Violence on Television

A women in a pink and white jacket rides up on the back of a motorcycle to a group of men standing on a Baltimore street corner and before anyone watching can comprehend, she opens fire. The whole incident occurs in a matter of seconds.   Violence is a hallmark of The Wire, from the flashing blue and red lights of a murder scene that served as the  opening sequence of the entire series. The Wire depicts people who have been stangled, throats slit and beat up to the point of emergency room visits.  All of that is in addition to frequent portrayals of gun violence. The Wire ’s position as a cable show gives it more freedom to show the amount of violence that often pushes the line between realistic and gratuitous.   Without the constraint of advertisers placed on basic networks, cable networks such as HBO have a reputation for edgier content.

The presence of violence in the media is a trend that concerns many and has been blamed as a catalyst for real life crimes.  The infographic bellow explains some conflicting data about the increase in the depiction of crime in television and rates of real life crime.  While these numbers demonstrate an undeniable increase and prevalence of violence on television, the impact of this trend is debated.

Image courtesy yourlocalsecurity.com

Image courtesy yourlocalsecurity.com

One worry is that when viewers are  exposed to more violence on television, they become more fearful of the world around them. This is known as the “Mean World Syndrome,” a part of  “Cultivation Theory” proposed by George Gerbner. (For more on Cultivation Theory and Mean World Syndrome check out the video The Mean World Syndrome:
Media Violence & the Cultivation of Fear) The idea of  the “Mean World Syndrome” is that seeing a world on TV filled with shootings and crime will make people distrustful of their own environment. In actuality, as the inforgraphic points out, people are 200,000 times more likely to be murdered on television then in real life. The violence on The Wire can cause the belief that on every corner in the streets of Baltimore there are shootings and drug dealers and breed a fear of the whole city.

Another worry about exposure to violence on television is that it may desensitize people to violence. [1]After watching two and a half seasons of killings, the gun violence on The Wire may seem less shocking. Further, this level of violence may become normalized and seem to be an inevitable fact of life.[2]  In The Wire , the violence in the show is a steady theme, and the viewer needs to be able to digest killings quickly to keep up with the pace of the show.  The question lies in whether this extends to viewers feelings about violence occurring in the real world.  Violent games and television shows have also been proven to result in higher aggression in children and teens, but those study results are debated. [3] This clip from the Mean World documentary discusses phenomena of desentization to violence.

In truth, a viewers reaction may include some combination of the two ideas. Its difficult to watch The Wire and not think about the danger and crime in Baltimore, but that is clearly part of the series intent.  However, a viewer cannot be upset about every violent act in The Wire , or it would make the show impossible to watch. The emotional relationship developed with characters like D’Angelo, Wallace and Frank Sabotka prevents the viewer from becoming completely detached to the violence either.

 

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[1] 2 3 Brad J. Bushman and L. Rowell Huesman “Effects of Violent Media on Aggression,” in Handbook of Children and the Media, eds. Dorothy G. Singer and Jerome L. Singer (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publication, 2012), 231-248.

 

 

Jobs for Ex-Offenders: Staying out of The Game

In Season Two viewers of The Wire are introduced to Cutty, a Barksdale solider who has recently been paroled after 14 years in jail. Avon gives him contact information to slip back into his life on the corner.   However, time in jail and getting cheated out of the money on his first package cause Cutty to try and make it straight working as a manual laborer.  He discusses his situation indirectly with his supervisor, who is the only other person in the landscaping crew who is not Hispanic. Discussing how the labor is a good deal of work with a limited pay off juxtaposed with seeing the comfortable, nice car of drug dealers is too much for him.  Cutty quickly falls back into the game and the 4^th episode closes with him disappearing into a party, absorbed by the strobe lights and the temptations of drug dealing.  In a scene right before his release, Cutty is initially hesitant to take information for a job from Avon. This shows the internal struggle between keeping straight and falling into old patterns, which began for Cutty while he was still in jail.

This is a common struggle for ex-convicts. Numbers for recidivism are high, especially for African American Males. For African America males, 74% are arrested for another crime within 3 years of being released, a quarter within six months.Within three years, about a third are back in prisons.  (Bureau of Justice Statistics)  These numbers indicate that many of those who leave the prison system are unable to break the cycle of illegal behavior, likely out of necessity.

