodernism, they are treated as simply real. There to be acknowledged as true parts of the metaphysical water we all swim in, and the human condition. The humanity of the characters was almost like an alarm going off during the duration of the show. As if to say, ‘there is something wrong here, and this human feeling is showing you why and how’.
It’s an interesting coincidence that the show ended in 2008. For it was former United States President Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign that could be seen as the beginning of the metamodern age. Some of Obama’s campaign slogans were literally ‘hope’ and ‘change’. The age of postmodernism had crested with the September 11th, 2001 terrorist attacks, the Iraq War, and the 2008 financial crisis. The metaphysical mood of the country was one of confusion and despair. The anger that resides in the country today was brewing, but was still mixed with a sense of genuine bewilderment from the events of the decade. There was a lot of ‘hopeless hope’ to go around, just as ‘The Wire’ had depicted. People yearned for something they knew was probably lost, yet they felt inspired to reach for it anyway. This was the essence that Obama’s campaign embodied.
The final moments of ‘The Wire’ were an apt metaphor for the show’s position as a bridge between the postmodern and the metamodern. The detective who appeared in the very first scene discussed earlier, is depicted driving back to Baltimore city as a literal and metaphorical end to his journey. Ironically, he stops on an actual ‘bridge’ or highway overpass to gaze at the city and reflect before he returns. The detective’s actions have weight because the arc of his character throughout the five seasons had mirrored the path of the show. His journey was one of earnest humanity blanketed with overriding cynicism, yet motivated by ‘the good’. Motivated by the ‘hopeless hope’ he could make things right.
As he looks out over the city, the familiar song that opens every show, ‘Way Down in the Hole’ written by Tom Waits plays. Each season of ‘The Wire’ had a different version recorded of the song. For this ending scene, the original recording from the first season plays as a way to signal to the viewer that they are back where they started. A montage of various characters who have survived to the end of the show begins. Since the viewer has a connection to each of the characters by now, each character that appears evokes personal feelings. Each character is seen moving forward with their life, yet the overarching theme is that in the grand scheme of things; nothing has really changed. The overarching institutional dysfunction that all these human beings have been maneuvering in is still in place.
In the last moments of the montage, the portrayals of the fictional characters in the show are replaced with real life snippets of people and places in Baltimore’s inner city. This removes any notion that ‘The Wire’ was a purely postmodern venture. The inclusion of actual people who go through the actual things the show depicted is an indicator of the show’s humanistic heart. The show was not simply made to entertain, it was made to reflect the reality of its time. David Simon once called the show 'a love letter to Baltimore'. It was this love that I believe led to 'The Wire' being a cultural bridge between the postmodern and the metamodern. A time of semi-coherent 'hopeless hope' before the advent of true liquid modernity, metamodernism, or the metamodern hypergraph. A time where the earnest and the cynical remained in juxtaposition, rather than oscillation or combination. A time when individuals still looked towards the old pathways to meaning, not realizing yet that they were gone for good.