Here's another example of the power of "The Wire." Fans, sociologists and academics met recently in Leeds, England to examine and discuss the Baltimore-based drama and its impact.
Here's an excerpt:
"The session on "Omar: Ethics, Power and Performativity" was about to begin, but Josine Opmeer, sitting at a low table in the lobby of Leeds town hall, had decided to give it a miss. Opmeer is the manager of the centre for research on socio-cultural change (Cresc) at the University of Manchester, which was co-hosting the event, but by the standards of this gathering, she was an outsider, an ing�nue. She's only watched up to the end of season three.
"I finished it last night. I thought I'd better at least do that, but someone suggested there might be some spoilers in the presentation."
It was a reasonable assumption. For two days, more than 100 sociologists, criminologists, historians and cultural theorists from Britain and abroad came together in Leeds this week to discuss and debate a subject which had united them across sometimes jealously-guarded faculty and disciplinary borders: the HBO series The Wire.
Was the programme social science fiction or genre TV? Had it succeeded in its distillation of the US polity? Could Bourdieu's theoretical technologies help us in understanding its significance? In this gathering, mention of an obscure line of dialogue from an unremarkable incident in an early episode would meet with sage nods. Giving away what happens to McNulty, it is fair to say, was not their principal concern."
Read the full article here.