Recoil The Fierceness and Futility of “The Game” in The Wire Will Jones University of Colorado at Boulder (2014) Contributor of the Month
Both sides of the war on drugs depicted in The Wire focus on moving forward, whether in business or making a case. Characters in the show refer to this war as “the game,” and the way they use language and rely on certain technologies indicates their own perspective on growth and efficiency. Some characters argue that “the game” has changed for the worse; others argue that “the game” has not and never will change. As drug dealers evade the police’s attempts to survey them, the game constantly adapts and evolves with new surveillance technologies. This evolution provides a paradoxical construct as the war on drugs constantly advances in technology with different players over time—but in a way that prevents any notion of progress on either side of the struggle. Whether the tools are guns, statistics, wiretaps, or power tools, an endless cycle of futility and the reliance on more competent technology frequently cancel out larger notions of systemic efficacy. As characters put their faith in certain weapons and tactics to ensure their own survival and keep tabs on their enemies, most fail to understand the repetition of the unchanged “game.” While the wire seems to represent a weapon that adapts to foiling tactics and ensures real progress against crime, language used by certain characters demonstrates a constant state of futility in a stagnant, never-ending “game.” Phallic Power and Number Power Within the language of power and efficiency in The Wire’s drug trade and law enforcement circles, “being up” seems to signify the notion of progress, forward movement, and success. For the drug trade, “being up,” means a customer is ready to buy a spider bag or eight ball, which represents the trade’s main goal of profit making. “Being up” in law enforcement usually connotes being “up” on a surveillance wire. The reliance on the wire stems from the belief that the tool provides the single most efficient way of building cases that matter, that the wire promotes real change and progress. However, language in The Wire demonstrates the paradoxical notion of moving forward without any progress. Watercooler Journal
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During a foot chase in season three, two police new to the Western District fail to identify where north is when asked by Maj. “Bunny” Colvin (“Time After Time”). As he points north, Colvin says: “You think it might help to know which direction you’re running?” Colvin teaches the two police how to use a compass: “Even numbers tell you north and west, odd, south and east.” Once the police are relieved, Carver mocks the rookies by saying, “I’m at a desk outside the roll call room on the first floor of 1034 North Mount, my feet are facing west, and my dick is pointing south, southwest.” Herc reassures them, “Bunny Colvin’s been giving that speech as Watercooler Journal
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long as you guys been sucking air.” The fact that Colvin has been giving that speech to almost every rookie who comes in demonstrates the inability of the police to learn directions and that their ignorance repeats constantly over time. Carver uses language of phallic power by joking that the two rookies’ “dicks” are facing paradoxical directions, taking their power away from them by mocking their own ignorance. Many characters throughout the show use phallic language to demonstrate their own power or efficacy in the proverbial “game.” Because The Wire presents a diegetic space where drug dealers and police have their own unique vocabulary that “operates in its own vernacular, these various structures of social, political and economic power are all linked to one another and share similar levels of linguistic density” (Hanson 209). As a character’s dialect signifies their race, class, or occupation, the way a character speaks can signify the lack of progress found in the system of the game. While language in The Wire points to a certain power dynamic, it also points to the paradoxical movement of a game that never changes but constantly moves forward with seemingly heightened stakes.
“While languages of power, efficiency, and weaponry like Slim’s ammunition and Burrell’s statistics seem to suggest a new fierceness of ‘the game,’ any motion forward is usually thwarted by systemic cycles found within The Wire.” Mirroring the use of phallic language comes language of and reliance on weaponry in order to succeed in the war on drugs. Similar to the way Colvin used numbers to teach directions, numbers play an important role in the language of power. Numbers seem to clearly represent a character’s own efficiency and success; more firepower equals a higher chance to hit a target. Numbers come to represent this notion of efficiency in episode four of season three, “Amsterdam.” Slim Charles, a “soldier” in the current game, and Cutty, a solider recently released after a fourteen-year prison sentence, prepare to hit an employee who stole off the count. Slim Charles hands Cutty a “Sig Sauer” pistol when Cutty objects: “I’m used to revolvers, man. .38 don't jamb.” Slim retorts, “Don’t hold fifteen neither.” Slim’s choice of weapon provides a glimpse into the current state of the game: a gun with a higher capacity magazine is more efficient and powerful than a revolver that “don’t jamb.” The reliance on numbers suggests that more firepower gives a player a better chance of survival in a game where violence and stakes have increased but morality and agency have decreased. Watercooler Journal
