"It's essentially a six hour lecture on zoning regulations" - David Simon's Show Me A Hero

*keener

yea that vid is insane for both like good and bad reasons that it exists & was on tv

horseshoe can have my allocation of springsteen montages, im good

president of the yonkers NAACP:
the class of people who are just, forgotten about, should have the right to live where they want to-

host: -IF THEY CAN AFFORD IT!!! *CROWD ROARS* why should the taxpayers - yes - why should the taxpayers - why in the name of god should the taxpayers go out and acquire expensive property? alright, to build low-income housing, to generally - and i'm not going generalize, generally, take the neighborhood in the first few years, panic it, and send it running? alright. i say move them into the rich neighborhoods"

i was raised in northern jersey so a distressing amount of the people at those meeting scenes are representations of people I'm all too familiar with

"also the reporter on TAL remarked that listeners shouldn't judge the white racists in the school desegregation meeting too harshly bc most white people elsewhere in America are never faced with school desegregation."

lower middle class/working class whites vs affluent whites

that video is amazing, managed to make it 10 minutes in before losing most of my will to live

srsly, why springsteen. why???

i mean, at least they picked dark-ish springsteen songs, i'm fine with those. and hey, coulda been way worse, like mellencamp or some shit

i don't understand are people critiquing "hungry heart" AS A SONG? that is nonsense.

if you're critiquing the sentimentality/laziness of tv montages, that's fair, but send them to me. it's true that they're best employed sparingly--i always enjoyed the big end-of-season musical montage on the wire.

dunno if i can face this. simon comes across as a total moron and the wire has aged badly in my mind. treme was dire and all his characters are ciphers and stereotypes for his few basic views about "decline".

you are not going to like this

that's all i need to never watch it.

thank you!

haha you're welcome! i want to berate you for your views on simon but they seem fair. i don't think he comes off like a moron in interviews, but he does come off like a dick

my husband met simon in the aftermath of the baltimore uprising this past year. they were both out cleaning up in one of the affected neighborhoods. he says he's nice in person. also that he started yelling at some random police officer who was doing his job wrong in a way that seemed unnecessarily surveilling of the people who lived in the neighborhood. this is a thing i value about simon, the way he nerds out about public service jobs and tries to hold people accountable when they fuck them up. the journalist in him i guess. it's also the jerk in him.

yeah maybe dick is more the word. i just hate the kind of macho persona and all this "difficult men" fanboy shit that fed into it.

super satisfying on the ground david simon anecdote!

TAL remarked that listeners shouldn't judge the white racists in the school desegregation meeting too harshly bc most white people elsewhere in America are never faced with school desegregation. she opined that whites in nyc, chicago, wherever would likely react the same way. i think she's probably right.

this is otm i think, in a kind of close to home way. i feel like the speech usually reflected this, also - that most of the comments were prefaced by some kind of limp acknowledgement of a broader duty to commit to reform, only when it didn't directly affect their kids' education.

i am only on ep. 1 of this BUT also while it is the case should mention that the awful crash guy isn't doing anything wrong at all

yeah i was really mad when i found out haggis was the director like simon, how could you let this happen but he clearly does not have a say in the writing, otherwise all the scenes of the project-dwellers would involve them being reciprocally racist toward white people and the overarching message would be "see, we're all a little racist" and it would be totally apolitical and terrible.

i think the direction is fine. i'm not really smart about that stuff.

also ever since the scientology article in the new yorker (haven't read the book yet) i've felt really bad for haggis.