This necessity rises from the uphill battle that is obtaining a job with a criminal record.  A study of prisoners  by the Urban Institute indicated that eight months after imprisonment, only 65% of those released had found employment at any point, and only 45% were currently employed at the time of the study.  The study indicates the difficulty of revealing a criminal past to an employer. The study also indicated “the most successful strategy for long-term employment was returning to a previous employer.” (Urban Institute) When the previous employer is in an illegal industry, such as Cutty, this can provide another barrier to living a clean life.  Cutty, and those in similar situations do not have that resource to fall back on. In the study, the income source of 35% of those released was illegal activity, and the number was greater eight months out of prison then after two. This shows the commonality of the weakening of resolve seen in a less gradual time frame for Cutty.

There are  a limited number of  low-skill positions in the work force to begin with. (see previous post) However, those with criminal records face even more of a difficulty finding employment. Part of the issue lies with the unwillingness of employers to hire ex-offenders and the lack of job seeking skills.  Different governmental organizations, including the National Institute of Justice (NIJ), the National Institute of Corrections (NIC), and the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Correctional Education (OCE) have worked together to create work-training programs to better offer ex-offenders the skills for the workforce.  (Dept Justice)  Different programs, like the CEO (Center for Employment Opportunity) program in New York, outlined in a program spotlight here, provide temporary work placement and interview and job skill training.

Another way to try to aid the work placement issues for those who have served time is the Work Opportunity Tax Credit Program (WOTC) program.  This program incentivizes the hiring of different types of socially disadvantaged people, including those receiving certain types of public benefit and ex-felons.  Employers who hire qualifying workers receive a credit of “25% of qualified first-year wages for those employed at least 120 hours but fewer than 400 hours and 40% for those employed 400 hours or more.” Programs like this and CEO can be the support that people like Cutty need to stay out of the game. In spite of this, the recidivism numbers show that often, the temptation and necessity is too great. Additionally, it may be difficult to find information about the programs that are available.

 

Cutty disappears back into the world of drugs. Image Courtesy HBO's The Wire

 

The Struggle for Employment

Image Courtesy BLS

The second season of The Wire focuses on the loss of industrial and blue-collar jobs in the inner city,  using the plight of the stevedore to exemplify this phenomena. This processes is especially hard on cities based on manufacturing and industry, like Detroit and Baltimore. (For more on Detroit’s deindustrialization, check out Thomas Segrue’s book The Origins of Urban Crisis) However, The Wire takes place at the turn of the century, and after the recent recession, rates of unemployment are even higher. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the 2011 unemployment rate was 8.9%.  The unemployment rate in Baltimore City itself is 9.1 as of December 2011, up from 7.1 in 2003, when season 2 takes place.   This is the end result of the long process of deindustrialization, where manufacturing jobs moved out of the cities and out of the country. Cuts to manual labor positions have left an underclass of poor workers, with limited or no skills.  The question left unanswered by The Wire is how these workers go about trying to find new employment beyond the streets. The figures that seek legitimate lower income employment outside the drug trade are periphery in The Wire, like Gant, the handyman murdered for speaking the truth about D’Angelo in season one.  In the end, as the high unemployment and The Wire show, these opportunities are few and offer little safety from the dangers of the city,

Here is an important scene in The Wire,  where union leader Frank Sobotka hits on many of the issues with deindustrialization and the lack of skills that make is hard for workers to find stable employment:

For the last year I have volunteered at LIFT-DC, a local social service organization (there are several around the country)  where college students work with low income, mainly un/underemployed DC residents.    A lot of what volunteers do with clients is helping create resumes and cover letters, and search and apply for jobs.  Many of those who come into LIFT have extensive work histories in industries like construction and maintenance, and have held semi-steady employment until economic changes left them without a job.  For many, they have spent their whole lives in one industry.  Many clients, especially younger ones, have moved around brief positions in several service industries. This reflects the growth of the service industry, another symptom of deindustrialization. At LIFT, many of the jobs applied for are at grocery stores or hotel chains.

