> Yes, I agree and EB should listen to Simon---its well worth the hour. There
> are really interesting things to write and think about in his USC
> discussion.
[snip lots of interesting stuff]
> I notice the thread move to Simon's politics. I am sure he is a liberal. But
> hell liberals can have good ideas and do good art.
I agree, and I wasn't calling Simon liberal as an insult, just as by saying that his art is smarter than him I wasn't calling him stupid. As Mike said, Simon's creation is more complicated and interesting than his own politics because it dramatizes things. This isn't an insult; it's what art does. Only bad artists are smarter than their art.
I will watch the Simon talk at some point, and I'm probably being silly by avoiding it. But I'm wary because the series was so wonderful and I have my own image of and ideas about it that I don't want them ruined, uncomplicated. For instance, I have read Simon say something about the institutions in the show not doing what they are supposed to do. But his show says something different, or something more: that those institutions function just as well if not better by not doing what they are supposed to do, by breaking. And here it is appropriate to bring in Deleuze and Guattari (I was just waiting for my chance):
"The social machine's limit is not attrition, but rather its misfirings; it can operate only by fits and starts, by grinding and breaking down, in spasms of minor explosions. The dysfunctions are an essential element of its very ability to function, which is not the least important aspect of the system of cruelty. The death of a social machine has never been heralded by a disharmony or a dysfunction; on the contrary, social machines make a habit of feeding on the contradictions they give rise to, on the crises they provoke, on the anxieties they engender, and on the infernal operations they regenerate. Capitalism has learned this, and has ceased doubting itself, while even socialists have abandoned belief in the possibility of capitalism's natural death by attrition. No one has ever died from contradictions. And the more it breaks down, the more it schizophrenizes, the better it works, the American way."
I think this is exactly what The Wire dramatizes.