ETHNOGRAPHY A method of nuanced qualitative social research “in which fine grained daily interactions constitute the life blood of the data being produced Simon’s work from back to the Baltimore Sun could be described as ethnographic from the beginning METHODOLOGY FOR THE CORNER Long-term, one year stay in the field where a particular set of social relations can be observed The observer learns the visuals and the habits of the culture by following selected individuals in their work and daily lives Police culture and drug culture Stand-around-and-watch-journalism GEORGE MARCUS Inherent problem with the ethnographic method Concentrates on a specific location of study “single site” ethnographers have recourse to a larger whole that has not been studied in so deep a systematic fashion Researchers do not have data for the whole This amounts to an abstraction: “the state, capitalism and so on. Enables some sort of closure He and others developed an ambition to undertake a multisited ethnography One that can approach the system as a whole THE PROBLEM… No single ethnographer has enough knowledge of enough worlds or enough time to map this constantly evolving world system “ETHNOGRAPHIC IMAGINARY” World enough and time Simon’s unique fabrication of ethnographically informed serial television melodrama speaks to this according to Williams Makes arguments, sets up contexts that could not be managed in journalism alone Serial television melodrama, according to Williams, makes possible the larger canvas of the ethnographic imaginary Combined factual, ethnographically observed, and detailed worlds of cops and corners into one converged fictional world With the exception of Spike Lee’s 1995 adaption of Richard Price’s novel Clockers there had never been a film that had given equal time to both sides of the law SEASON 1 Breaks crime story conventions Introduces a crime A cop who pursues solving the crime Higher ups who have no interest in solving the crime Doesn’t stay with the cop, but moves to the complex world of the committer of the crime Humanizes that character as well Equally important procedures of cops and dealers are introduced COMPARISON BETWEEN TWO MICROSITES Cops who want to be good and cops who just want to bust heads Competent drug dealers vs. ones who lack the discipline to avoid capture COMPLEXITY OF THE SERIES’ MICROSITES (PLOTLINES) Politics Different police details Education Co-ops War on drugs and “Hamsterdam” Etc. The vivid and interlocking stories from so many concrete ethnographic sites is what fiction affords, what ethnography aspires to, and what newspaper journalism can rarely achieve Multi-sited ethnographic imaginary that no longer needs to depend on allusions to abstract ideas of “the state,” “the economy”, or “capitalism” as its “fiction of the whole” The many sites reveal a vivid picture of that “whole” Simon had to quit the business he loved and turn to television Hasn’t fully embraced the form Hence the comparison to Greek Tragedy? JOHN CARROLL AND BILL MARIMOW From Baltimore Sun (criticized “The Metal Men—1995” Said it was too much like “The Corner” and that it wasn’t hard enough on the thieves Simon believed that newspapers should adopt a wide sociological approach to the city’s problems His editors thought he should be more clear and focused on right and wrong RIFLE-SHOT JOURNALISM One story is small and self-contained and has good guys and bad guys The other is about why we are where we are About who is being left behind Harder to report Carroll and Marimow saw them as performing a public service that can’t reach for the larger ethnographic complexities RIFLE-SHOT VS. MULTI-SITE Rifle shot is like a half hour of episodic television whose world is necessarily narrow and whose time is limited to a half hour or hour In contrast, Simon’s reporting presented an expanded world view Transforms a social “type” to a human being WHITE MIDDLE CLASS EDITORIALIZING In The Corner, his editorializing has an identity In The Wire he shows instead of telling (Which is more truthful?) In place of the five-paragraph rifle-shot story he would eventually create a five- season cumulative serial whose primary outrage-a futile war on drugsencompasses myriad others Serial melodrama can show us, in a way sociologists and ethnographers cannot, how much as Detective Lester Freamon puts it, “all the pieces matter.” CRIME STORY VS. MELODRAMA Controls knowledge The genre aims to create curiosity about past story events Suspense about upcoming story events Surprise with respect to unexpected disclosures about either story or plot detail We learn what the detective learns when he or she learns it Focus tends to be on finding out who committed a crime Story can rely on broad emotional impact Evokes pity, sometimes irony or distanciation. Sirk and Bertholdt Brecht Maximizes the viewer’s urge to know what will happen next—and, especially, how any given character will react to what has happened The emotional expressiveness of the film issues partly from the narration’s tendency to be omni-communicative Closure—leading towards full knowledge To wring every emotional drop out of the narration employs omniscience Various characters discover what viewers already know Unrestricted knowledge: of multiple storylines Crosscutting different plotlines Following several characters from one locale to another RELIGION Art Music Icons Ritual ENTERTAINMENT Are all of these things entertaining? Is there another word? “Enchantment” By endowing these things with “magic” enchantment is the means through which we may gain access to sacredness Entertainment is the means by which we separate ourselves from it TELEVISION (OR ANY SCREEN) Has a strong bias towards a psychology of secularism The power of a close-up face makes idolatry a hazard Brings personalities into our hearts and not abstractions into our heads Walter Cronkite plays better than the Milky Way and Jimmy Swaggart better than Jesus Attracts viewers by the millions (good thing?) TELEVISION COMMERCIAL Assault on capitalism Capitalism was originally an outgrowth of the Enlightenment Its principal theorists believed capitalism should be based on the idea that both buyer and seller are sufficiently mature, well informed, and reasonable to engage in transactions of mutual self interest Commercials Legally, companies are supposed to tell the truth about their products That law is destroyed when commercials come into play The discourse of “true” and “false” is discarded in commercials Empirical tests, logical analysis, and any elements of reason are impotent If a seller produces nothing of value, as determined by a rational market place, then the seller loses out The assumption of rationality among buyers that spurs competitors to become winners, and winners to keep winning Television commercials made linguistic discourse obsolete as the basis for product decisions Images are substituted for claims Pictorial commercials made emotional appeal not tests of truth, the basis of consumer decisions The distance between rationality and advertising wide The truth of an advertisement’s claim is not an issue The commercial insists on unprecedented brevity Disdains exposition Complex language is not to be trusted The argument is in bad taste and leads only to intolerable uncertainty Politics as show business What if we didn’t know anything about the politicians except their policies, voting history etc? What do we know primarily about politicians? WHAT MAKES A BETTER POLITICIAN? Capable in negotiation? More imaginative in executive skill? More knowledgeable in international affairs? More understanding of the interrelations of economic systems? Reach out and Touch Someone The reason we almost always believe a politician is better is because of image A politician does not offer an image of himself A politician offers himself as an image of the audience Reach out and Touch Someone: Most powerful example of the TV commercial on political discourse The lesson of most TV commercials like “Reach out and Touch Someone” They provide a slogan, or a symbol or a focus that creates for viewers a comprehensive and compelling vision of themselves We are likely to vote for people whose personality, family life, and style, as imaged on screen, reflect our most positive images of ourselves VOTER INTERESTS TANGIBLE INTERESTS SYMBOLIC INTERESTS Supreme Court Appointments Image Investment in programs that have positive effect on the populace Charm Protection from Bureaucracy Celebrity Support for one’s own union community Support for poor and homeless Good looks Personal disclosure TV AND (LACK OF) HISTORY “The past is a world, and not a void of grey haze” --Thomas Carlyle The past is not just a world, but a living world The world of the present is the most shadowy and difficult to understand The world of television is all about immediacy The quickness of information and TV communication removes contextual and historical content from politics HUXLEYAN VS ORWELLIAN Television does not ban books it displaces them With a limited ability to interpret, contextualize (historically and conceptually) we have way of protecting ourselves from corporate America