It's too bad more people didn't stick w/ Treme past the ehhh 1st season, season 3 in particular was almost Wire-level good (albeit in a totally different way)

mind you I don't really get why people itt dislike Simon, what's the specific grievance?

i'm trying to rewatch treme right now. i gave up during the first season when it was actually airing. it's better than i remembered it being, even though i'm only in the first season.

i understand that 90% of eveyone hates brooce but ffs the show is set in late 80's whitebread Yonkers, what were you expecting? sonic youth?

i don't think people hate bruce to be fair (i mean, if they do, we will fight) i think it just reads as lazy/overkill to have two springsteen montages in the first episode. again i must clarify that i would watch a tv show that was nothing but montage with hungry heart playing on a loop.

i like how the show so far captures the impossible bind of desegregation efforts, because for it to work in practice, it's really necessary to change "hearts and minds" and how on earth do you do that? every time the yonkers whites are bellowing in the meetings, i imagine what wacisko would have to do to explain why building low-income housing in white and black neighborhoods is the only way to honor the principle of equality (saying "we have to follow the law" seems inadequate) and it would just require a lot of calm and rational discourse, which is clearly an impossibility in that setting. i personally have always inclined to antiracist activism that ignores changing people's minds because it seems exhausting and unrewarding and also fuck those people frankly, why does changing a horribly unjust system have to happen on their terms. but desegregation really does, and it's maddening.

i know i keep pimping them but the this american life episodes are really good on this, too.

xpost the David Morse police corruption storyline in season 3 of Treme was as harrowing as any Wire police side plot, and pretty prescient considering contemporary events.

i understand that 90% of eveyone hates brooce but ffs the show is set in late 80's whitebread Yonkers, what were you expecting? sonic youth?

― difficult-difficult lemon-difficult (VegemiteGrrl), Thursday, August 20, 2015 11:25 AM (48 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

haha otm

the kind of macho persona and all this "difficult men" fanboy shit that fed into it.

never really thought of simon as macho simply for writing about social institutions full of macho personalities (police, drug crews, political structures, the marine corps). that said, i do agree with the distaste for difficult man fanboy bullshit that became tied to certain segments of wire fandom (and sopranos/breaking bad/mad men/insert prestige show here fandom)

i will def check out the TAL episodes

and maaaaaybe I will finally revisit Treme. I quit on it pretty early

Treme benefits from being able to binge, I think - I only lasted a few episodes week to week but since it's more character based than plot based being able to watch people develop in relatively quick succession helps a lot.

you could honestly just start w. s2 and not lose out on too much

Steve Zahn is so fucking annoying in Treme, he is almost unbearable in every scene.

never really thought of simon as macho simply for writing about social institutions full of macho personalities (police, drug crews, political structures, the marine corps). that said, i do agree with the distaste for difficult man fanboy bullshit that became tied to certain segments of wire fandom (and sopranos/breaking bad/mad men/insert prestige show here fandom)

i guess i feel his writing even about these institutions is a studied form of overly erudite machismo. and that feeds into the fanboy stuff. i guess i can't imagine breaking bad fans or mad men fans being annoying in the same way as hardcore wire fans, even though i'm sure there are awful people everywhere.

would def say that's true of a segment of BB fans - consider the huge swell of online hatred for the skyler white character. prob not so much mad men, aside from finance/accounts bros who view don draper's behavior as an etiquette manual

i see more what you're saying tho re: simon by characterizing it as a hypereducated/literary/erudite brand of macho

segue: did people like winona in this? i thought she was pretty good!

in the uk i feel like i've heard white middle class men do omar impressions far too often for comfort. i guess that's not quite simon's fault, but that character is completely ludicrous.

um plenty of mad men fans are insufferable please

i've never heard anyone quote mad men. is there any notable quote? i mean besides "yowzah!" and "i am the secret man who drinks at work"

i think i'm just referring to people who seem to want to live in the era depicted, have mad men costume parties, whatever. i don't really get that show, also, so i'm being mean.

winona is fine so far but she kind of takes me out of the show because she's winona ryder, you know?

Yeah direct quotes aren't the only way to be an annoying fan.

her meltdown at the bar was a good cautionary tale moment, i thought. don't become a politician, kids!

xxp i see what youre saying but she has the look of a harried politician down imo

i think i'm just referring to people who seem to want to live in the era depicted, have mad men costume parties, whatever. i don't really get that show, also, so i'm being mean.