With such a large pool applying for a decreasing labor market, employers have responded by adding confusing personality and memory tests for applications and making applications online. For workers raised in low income families and applying as middle-aged men these applications that are often very difficult to complete. What is left is a bleak picture. There are little to no jobs and it is difficult to obtain employment no matter how many applications a worker will send in.  At LIFT, we are trained to tell clients frustrated with the length of the job search that  “the job search is a job itself,” requiring time and diligence, Additionally,  changes in technology leave these workers further behind.  It is a job market that only leaves room for Bruce’s son, raised with the lucky combination of education and the circumstances of his parents. For the lower income children of blue-collar workers and any who worked for jobs that no longer exists the odds are difficult.  This difficulty crosses racial lines and neighborhood lines, from the docks of Locus Point to the high rises of East Baltimore, where people have been shunned by a system that does not give them the tools to achieve.

“I ain’t….some fuckin’ project n✷✷✷✷”

Image Courtesy HBO's "The Wire"

Early in Season 2, Nick Sobotka tells his cousin that he doesn’t want to sell drugs because  he ” ain’t standing out on no corner like some fuckin’ project nigger so’s I get popped for pocket change.”   Not too much further into the season, Nick is heavily involved in drugs. That statement is crucial to understanding Nick’s character and the racism of many in comparable situations to him.

The de-industrialization of urban centers left many impoverished, taking away employment and industry, affecting all sects of city-dwellers. People from blue-collar backgrounds had the rug swept from under their feet, and are trying to make money in an increasingly automated world where hours are disappearing. This city structure disadvantages low-income people of all races. Season Two of The Wire shows the interplay between the impoverished African American towers, where the only way to make money seems to be drugs, and the docks of the stevedores, who eventually reach the same conclusions. Nicky Sobotka, a longshoreman caught in a generation where jobs are few, is ultimately drawn into the drug trade.   Multiple times, Nicky touts the fact that he is white, implying that this differentiates him or even makes him better.

While many think about the racism of Jim Crow laws and privileged slave owners, there is a strong history of animosity and racism between Caucasians and African Americans in close economic situations.  Historically, lower class Caucasians formed the backbone of organizations like the Neo-Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan and were the driving force behind laws that oppressed African-Americans.   In unstable or bad economies, like those that have befallen the dock workers, this phenomenon grows worse according the Southern Poverty Law Center. In fact, over the last decade, part of the era depicted in The Wire, hate group membership has gone up by 54%. The Southern Poverty Law center was founded by Morris Dees and Joe Levin, the two Alabama lawyers who took cases together in the Civil Rights era, officially becoming chartered under the name in 1971.  More on their history can be found here. Still focusing on taking civil rights related cases,  its has expanded further to  be an organization which fights and monitors hate crimes, and publishes a Hate Map that displays the location and nature of organizations throughout the United States. Here is a picture of the Hate Map for Maryland. The fist symbol and purple start represents Black Separatist groups. The other groups are neo-Nazi, KKK, and skinhead organizations.

Courtesy SPLC

Part of this white working-class racism likely has to do with the threat of encroachment.  While it may adopt elements of inherent genetic spirit, it may stem from a place of worry, that an “other” is seen as taking away economic opportunity from “us .”  These ideas are further explored in Edward Said’s book “ Orientalism,” which focuses on this process of creating a divide between the Western “us” and the Eastern “other,”  A scene in Season 2 Episode 7, illustrates the privilege Nick assumes from his whiteness:

“Hey, Frog. Come here. No, seriously. Come here. First of all, and I don’t know how to tell you this without hurting you deeply, first of all, you happen to be white…Second, I’m also white. Not “hang-on-the-corner, don’t-give-a-fuck white,” but “Locust Point I.B.S. Local 47 white.” I don’t work without no fuckin’ contract.” (Here is it on YouTube)

For Nick, Frog’s “street” behavior is not typified as white.  He is breaking social norms and being disgraceful to whites by “acting black.”  Nick further differentiates himself, by using his status as a union member to further distance himself from the African American street dealers. He is not just a low street level white like Frog, but also one with moral standards—a union man. Even though he is as much in the game as Frog or Bodie, Nick feels as though he is a higher caliber person because he is white.  This is the same attitude found in the hate groups monitored by the Southern Poverty Law Center.  While, in no way are all blue collar workers or even Nicky are dangerous racists, many may just be one more pink slip or negative encounter away from the edge of hate.