The Wire: Season 4 Themes

1. Social Institutions Social Exclusion Ideological Discipline The Game The Wire:Season 4Themes

2. Theme: Social Institutions • Social Institution: the more enduring features of social life that contain a set of rules shared by members of a society • Bureaucracy: carries out the policies, rules, and regulations embedded in institutions • The social institutions in the Wire are BROKEN! • Lesson of the Wire: It is folly to place your faith in institutions, because they're designed to protect themselves and not you, the individual.

3. Theme: Social Exclusion • Underground Economy of the Urban Poor by SudhirVentakesh: explores how people work beneath the radar, earning a living and providing for themselves and their families. How does a community survive when it works with a different set of rules than the rest of America? • “Those that are excluded from the legitimate economy make their own world. And we’re trying to paint the world that they created upon being excluded from the rest of America”.

4. Theme: Ideological Discipline • The process of making “docile minds” so that professionals are trained to advance the institution’s interests. • “Hidden curriculum” “The product of professional labor is political. It takes sides. The accountant’s bookkeeping decision, the journalists’ angle on the story, the lawyer’s choice of contract language, the scientist’s narrow focus, the minister’s sermon, the teacher’s lesson—professional work tilts one way or the other, and the way it tilts is never an accident” – Jeff Schmidt Disciplined Minds

5. Quiz – Question 1 Ideological disciplineis the process of getting people to think like professionals. This concept means that professionals: a. are valued for their ability to do what their told b. police the political content of the workplace c. can be called critical thinkers because they develop their own, independent points of view d. have a better idea of what is going on in the workplace because they have paper credentials

6. Theme: the Game • The Game: “This Game is rigged. We’re like them little bitches on the chessboards. Pawns.” • The Game is the unwritten rules of the institution and its players—whether at the corners, City Hall, the police station, street-level junkies, corrupt politicians , cops looking for promotion. Everyone is pretending to do their jobs • The Game is also why nothing changes or gets fixedbecause it means solving problems with PR. • Bare bones capitalism, without protections • “I got mine, so screw you”

7. Quiz – Question 2 Which of the following is the best definition of the Game, as implied thus far in the Wire? a. a metaphor for corrupt people doing corrupt things for their own self-interest b. the publicly stated goals of an institution c. encourages individuals to become selfish and greedy, thus causing social problems d. encourages habitual ways of thinking to protect institutions but not necessarily the individuals within them

8. The Game in Social Institutions(in a show where ½ are socially excluded and the other ½ are professionals) • What are some examples of The Game or ideological discipline from Episode 5?