THE WIRE is most definitely noir. Doom does not mean that you
don't come back next week. Doom means your screwed. As for
eternal damnation, the characters all started out that way.
McNulty and Daniels are cops trying to do the right thing and
are constantly told that "Baltimore's a poor town. We can't
afford good police work." McNulty especially has to deal with
a control freak homicide commander, and while he's a good
cop, he's not above screwing over anybody to get the job
done, even his own lover. Presboluski is really screwed
because on the street, he's a loose cannon who likes to play
with his gun. Only when he's deskbound and his career is
pretty much over, does he find his niche, which is crunching
the numbers to find the bad guys. That whole squad, in fact,
is doomed and keeps falling to a new level of it every
week.
And that's just season 1. One of the things Dennis Lehane
said about Season 3 was that he saw no reason not to kill off
a major character in one ep. In other words, you DON'T know
if they're coming back next week. Hell, I'm only on season 1
and was surprised to see Kima listed in season 3 after the
bullet she took.
Doom is not like being unique. There really are degrees of
doom. Christopher Reeve was doomed. He was impressive as hell
after meeting his doom, but full paralysis is, in fact, doom.
Terry Schiavo (and please don't take this as a cue for an
off-topic debate on Ms Schiavo's fate) was doomed when she
had the heart attack. The controversy was over what to do
about it. Death is the ultimate doom, but it's not the only
one. How many people do something with their lives that
leaves them in a perpetual state of hell for years to
come?
Noir doesn't necessarily mean your protag is completely
destroyed. A truly vicious author will leave his character to
live out his doom, wherein the only escape is death or
exile.
So Mackey is doomed. Eventually. McNulty is perpetually
doomed. They're not doomed like a Jim Thompson character, but
then would you trade places with either of them? (Or any of
Thompson's characters for that matter?)
Jim Winter
Northcoast Shakedown
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0975857185/qid=1110288533/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/104-2029551-1867167?v=glance&s=books
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 03 Apr 2005 EDT