Analyzing The Wire: Ethos, Logos, Pathos, and Ethnography

Ethos or the ethical appeal, means to convince an audience of the author s credibility or character. An author would use ethos to show to his audience that he is a credible source and is worth listening to. Ethos is the Greek word for character. The word ethic is derived from ethos. How does The Wire make an appeal using ethos?

Logos or the appeal to logic, means to convince an audience by use of logic or reason. How does The Wire appeal to logic?

Pathos or the emotional appeal, means to persuade an audience by appealing to their emotions. How does The Wire appeal to our emotions?

Ethnography Systematic study of people and cultures The observation comes from the point of view of the subject of the study Field study reflects the knowledge of the system of meanings in the lives of a cultural group Should collect information in the context or setting where the group works or lives. This is called fieldwork. Types of information typically needed in ethnography are collected by going to the research site, respecting the daily lives of individuals at the site and collecting a wide variety of materials

ethnographic imaginary World enough and time

Simons style of TV speaks to this idea Makes arguments, sets up contexts that could not be managed in journalism alone Serial television melodrama, according to Williams, makes possible the larger canvas of the ethnographic imaginary

Combined factual, ethnographically observed, and detailed worlds of cops and corners into one converged fictional world

Season 1 Breaks crime story conventions Introduces a crime A cop who pursues solving the crime Higher ups who have no interest in solving the crime Doesn t stay with the cop, but moves to the complex world of the committer of the crime Humanizes that character as well Equally important procedures of cops and dealers are introduced

Comparison between two microsites Cops who want to be good and cops who just want to bust heads Competent drug dealers vs. ones who lack the discipline to avoid capture

Complexity of the Series microsites (plotlines) Politics Different police details Education Co-ops War on drugs and Hamsterdam Etc.

The vivid and interlocking stories from so many concrete ethnographic sites is what fiction affords, what ethnography aspires to, and what newspaper journalism can rarely achieve Multi-sited ethnographic imaginary that no longer needs to depend on allusions to abstract ideas of the state, the economy , or capitalism as its fiction of the whole The many sites reveal a vivid picture of that whole

Simon had to quit the business he loved and turn to television Hasn t fully embraced the form Hence the comparison to Greek Tragedy?

John Carroll and Bill Marimow From Baltimore Sun (criticized The Metal Men 1995 Said it was too much like The Corner and that it wasn t hard enough on the thieves Simon believed that newspapers should adopt a wide sociological approach to the city s problems His editors thought he should be more clear and focused on right and wrong

Rifle-Shot Journalism One story is small and self-contained and has good guys and bad guys The other is about why we are where we are About who is being left behind Harder to report Carroll and Marimow saw them as performing a public service that can t reach for the larger ethnographic complexities

Rifle-Shot vs. Multi-Site Rifle shot is like a half hour of episodic television whose world is necessarily narrow and whose time is limited to a half hour or hour In contrast, Simon s reporting presented an expanded world view Transforms a social type to a human being

White Middle Class Editorializing In The Corner, his editorializing has an identity In The Wire he shows instead of telling (Which is more truthful?)

In place of the five-paragraph rifle-shot story he would eventually create a five- season cumulative serial whose primary outrage-a futile war on drugs-encompasses myriad others Serial melodrama can show us, in a way sociologists and ethnographers cannot, how much as Detective Lester Freamon puts it, all the pieces matter.

Serial Drama Segmented quality Moves from place to place and also creates: Parallels, Contrasts, and Interruptions Must parcel out (often melodramatic) units of information that grab attention Also grabs attention through stories about compelling characters facing difficult obstacles

Ta-NehisiCoates Progress of white people (those who believe they are white) is built on violence Government of the people what has the US considered the word people to mean? Race is the child of racism and not the father it is not about genealogy or physiognomy, but about hierarchy

Hegemony before white people were white they were Catholic, Corsican, Welsh, Mennonite, Jewish

American Exceptionalism America believes itself exceptional we should accept American innocence at face value Coates holds America to that high standard

Destruction of the Black Body Coates, speaking to his son, speaks of the vulnerability and danger He doesn t view police brutality as a few bad apples, but that the police are Correctly enforcing the whims of our country Page 10 page 11 the dream This is your country, this is your world, this is your body

Vulnerability of the black body is not an accident or a pathology, it is correct and intended policy of a society the other world was suburban and endless, organized by pot roasts, blueberry pies, ice cream sundaes, immaculate bathrooms and small toy trucks personal responsibility

Certainty Constant questioning, questioning as ritual, questioning as exploration rather than the search for certainty Current views on implicit bias training is unnecessary The dream thrives on generalization, on limiting the number of possible questions, on privileging immediate answers. The Dream is the enemy of all art, courageous thinking, and honest writing