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As Cutty acclimates to this newfound principle of “the game,” he says, “The game done changed,” but Slim offers his own philosophy: “The game’s the same. Just got more fierce.” Slim’s language points to the paradoxical state of the game as something that does not change, but progresses or “gets more fierce.” Paul Allen Anderson points out that the game must be the same in “‘The Game Is the Game’: Tautology and Allegory in The Wire.” Avon Barksdale constantly reminds his soldiers, “The game is the game. Always,” as a tautological phrase indicative of his own “conservative proverbs or shorthand renderings of an epic worldview defined by necessity and institutional consistency rather than turbulent change and randomness” (Anderson 85). Throughout the entire series characters debate the current state of the “game” as something that either never changes or has changed drastically. While “Avon would like to stop time with the atemporal tautology” in an attempt to assert his own philosophy and dissolve his harsh, immoral decisions because “the game” is simply “always the game,” Colvin believes the game has changed (Anderson 97): “The West Side we knew is dead man… People in the game nowadays… I mean, it's a whole different breed” (“Final Grades”). Det. Bunk communicates a similar perspective to Omar: “I know you remember the neighborhood how it was . . . It wasn’t about guns so much as knowing what to do with your hands,” and finishes his critique of Omar’s generation with, “It makes me sick, motherfucker, Watercooler Journal
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how far we done fell” (“Homecoming”). Bunk’s assessment communicates the idea of falling rather than moving “up” as if to say the game has regressed into an amoral state due to the reliance on guns and violence. While Avon would argue against this change, Slim adds an interesting compromise with the phrase “just got more fierce” as if to admit technological advancements and a need for violence have raised the stakes, whereas other ideologies and objectives within the game have stayed the same.
Similar to the way Slim’s fifteen-bullet capacity magazine correlates to a higher success rate, Commissioner Burrell relies on the principle of numbers. High numbers of arrests, rip-and-runs, head-busting style of policing, and the amount of “dope on the table” all represent Burrell’s need to quickly produce results. Burrell’s reliance on these tactics demonstrates his ability to “juke the stats” rather than provide long-term solutions; more firepower in a shorter period of time is better than Cutty’s slower and supposedly less capable revolver. Commissioner Burrell displays a reliance on cold hard data as police efficiency, when in actuality, his style of policing negates any notion of progress in the war on drugs. When Burrell tries to kill the wire—a tool that takes more time, resources, money, and energy to build a case—after the drug dealers “change-up” and stop using pay phones, he tells Lt. Daniels, “You wanna listen to some brokeass pay phones, have it, but you don’t need that much manpower to do it” (“Cleaning Up”). Watercooler Journal
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Burrell’s goal is efficiency when he removes “manpower” from a wire that has “gone cold.” He orders Daniels to send back “Sydnor and Santangello” and to keep “that old man from the pawnshop” (Freamon) and “Valcheck’s brain-dead son-in-law” (Pryzbylewski). Freamon and Pryzbylewski are actually the two figures most effectively following the paper trail that would eventually expose the “higher-up” bureaucratic individuals such as Burrell or Senator Clay Davis. Burrell shows a lack of understanding of effective police work that leads to a false sense of progress within the police department. When Daniels gets his chance to finally expose these failed methods to much-higher-up Carcetti, he is reluctant to expose his bosses. But Rhonda Pearlman advises Daniels to “fire away, both barrels” (“Unto Others”).
