It's always the television's fault

My first favorite thing about Netflix is that they have effectively introduced the term ‘queue’ into daily US lingo. My second favorite thing is that you can get an amazing variety of television shows neatly compiled and commercial-free delivered to your mailbox. I have lived without a television for a while and Netflix has provided me with the ability to decipher pre-class banter. My fiancé and I just finished our marathon viewing of HBO’s Six Feet Under and have moved on to the same network’s series, The Wire.

Five episodes in and I’m hooked. The show centers around a Baltimore police task force assigned to infiltrate a large drug operation that has claimed the lives of many Marylanders, including one State’s witness. Unlike many television crime dramas, this one doesn’t take sides or otherwise valorize law enforcement. The story-line flip-flops between various perspectives: cop, detective, drug addict, informant, district attorney, judge, public defender, prostitute—none of whose lives is sugar-coated. I was first drawn by the mystery, then by the politics but ultimately hooked by the honesty.

Perhaps I’m over-sensitized because of my enrollment in Seymore’s Women and the Law, but my infatuation with the show is being challenged by my inability to stop analyzing women’s portrayal in everything I encounter. While women are distinctly absent from much of the cast, the roles they occupy are oozing with themes of inferiority and otherness.

Time for a disclaimer: I have only seen the first 5 episodes of The Wire. Four more seasons follow, but this analysis is based on those first 5 episodes.

The character of Kima is the largest female role. She is a narcotics detective assigned to the task force. While she is a lead detective, she is essentially one step above the lowest rank with several layers of males out-ranking her. Two of the central themes involving Kima are her lesbian lifestyle and her girlfriend’s worry over her safety. In effect, the sole female cop emulates a male identity.

The character of Rhonda Pearlman is the other regular female presence. She is an assistant state’s attorney who acts as liaison between the task force and the courts. Rhonda’s lack of character is notable. Also notable is her infatuation with lead character Detective McNulty whose booty-calls keep her favors coming to the task-force.

Other female characters play very minor roles. McNulty’s ex-wife is portrayed only in reference to his child custody dilemmas. Although McNulty is an alcoholic and endangers his children several times by mixing their visits with his work, his wife is portrayed as interfering with his fathering by continually nagging and criticizing him.

The women associated with the drug operation are primarily prostitutes and girlfriends. They are portrayed as weak-links who are targeted by the cops for their propensity to snitch. The men are largely unfaithful and otherwise disrespectful to the women. In one episode, a prostitute is sexually assaulted and dies from asphyxiation after she is abandoned in a drunken state warranting little to no reaction of the men who are present.
Is it an interest in fostering a stereotypical female presence that a show touted for its truthful characters portrays women as inferior and naive? Or are the women in The Wire a result of the writer’s effort to nail the female role? My unfortunate realization is that it likely the latter. And even more unfortunate is that even though I endorse that portrayal by watching the show, I don’t plan on rearranging my Netflix queue.