"No Country For Old Men" & "The Wire"

I raved last year on the subject of the Coen brothers' film No Country For Old Men, and last night it opened on Sky Movies.  It is superb; in my opinion, one of the very greatest films ever made.  It is apocolyptic in exactly the way that Apocolypse Now wasn't!  It spells out, not stridently, but inescapably, that western civilisation is decaying from within and that the malignant forces applied from without are going to win.  Anyone watching the film should take careful note of the ending in which the decent, old-timer sheriff retires early having given up the fight, whilst the psychopathic killer, despite being wounded, lives on.  When I first saw it, I had no idea how prescient it was concerning the southern border states of the USA.  It was only the publication earlier this year of the CIA's annual, risk-assessment report to the President in which, apart from the usual suspects, they included - Mexico!  That made me sit up and wonder, and since then there has been more and more news concerning the war going on to control the drug trade along the whole Mexican/USA border such that the murder and kidnap rates are now astronomical.  Even so, I do not think the Coen brothers intended their film to be parochial.  It stands as a metaphor for the free world in its current, many faceted war against the totalitarians.  Can we stand up to the fight, or shall we follow the old sherriff into early retirement?

All of that brings to me to The Wire, a police procedural series on TV much admired by the critics and which the BBC are now running exceedingly late on BBC 2 every weekday night.  I have watched all five episodes so far and I must confess to a bias in that the series is based in the Baltimore Police Department which was, of course, the home of the very excellent but now very elderly series Homicide: Life on the Street.  Watching The Wire one thing struck me immediately, not so much what was in it but what was not in it - colour!  Actually, around 80% of the cast, police and villains, are black but nobody refers to those old racial divides.  Any series of 20 years ago trying to be up there on the cutting edge of authenticity would have had to include references or even a story line showing up the great racial divide in America.  Not so in The Wire where no-one mentions it and everyone, to quote a phrase, seems 'comfortable in their skin' whatever colour it is.  They are all, the good, the bad and the downright ugly, just Americans.

Even so, some things never change in LA-LA Land (the home of American TV production) and the hero cop is white, tough, principled and good-looking - natch!  However, his right-hand girl, so to speak, is black - no change there - but she is not beautiful - and that is!  She is also (sigh of irritation) lesbian and the producers could not allow the chance of a bit of female canoodling to pass them by.  Like most men I find the sight of lesbian activity quite exciting, even at my age, but not when it is so obviously superfluous to the story and even more obviously only inserted to gain the series a bit of notoriety.  Also, having watched that, I just knew with a sinking feeling that a somewhat unlikely homosexual development amongst two of the nigger gangsters was almost certainly going to develop into a snogging session which, as surely as the Missouri runs south, it did.

Incidentally, could someone fetch a glass of water for poor Dr. 'Teabag' who, if he is reading this piece, has just fainted away at my use of the word 'nigger'.  Now, I have been told, many a time and oft', by the Great and the Good, especially the likes of 'Teabag' and his fellow language commissars, that the n-word is definitely and irrevocably forbidden, but guess what, in this film the niggers keep calling each other niggers!  Don't they read The Grauniad?  Has Dr. 'Teabag's' famous organ bearing his politically correct message failed to reach them?  Honestly, watching and listening I felt like standing up and telling them that never mind the drugs and the murders, they were all very, very naughty boys for using the n-word even if, er, they're actually niggers themselves!  Where was I . . . ?

The series is very good at showing the low politics of high-ranking police bureaucracies, all of it so like our very own dear local police authorities.  I also enjoyed the portrayal of two 'good ol' boy' detectives who in any other series would have been real 'straight arrows' but who in this are the most incorrigible cheats and layabouts ever to disgrace a detectives' squad room.  As always with modern American films I have difficulty with the language, particularly from the black gangsters, but I apply the same technique as I use with Shakespeare, I don't strain to catch every word, I just relax and let it flow over me and gradually the brain seems to tune in to it.  I also have difficulty distinguishing one black from another - yes, they really do all look the same, don't they?  Actually in this film they do because they all dress alike in baggy street cloths with hoods and caps and collars pulled up, and all of that plus their incomprehensible argot makes identification difficult.

