“We Ain’t Gotta Dream No More”: The Wire as Deindustrialization Narrative
Abstract
This thesis is an examination of the critically-acclaimed HBO television series The
Wire and a commentary on the shifting nature of labor relations in the modern economy.
It will, in two parts, explore the economic transformation that the United States
faced at the turn of the millennium, keeping in mind the ever-present specter of Baltimore’s
past while examining its present. While the first chapter will focus on the shifting
nature of labor itself, the second chapter examines how the corruptibility of the
state worsened the already unjust outcomes of the capitalist system. What emerges,
hopefully, is a deeper understanding of a show deeply in touch with the economic shifts
this country continues to face today, and the sophisticated way in which it portrayed
an America yet again failing to care for its denizens in the most need. By concentrating
on the show’s second season, an investigation into the union of longshoremen who work
the Port of Baltimore, one can see how technology and globalization affects communities
of labor, and how both the state and the capitalist system responded in a manner that
was not only inadequate, but almost always entrenched the dominant powers at the expense
of the vanishing middle-class. This, in turn, presents a portrait not just of contemporary
America’s economic failings, but an explanation of the ways, from old to new, in which
economic structures fail to bring legitimate opportunity to those who seek it.
Description
2013 English Honors Thesis: Winner of the Barbara Hernnstein Smith Award For Outstanding
Work in Literary Criticism Or Theory
Type
Honors thesisDepartment
EnglishPermalink
https://hdl.handle.net/10161/7565Citation
Liberman, Harry (2013). “We Ain’t Gotta Dream No More”: The Wire as Deindustrialization Narrative. Honors thesis, Duke University. Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/10161/7565.Collections
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