During pre-registration a few weeks ago, I was hell-bent on taking one specific philosophy class. It seems odd, considering that I’m not a philosophy major, and generally find the subject to be a pointless, theoretical pain in the ass. But the title of this class alone was enough to make me, and, my guess is, a good chunk of the television-watching population of Georgetown, slide it all the way at the top of my pre-reg list—“Philosophy and The Wire”.
Having previously offered courses like “Philosophy of Star Trek” and “History of Television,” Georgetown is no stranger to television in the classroom. And using The Wire as teaching material is also not a novel concept—last year, Johns Hopkins University, located in the show’s home city of Baltimore, made headlines when it used the show as the subject matter of a class investigating the problems of today’s American cities. Other elite universities, like Duke and Harvard, have also offered classes on urban sociological issues that use the HBO drama as teaching material.
It may seem a little odd that a television show is getting so much attention from academia, even one as phenomenal as The Wire. There are plenty of highly-rated, critically-acclaimed shows out there—well, maybe not plenty, but there are at least a few—and most of them do not have their DVD box sets on numerous textbook lists. The main reason for this is also the thing that makes the show as good as it is: its unusually poignant, realistic, and often terrifying depiction of the city of Baltimore sheds light on interesting and troubling sociological issues. Although the show’s basic premise follows a drug-dealing ring in the city’s housing projects and the police force that attempts to infiltrate it, each season broadens the scope toward city-wide institutional problems like politics and the education system. The show’s creator, former police reporter David Simon, expertly weaves the large-scale issues in with “the game” of drug dealing. The city’s bigwigs come out looking no better—and often considerably worse—than any member of the heroin-slinging Barksdale family.
With its gritty, insightful look at America’s urban systems, and bolstered by its nuanced characters and exceptional narratives, The Wire garnered praise from multiple critics not only as arguably the best television show ever aired, but for its merit as a work of fiction—a rare honor for a work in the same mass-market medium as Sex and the City. Despite its acclaim, however, the show was cancelled after its fifth season in 2008 due to substandard ratings (I don’t need to remind you that Sex and the City made it through six seasons and two god-awful movies).
Though the show only ran for five seasons and hasn’t been on the air for three years, the ivory tower is still abuzz about it. The class at Johns Hopkins makes sense—the school is in Baltimore—but most Georgetown students have been about as close to the crime-addled, blood-soaked, dope-dealing corners as residents of Wichita, Kansas (think about it—how often do you go making friends in Anacostia?). And the Hopkins course was augmented with guest lectures from Simon other speakers whose jobs were featured on the show. Making a philosophy class out of it seems a tad less intuitive, but not by much—if Kant intended his principles to be applied anywhere, why not use them to shed some light on a compelling, well-researched show that frequently touched on lofty philosophical ideas while depicting problematic urban issues?
Email Leigh at lfinnegan@georgetownvoice.edu if you want someone to watch re-run marathons of The Wire with. Seriously though, she could use the company.
