Sopranos Vs The Wire

[nemesis]

The Wire......most realistic portrayal of urban decay and the so called war on drugs I have watched......"The game is the game" - Avon Barksdale

[Sinister]

Both.They're too different to compare.

[Mr Q]

Name me another show that has such social impact...

'THE Wire," HBO's gritty se ries about life in the Baltimore ghetto, is about to become a course at Harvard.The announcement came at a panel discussion at the school featuring several of the show's stars, according to the Harvard student newspaper, The Crimson.The class will be taught by sociology professor William J. Wilson, one of the best-known African American history professors in the country, who has made no secret of the fact that he is a huge fan of the show."I do not hesitate to say that it has done more to enhance our understanding of the challenges of urban life and the problems of urban inequality, more than any other media event or scholarly publication," Wilson told the audience before poking fun at himself, "including studies by social scientitsts."Star Michael Kenneth WilliamsSonja Sohn, who played Det. Kima Gregs, Andre Royo (Bubbles) and Michael Kenneth Williams (Omar Little) were on the panel talking about the show's unusual impact.The series ran for five seasons, starting in 2002. Each year, it took on a different aspect of urban life -- from drugs to schools to the news media.Harvard will be not the first college course on "The Wire." Other students commented on The Crimson's site that courses on the TV show already exist at Duke University and Middlebury College.

That is from theNew York PostThen there was...

Conference - The Wire as Social Science Fiction? 26-27 November 2009, Leeds Town Hall

and this..From the Guardian..

How many sociologists does it take to change a lightbulb? Five. One to change the lightbulb and four to examine The Wire.Harvard sociologist William Julius Wilson believes that The Wire has done more "to enhance our understanding of the challenges of urban life, and the problems of urban inequality, than any other media event or scholarly publication". But here at The Wire as Social Science Fiction? conference in Leeds, what do academics from around the world think?Christophe Ringer of Vanderbilt University argued that Baltimore has become "the archetypal urban city for American sociologists". It could have been any city in which a project as ambitious as The Wire had been set. But is it the real city Ringer is talking about, or the one depicted in The Wire? Terry Austrin of the University of Canterbury in New Zealand argued that actually The Wire's "staged authenticity" is a long way from sociology.University of Brighton's Rebecca Bramall and Oxford Brookes' Ben Pitcher said they loved the show, but "rather than regarding The Wire as straightforwardly 'sociological' – as enhancing our understanding of the social, or as expanding the contemporary sociological imagination", they argued that the show has appeal to left-wing academics working in the fields of sociology, cultural studies and cognate disciplines."The Wire offers a beguiling projection of sociological desire, providing a totalising vision of and orientation to the social, a fantasy of the intelligibility of contemporary urban life," they said.Bramall and Pitcher suggested that The Wire's celebrated, unorthodox and stereotype-challenging representations of sex, race, class and gender provided a simulacrum of realism structured by the audience's demands for "progressive" representation. Or to put it another way, Omar is a liberal-left fantasy of an urban American gangster stereotype. Elsewhere it was argued that Omar was in fact a right-wing ideologue in the tradition of Death Wish.Whether The Wire is actually a real sociological exercise or not, Rowland Atkinson from the University of Tasmania claimed that it should at least become a tool for sociologists:In an era in which cycles of thought are quickened and commentary is subjected to democratisation/compression, sociologists have been decentralised as a role of potential authority or relevant analysis.One of the greatest challenges of the relevance of contemporary thought is to step beyond text, and into other ways of conveying. Yet, even following this formulation, The Wire itself represents a long and thoughtful mode, providing drama and plausibility without recourse to the conventions of much other media products. Eschewing the elitism of the academy it offers at least the exclusivity of a distinctive, perhaps subcultural, mode within TV and film production.To this end The Wire can be seen as a key exemplar of non-text based sociology (NTS) given its rare qualities: insight, commitment and panoptic coverage of social institutions and urban structures. What The Wire may represent in this context is an NTS template from which others might be drawn: something that is more 'like sociology' than it is 'like TV'.A truly public sociology will inevitably involve a move beyond pure texts – The Wire may indeed offer insights into the possibilities of collaborations that may extend to videogames as much as to TV and cinema. Such observations destabilise notions of what sociology 'is' while opening new possibilities for teaching, public engagement and social progress.

[NO SUNSHINE]

People who teach sociology tend to be d*ckheads though.

[Dubby]

i have no interest in american italiansblack people ftw!

[ChickenCottage]

just like the guardian article says, The wire makes sopranos look like the waltonsand i quote "As great as Tony, Paulie Walnuts and the gang are, The Sopranos are guys we've seen before: in The Godfather, Goodfellas, Donnie Brasco. The astonishing range of characters in The Wire is altogether more labyrinthine - from Baltimore's eight-year-old drug dealers and the cops trying to bust them, to the kids' teachers, their crack-addict mothers, and the corrupt officials in the mayor's office running/ruining the city."lol@ some upper class gangtster drama captivating anybody. i liked the sopranos but it was just like any Good TV dramathe wire was like a documentary in a REAL city almost anywhere in the world. i would even choose the shield over sopranos. about sopranos coming close to the wire. fcuk outta here

I was agreeing with you up until the The Shield comment. The Soprano's is a very very well made show.Personally what I find more interesting about The Wire is how it takes a bottom-up approach, you see how the lives of the lowliest foot soldier is affected by those higher up. You also get a more complex narrative web.....f*ck it I need a sh*t and I could wank over this all day.

[Corrigan]

dus som1 wanna give me a site that shows series 2finished series 1 the other week

[Corrigan]

dus som1 wanna give me a site that shows series 2finished series 1 the other week