Comments on: The diseased depths of the American mind

By: Matt Thomas

Matt Thomas — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 07:41:17 +0000

Reading Rachel’s “Only Collect” post for the first time a year or so ago, I finally understood what Emerson meant when he wrote “In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts; they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty. Great works of art have no more affecting lesson for us than this. They teach us to abide by our spontaneous impression with good-humored inflexibility then most when the whole cry of voices is on the other side. Else to-morrow a stranger will say with masterly good sense precisely what we have thought and felt all the time ….”

By: Saheli

Saheli — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 05:45:39 +0000

You do realize that I have a pie recipe I’ve been working on for just this occasion? If you eat your brussel sprouts, you get some pie.

Though honestly, the chances of my buying some Brussell sprouts tomorrow and braising them in beer, pepper flakes, garlic and mustard are quite high.

Also, as I told Tim, I went to the video store last night, and they had every. single. disc. of. the.wire. except. number 1. So THERE!

By: Robin Sloan

Robin Sloan — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 04:32:11 +0000

When Snarkmarket finally all dines together, we dine on Brussels sprouts. (And in matching black paisley jumpsuits.)

By: Matt

Matt — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 03:26:24 +0000

I’m sorry, “brussels sprouts.”

By: Matt

Matt — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 03:25:46 +0000

I’m sorry, were you all still talking? Someone planted a dream in my head of gorging on brussel spouts braised in beer. Om nom nom, as they say.

By: Nav

Nav — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 03:40:52 +0000

Saheli, if it means anything, I resisted The Wire for ages for precisely that reason: it just seemed like such a significant investment of time. I am still resisting The Sopranos for the same reason. But my reaction has been the same as many others: it has reframed what I might expect from television and film. Another way of expressing this: I think I started less than a month ago and I'm already on Season 4. It's just that engrossing.

By: Saheli

Saheli — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 21:32:36 +0000

I should be more clear: I don't need to be convinced. It's on my to-do list. My last snarkmeeting, also with Matt, clearly bumped it near the top. I'm more just interested in how, because of its format, it's so much more problematic than, say, a book. If you three had sold a book as hard and steadily and exuberantly as you've been selling the Wire, I would have read it by now. In fact, I read the Harry Pottery series with much less persuasion on your parts. Throw in everyone else I know who's tried to sell me on it, and it's really remarkable. And yet. Series TV--especially HBO series TV--is just not as accessible as, say, books. Or even single slice movies. That barrier to entry is what I'm remarking on, and what I mean by 'timesink' (not timewaste). So it's really a more general point: different media have different barriers to entry for different populations, and the resulting variegation in access and enjoyment and delayed enjoyment creates its own dynamic beyond the sheer content. Happy Birthday, Marshall?

By: Matt

Matt — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 05:29:53 +0000

Extended thoughts on The Wire tk. All I'll say right now is that there's conversation, and then there's Conversation, and Tim and Rachel brought it.

By: Tim Carmody

Tim Carmody — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 00:20:08 +0000

This is intended as encouragement, not chastisement: Even talking about it as "a time-sink" begs the question and misses the point. Maybe The Lovely Bones is a time-sink, I don't know, I haven't read it. Whatever pleasure or pain or engagement you have might be internal to the book, and your feelings about it, its characters, a style of writing, whatever. LOST, which is a show I really, really like, is a time-sink. Solving some paradox or speculating about some mystery or getting excited about the characters doesn't really do anything beyond the world of LOST. I can go to the meta-level and start thinking about TV entertainment and media changes and American culture, but that's about it. The Wire is one of an exceedingly tiny handful of television shows that actually helps you understand something about the world, and articulate things you knew but couldn't quite get at before. It is not a time-sink; it's genuinely transitive. That isn't to say that it isn't entertaining, funny, shocking, with great characters and moments and events in it, that you don't get sucked into the world as it's created. But, god, god. There's a running thread on Snarkmarket about "the ideas! the ideas!" The Wire makes "ideas" just too weak a word. It is seriously that valuable.

By: Saheli

Saheli — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 22:44:14 +0000

Suzanne has a good point that this goes beyond series-as-time-sinks to violent-series-as-time-sinks. And sometimes deeply thought out violence is worse. I mean, I haven't ever watched the Sopranos (and any Sopranos comparison is unlikely to move me), but there's a sort of cartoon or shorthand violence that exists in certain police procedurals that I used to watch (back when I watched TV) that I wouldn't be afraid of watching now, except for the whole time and money thing. The violence doesn't stick with you after the episode is done. The only episode of the Wire I have seen (I believe Season 2, episode 1) wasn't even that violent but it featured a large quantity of dead female bodies and I'm not sure I have the psychic energy and time to start absorbing that. If the characters are grappling with it, then I have to grapple with it, and that can be problematic, multiplying 60 hours of consuming TV into 120+ hours of being consumed by TV. It's not that this a TV-specific problem, completely: I randomly decided to pick up The Lovely Bones this weekend, and of course had to finish it, and had a bunch of great nightmares and then a sleepless early morning as a result. Some friends and I were discussing how this is the price one pays for reading literature: most literature is about bad stuff happening, and you have to pace it out, but you can't abandon it completely. Most of my favorite movies and many of my favorite books are pretty grim, so it's not a major obstacle. But series-TV's specifically high demand for time & attention does combine badly with any hesitations about engaging with violent media.