Friday, 19 March 2010

The Wire

The Wire uses realism elements, such as filming on location in Baltimore. It tackles several key issues , such as drug abuse and problems with bureaucracy. The target of the show is to show how american cities function and how everyone gets on with each other. It is written around the experiences of co-write Ed Burns who was a former homicide detective such as the frustrations he suffered of the ineffectiveness of the beaureaucracy of the police department so there are a lot of political elements featured in the Wire.
The Wire is postmodern, because it is based around true events which shows that the structure of the narrative is less creative as ideas for the narrative already exist that can be used to construct the plot for the series. It also is postmodern as it hits out at the weaknesses of the police department. This in the past would have been too risky to attempt to do, but nowadays writers of TV programmes aren't for example afraid to break the fourth wall. Also most of characters involved are based on real life Baltimore figures. Also some important events occur off camera and flashbacks are common so another postmodern element is the growing emphasis on technology on media products. This is just like the A2 media projects which now depend more on technology such as recorded evaluations.

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