“While ‘recoil’ literally signifies the kickback of a weapon, it also metaphorically speaks to the movement of the game itself...” The language of weaponry and firepower is used when discussing a character’s opportunity to get promoted or expose the failures of others. Daniels is in a position to “fire away, both barrels” (like Slim’s fifteen-capacity mag) and do real damage or real change. Daniels, a “good po-lice,” can finally expose Burrell’s failures in law enforcement and start to work towards real progress, despite the notion that most progress in The Wire is scarce. But in season five, Daniels denies his promotion as Acting Commissioner because he knows his desire to enforce good police work will be consumed by the larger system at play. He realizes that his ability to “fire away” has no real impact, because he would be roped into the same cycle of every Commissioner before him and be forced to “juke the stats.” Just Another Horse in a Harness While languages of power, efficiency, and weaponry like Slim’s ammunition and Burrell’s statistics seem to suggest a new fierceness of “the game,” any motion forward is usually thwarted by systemic cycles found within The Wire. There is a sense of false progress even for those police who believe in high quality cases with higher quality equipment. Det. Jimmy McNulty whole-heartedly believes that the wire is the key to creating good cases. If the game has “got more fierce” and the drug dealers have discovered new ways of avoiding the police, the wire seems to be the most efficient tool to catch them. But as McNulty recognizes, bad Watercooler Journal
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police will always prevent progress. In the third episode of the series, McNulty attempts to get two lazy officers on the detail to go find a picture of Avon Barksdale. He points out that “the housing projects began to take photos of every registered resident as a security measure,” and once Pat finally picks up that McNulty “wants [them] to go down the housing department and pull his photo,” McNulty mockingly points out the late arrival of his conclusion: “Excellent. You know you and I, we think as one. We’re like two horses together in a harness” (“The Buys”). The image McNulty presents is appropriate for understanding the way the two types of police hinder and cancel out each other’s progress. Two horses moving together should make the load they carry lighter, however, if one horse refuses to do the job, any forward motion is negated by the other horse’s inability to move. Despite the fact that McNulty is in a detail that gets up on a wire, bad police like Pat and Burrell pull him down. McNulty’s image mirrors the paradoxical notion of the game itself, which constantly moves forward through time, void of progress. The only other image of a horse in The Wire is when Dukie works selling metal off a cart pulled by a horse in season five. The cart resembles a more glorified version of Bubbles’ shopping cart. Bubbles would be pleased if his broken shopping cart carrying white t-shirts could evolve into a cart carrying an abundance of metal being pulled by a horse in such an efficient way. However, the end goal is the same—Dukie is just another Bubbles, another dope fiend on the street trying to score another vial despite the new “horsepower.” The false reliance on more power and more efficiency in The Wire demonstrates surveillance’s false movement forward. The language of power and weaponry relates directly to the use of the wire as a surveillance tool in the series. Like Cutty, who believes the game has changed due to the increase of violence in the game, McNulty believes the wire will produce a higher quantity of high quality evidence, increasing his own success in the game. However, the game remains the same and the players have developed “more fierce” ways to foil surveillance technologies. The ability to advance surveillance equipment, then, leads to an endless cycle of “changing up” that keeps the game stagnant. A technological standstill occurs when Omar and Brother Mouzone confront each other in the cold open of “Middle Ground.” At the beginning of the scene, the camera starts out in a highangle view of an alleyway. Telephone wires cross the frame, connoting the idea of wires and surveillance technologies. The camera tracks down to the street as Omar walks into view, but he stops when Mouzone says, “That’s far enough.” The two proceed to stare each other down in the style of a Western duel as they discuss the weapons they wield. While Omar “favor[s] a Watercooler Journal
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.45,” Mouzone sports a “Walther PPK, 380, double action.” They each point out weaknesses in the other’s weapons as Omar states, “Hear them Walthers like to jump some… that gun ain’t got enough firepower to make my joint useless. It definitely won’t stop me from emptying out half my mag.” Mouzone responds with, “You might not hit me,” but Omar laughs and says, “This range? In this caliber? Even if I miss, I can’t miss.” The confrontation ends when Mouzone says, “I suppose we could stand here all night… I want to ask you something.”
Omar and Brother Mouzone seem evenly matched as far as their weapons go, and their discussion of what will “go down” in a shootout largely depends on probability, firepower, and caliber of bullet. These guns do not progress their movement, as their discussion to follow points to the truth that Stringer Bell set them both up. Evoking the image of the wires shown at the beginning of the scene, Mouzone seeks information from Omar. The way the two discuss their weaponry points to McNulty and Freamon’s reliance on the wire as their own weapon of choice. Omar’s point about “range” and “caliber” relates to the wire as a tool that transcends proximity, or “range,” and has such a intense firing power that detectives believe that even if they “miss, [they] can’t miss.” The caliber of the wire seems so big that it cannot miss its target.