Still, I am, with some reservations, enjoying it so far.  I am glad that the main storyline is being told over many episodes in order to provide the sense of time passing, a facet which is totally ignored in those silly Law and Order series in which murder, detection, trial and sentence all get done and dusted in one hour flat.  If you haven't already started watching The Wire it may be too late to pick up exactly who is doing what to whom but if they run a second series I would recommend it.  Incidentally, foul language pours forth in torrents, and it is exactly right that it does so, this is how these people speak.  The series is similar in one respect to the Coen brothers' film in that it describes a society under attack from the drug trade.  I am just curious to see whether the producers have what it takes to come to the same grim conclusion that the Coens came to, that is, that the druggers are winning! 

Comments

[Clairwil]

I must admit to being a softy in the face of the dreaded n-word. So much so I pull up black men, for it's never women, for using it in my presence. It's a nails down a blackboard word for me I'm afraid. When I started out in life it wasn't my intention to become the racial language answer to Mary Whitehouse. Fate does thrust some odd things on one.

[dearieme]

I think "igg-word" would be less ambiguous than "n-word", if only because even the polite "negro" seems to be frowned on. Thus people write things like "people of sub-Saharan African descent". 12 syllables rather than 2; there's progress for you.

[David Duff]

Try as I might, Clairwil, in my mind I simply cannot link you and the late Mrs. Whitehouse in any respect! As to the word 'nigger', I have always avoided it because it has a long and established history and association with people who hated or despised negros. It is one of those rare epithets which does not require a qualifying word in front of it to indicate the speaker's, or writer's, meaning. For example, 'Paki' is to my mind entirely neutral being simply a diminutive; 'fucking Paki' is anything but neutral! I suspect that low-life blacks, like those portrayed in this film, have simply taken the word 'nigger' and turned it round to make it a badge of honour, much as front-line soldiers often adopt the enemy's insulting epithets as their own.

"Progress", DM? What is this thing called 'progress'? Dunno, but I won't hold my breath waiting!

[Sister Wolf]

Is this at all like me using the word Cunt, or not really?

[David Duff]

Not really, 'Sis', and do please try and keep your voice down, I have it on very good authority that 'her Maj' is a frequent visitor!

[Sister Wolf]

And yet, it is said to be one of Her favorite words!

[David Duff]

'We are not amused!'

[Tim Newman]

Have you watched The Shield, about a corrupt LA police force? I've not watched The Wire, but loved The Shield, I'd be interested in what somebody who has seen them both would think.

[Sister Wolf]

Hahahaha!

Happy Easter! xo

[David Duff]

I began to watch it, Tim, but then I think a string of social events interfered and I lost the thread and thus my interest. Oddly enough, I watched an episode the other week but the thing is with TV series is that you have to stick with it. Also, I like the fact that runs more or less nightly so that I get into the habit.

But to answer your question, yes, I liked what I saw of The Shield and the moral ambiguities of the 'hero' and his side-kicks; also, I seem to remember in the earlier episodes that the apparently new, squeaky-clean Hispanic mayor turned out to be as bent as a corkscrew.

I wonder, did you catch Law and Order the other night? Not the rather silly American series but the 1980s British version written by G. F. Newman. He wrote a superb book blowing the gaffe on the Flying Squad of those halcyon days when the cops were sort of in cahoots with the robbers (after all, they all came from teh same background) just so long as from time to time some of them were put away - "Well, he's due one", says one of the coppers about a criminal who needed fitting up.

Happy Easter to you, too, Sis.

[Tim Newman]

I wonder, did you catch Law and Order the other night?

On Sakhalin TV?!!! Hardly!

[David Duff]

Duh! Sorry, Tim, thumb up bum and mind in neutral. So no change there, then!

They are just running the last few episodes over here and from the synopsis it looks as though all is lost for Vic and his buddies.