Most recent public comments by Mara Guyer https://nowcomment.com/users/51171 https://nowcomment.com/documents/136072?scroll_to=1315090 https://nowcomment.com/documents/136072?scroll_to=1315090 I think that Ziggy is an excellent example of this dynamic on The Wire, especially since the Barksdale organization is so meticulous and cautious in their operations. Ziggy spends compulsively and conspicuously, and makes purchases that are not necessarily good investments or steps toward upward mobility. Ziggy is also interesting as an example of this because of the resentment his general demeanor and windfall seem to cause among members of his social group and work community. Thu, 04 Apr 2019 04:26:01 -0400 https://nowcomment.com/documents/136072?scroll_to=1315089 https://nowcomment.com/documents/136072?scroll_to=1315089 The dealers' comments about, and general treatment of, their customers stood out to me. Because I was so surprised to read early in the piece that Primo frequently reminisced about the year he spent out of control as an addict, I was even more struck to see a reversal in which Primo and Benzie acknowledge their situational power and ridicule the crack addicts that make up their customer base. It reminded me of David Simon's refrain about The Wire as a Greek tragedy and the inevitability of individuals being trapped in institutions; Primo and Benzie both depend on drug sales for their livelihood, yet are so confident that addicts will buy from them that they are so bluntly racist, sexist, and morbid in the ways that they address them. Thu, 04 Apr 2019 04:19:24 -0400 https://nowcomment.com/documents/136072?scroll_to=1315084 https://nowcomment.com/documents/136072?scroll_to=1315084 There's a lot to unpack in this entire paragraph about kinship networks and the ways that modern and traditional layers of kinship reinforce and complicate one another, but I wanted to highlight this sentence because I think it hints at the extent to which women perform labor in these relationships. Even in the street-culture relationships that Bourgois identifies as modern, women are constantly associated with a household - an association which tends to come with expectations of domestic labor - and their relationships appear almost secondary to the relationships that they make possible between other men. Thu, 04 Apr 2019 10:49:03 -0400 https://nowcomment.com/documents/136072?scroll_to=1315081 https://nowcomment.com/documents/136072?scroll_to=1315081 I think both of these comments are really interesting, especially because of the way that this reading seems to set up Felix and Ray in contrasting roles as a disorganized and organized leader. One part of the reading that stood out to me was Bourgois's comparison of "binge behavior" to normative modes of middle class conspicuous consumption, which I think is related to Emily's point: media narratives do not seem to point out these similarities. Thu, 04 Apr 2019 04:01:55 -0400 https://nowcomment.com/documents/136072?scroll_to=1315080 https://nowcomment.com/documents/136072?scroll_to=1315080 I largely felt the same way about The Wire's limited portrayal of women in the game and think your point about the creators wanting to avoid an investigation of rape is likely accurate. The power imbalance and sexual exploitation described in this section about Felix is so profound that it makes The Wire feel particularly sanitized in its portrayal of women, and especially makes me think about how limited the show's engagement is with all the women working at Orlando's. Most of those scenes either move the police plot in a direct way or are intended to be funny in some way, opposed to using that dimension of the drug operations to explore sex work and gender dynamics within the Barksdale organization. Thu, 04 Apr 2019 10:56:21 -0400 https://nowcomment.com/documents/134033?scroll_to=1307890 https://nowcomment.com/documents/134033?scroll_to=1307890 I think this is a really thoughtful extension of Alexander's argument about Obama. I was definitely struck by how often she mentioned him in the introduction, and how urgently she seemed to want to decentralize the symbolic meaning of his election. I think you're totally right to integrate Trump into this conversation, since his election - and the birther movement - points to a white identity politics grounded in xenophobia and antiblack racism and clearly demonstrates that Obama's election did not end either. Tue, 26 Mar 2019 02:42:27 -0400 https://nowcomment.com/documents/134033?scroll_to=1307889 https://nowcomment.com/documents/134033?scroll_to=1307889 This paragraph stood out to me too, so I'm glad that you pointed it out and hinted at the ways that race has been constructed to justify certain interests. I am especially interested in Alexander's description of white supremacy as a "deeply held belief system based on 'truths' beyond question or doubt," because the goalpost of whiteness has moved so frequently (ie Irish ethnicity, the "one drop" rule) that its status as objective is nonsensical and contradictory. Tue, 26 Mar 2019 02:36:04 -0400 https://nowcomment.com/documents/134033?scroll_to=1307887 https://nowcomment.com/documents/134033?scroll_to=1307887 I think you're totally right to underscore the relationship between vagrancy laws and capitalist rhetoric here. American capitalism - including Northern banks, which invested historically in material goods that required slave labor - is so historically tied to racialized chattel slavery that I think it's really valuable to acknowledge the rhetorical relationship with vagrancy laws. I also think the enforcement dynamic is important to emphasize here, since Alexander observes that vagrancy laws were "applied selectively to blacks" and inconsistently to poor or unemployed whites. Tue, 26 Mar 2019 02:27:26 -0400 https://nowcomment.com/documents/134033?scroll_to=1307886 https://nowcomment.com/documents/134033?scroll_to=1307886 Alexander's mention of "sensational media coverage" piqued my interest in the introduction, so I was glad that she delved into the topic later in the passage. The types of reporting errors - erroneously attributing deaths to crack - and disproportionate coverage are shocking to me. The fact that media so uncritically picked up and propagated this political and racist narrative is extremely striking, and I was unfamiliar with most of these examples beyond Willie Horton. Alexander focuses on news stories in this section, but I am curious about whether/how other forms of entertainment media also contributed to the spread of these narratives. Wed, 27 Mar 2019 17:57:08 -0400 https://nowcomment.com/documents/134033?scroll_to=1307884 https://nowcomment.com/documents/134033?scroll_to=1307884 This paragraph reminded me of our class discussion of cocaine and alcohol in the Moskos reading. By noting the consistency of drug use across racial lines, Alexander contrasts the differences in incarceration rates even more sharply. The statistics in this paragraph versus the realities of mass incarceration and police relations further underscore the ways in which white youths feel protected and insulated from legal consequences. Alexander's observation about drug use among all races also made me consider the portrayal of drug users and dealers on The Wire through a different lens; while including some white dealers and users, Baltimore's drug-related institutions on the show are predominantly black. Maybe that reflects the racial composition of the city or the specific institutions that the show wanted to tackle? Tue, 26 Mar 2019 02:14:47 -0400