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Gunpowder Tools While the wire seems like a surveillance tool that can constantly adapt to “change-ups,” no progress is made. Cutty and Slim Charles originally brought up the notion of backfiring or “jambing.” While McNulty believes the wire is an efficient tool to combat the new fierceness of the game, more ammunition does not necessarily mean more efficiency. The cold open of season four’s premiere, “Boys of Summer,” highlights this efficiency. Snoop shops for a nail gun in order to hide her dead bodies in vacant houses. The salesman notices her “Dewalt cordless… Dewalt 410.” Snoop complains that her nail gun’s “battery won’t hold up,” and the salesman replies “a cordless’ll do that.” The idea of being “cordless” or “wireless” is another connotation of technological advancement within the game. The salesman continues to recommend a “powder action tool… the Hilti DX 460 MX,” but Snoop misunderstands and later asks, “You say ‘power’?” But no, the salesman refers to “powder,” “like gunpowder.” He adds, “At that rate, the cost of the powder actuated gun justifies itself.” Snoop now literally mistakes the gun’s powder function for the word “power.” They discuss the gun’s caliber, a .27, and the salesman admits, “Not large ballistically, but for driving nails, it’s enough. Any more than that, and you’d add to the recoil.” In a unique moment Snoop understands that a smaller caliber bullet can be more efficient. She adds, “I seen a tiny ass .22 round-nose drop a nigger… motherfuckers get up in you like a pinball, rip your ass up. Big joints, though, big joints, man. Just break your bones, you just say ‘fuck it.’” Unlike Omar, who believed his large caliber increased his ability to hit his target, Snoop knows a larger caliber might not be as effective as a .22. However, her description of the .22 acting “like a pinball” provides an interesting contradiction. Along with the idea of a smaller, more effective caliber, comes her pinball simile. In the game of pinball, the objective is to continually keep the ball in motion but suspended in play for as long as the player can, like the larger “game”—constantly in motion but suspended in an unchanged state. Although the .22 seems more effective, it can still impede on the game’s progress and relates to the false reliance on the wire as a tool for change. Recoil The language of efficiency and reliance on “fierce” technologies demonstrates that the wire, when pushed too far, has the ability to backfire. Thus, any perceived progress is faulty. Apart from Snoop’s understanding of caliber, the notion of “kickback” links back to Cutty’s notion of “jambing.” Snoop provides this term when asked if she knows what the salesman means by “recoil.” The word “recoil” has a large resonance of meaning within the game that “just got Watercooler Journal
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more fierce.” While “recoil” literally signifies the kickback of a weapon, it also metaphorically speaks to the movement of the game itself in the midst of the technological advancement of weaponry and surveillance equipment. While these advancements seem to progress both sides of the drug war, they keep those sides in a false sense of causality as characters step into each other’s roles by the series end. In other words, what occurs is a “re-coil.”
The definition of “coil” is “to wind into continuous, regularly spaced rings one above the other” (“Coil” Dictionary.com). The word and definition of recoiling describes the mode of The Wire itself as a serial television program presented in a “continuous, regularly spaced” number of episodes and scenes, but it also describes the endless cycles and lack of progress found within the show as technologies and character types recoil on top of each other. Sydnor becomes the next McNulty, Carver the next Daniels, and Michael the next Omar. Unfortunately, the technology surrounding surveillance has plenty of “kickback” and fails to cause any significant effect within the series. McNulty and Freamon’s lust for the technology Watercooler Journal
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and abuse of its ability to bring in a case causes Marlo Stanfield, the detail’s main target, to walk free as they lose their own jobs. Even though the wire is thought to be an infallible tool, it pushes Freamon and McNulty to lie and manipulate crime scenes in order to obtain more money and time for their own investigation of Marlo. Along with the better technology comes a more “fierce” sense of morality, which ultimately keeps the game suspended and unresolved. Although the wire may accumulate more evidence over time, it can be misinterpreted, foiled, and abused. A revolver that “don’t jamb” may actually be more efficient than a magazine that “hold[s] fifteen.” The game has gotten “more fierce” and the language of its characters speaks to this very paradox with a stronger reliance on stats, a greater lust for power, and an increased lack of morality. But the game is the same, as the drug trade and law enforcement systems are stuck in a forward moving but futile struggle.
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Conclusion The Wire offers multiple perspectives on the war on drugs based on how certain characters speak, what imagery they offer, and what principles they communicate. The ways in which the “game” has changed offers certain perspectives on economics, morality, time, and technological advancement. The ways in which characters evaluate their own position in the game are based on many principles, such as numbers, weapons, objectives, technology, morals, and tools. As surveillance technologies evolve, so do the stakes of the drug trade and the need to evade those technologies. The interactions between characters and their dialogue in The Wire speak to the paradoxical idea of moving forward in systems of power like “the game,” which inevitably stays the same. Individual efficacy translates to a larger systemic paralysis of agency. While the wire seems to offer some form of hope in progressing this game to new answers or less crime, The Wire’s language speaks the very obsession of efficiency that keeps those values in a static game.
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works cited Anderson, Paul Allen. ""The Game Is the Game": Tautology and Allegory in The Wire." The Wire: Race, Class, and Genre. Ed. Liam Kennedy and Stephen Shapiro. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 2012. 84-109. Print. "Coil." Dictionary.com. Dictionary.com, n.d. Web. 25 June 2013. Hanson, Christopher. "“A Man Must Have A Code”: The Many Languages Of The Wire." Quarterly Review Of Film & Video 29.3 (2012): 203-212. Academic Search Premier. Web. 24 June 2013.
image credits, in order: image: The Scheme King, via http://www.weallscheme.com/ ©HBO Studios ©HBO Studios ©HBO Studios ©HBO Studios ©HBO Studios Watercooler Journal
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