― horseshoe, Thursday, August 20, 2015 2:33 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yea i find this hugely annoying too, and i'm a pretty big fan of that show. the era fetishization literally misses the entire point of what it's saying about the time period (as does viewing draper as anything but a trainwreck cautionary tale)

yeah i didn't recognize her at first, either. i am enjoying the 80s-i-fication and also the dowd-ification of everyone's look.

xp

Yeah direct quotes aren't the only way to be an annoying fan.

for sure - they feel more prevalent though than someone's private parties or whatever.

Steve Zahn is so fucking annoying in Treme, he is almost unbearable in every scene.

great depiction of an annoying guy imo

i understand that 90% of eveyone hates brooce but ffs the show is set in late 80's whitebread Yonkers, what were you expecting? sonic youth?

― difficult-difficult lemon-difficult (VegemiteGrrl), Thursday, August 20, 2015 11:25 AM (5 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Warren Zevon

Steve Earle is sooooo much worse than the Boss, you guys are aiming at the wrong target

Still sad about this. Great show though.

Kinda curious about Zaleski and Restiano. They're both still alive, and it seems like their reputations could get a bum deal out of this, that might not be especially warranted.

The phonebox scene -- "Ask him about the Desmond Hotel" -- felt a bit disrespectful to include, whether it's true or not.

watched episodes 4-6 last night.

oof.

The title isn't meant to imply that he IS a hero, or the hero. It could as easily be the tenants or mary ...there are no perfect "Heroes" here, like in life

otm

one possibly stupid question - the pager going off with 911-911-911 - is it meant to be clear what that's referring to? is it just supposed to mean that she knew he was in trouble and was desperately trying to reach him?

(I mean, yes i realize it's pager shorthand for "emergency, call back immediately", but what emergency? his life is in shambles and she's worried about him emergency, or something else?)

he's kinda like McNulty but with depression

wow, yeah

The whole time I couldn't help but think I was watching the guy from New Girl doing Adam Scott's part from Parks & Rec.

...

I guess I'm not the only one

http://i.onionstatic.com/avclub/5486/05/original/820.jpg

http://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2015/08/show-me-a-hero-review-part-3-and-part-4.html

i love parks & rec but that's a stretch for me

Whoa I haven't seen this but Ive stayed at the Desmond Hotel. It's a real place in Albany. And a pretty wacky one, too.

So glad I didn't read up on Waciscko before watching last two eps. Just devastating.

Also: watched this whole thing w/o realizing that was Wynona Ryder!

http://www.theguardian.com/media/2014/sep/28/wire-david-simon-interview-american-politics-show-me-a-hero

“What was required in Yonkers was to ask: ‘Are we all in this together or are we not all in this together?’ Is there a society or is there no society, because if there is no society, well, that’s the approach that says ‘Fuck ’em, I got mine’. And Yonkers coincides with the rise of ‘Fuck ’em I got mine’ in America.

“That’s the notion that the markets will solve everything. Leave me alone. I want maximum liberty, I want maximum freedom. Those words have such power in America. On the other hand ‘responsibility’ or ‘society’ or ‘community’ are words that are increasingly held in disfavour in the United States. And that’s a recipe for cooking up a second-rate society, one that does not engage with the notion of collective responsibility. We’re only as good a society as how we treat those who are most vulnerable and nobody’s more vulnerable than our poor. To be poor is not a crime, except in America.”

This is remarkably ahistorical - I would have thought Simon would know better than to think the Reagan era introduced selfishness as a main ingredient of American political activity - but watching the series with these ideas in mind seems to make it more intense. It also, unfortunately, means I tend to not give much of a crap about the vignettes, except as sort of exercises in storytelling craft (this is also a problem with Haggis directing, I think - he's just really ham-handed, my god).

At a certain point the furious, inexhaustible rage that Simon has against what he sees as the unstoppable decline of our country starts to wear you down. I know what happens, we're heading into ep 6 tonight, and I will be surprised if I'm much affected other than an incremental increase in my resolve to never own a gun. Will report back later.

The "white people listen to The Boss, brown people listen to Tribe" thing is also ridiculously OTT. Give it a rest.

Just finished Episode 5, really moving, even though some aspects of this show seem hackneyed.

The phonebox scene -- "Ask him about the Desmond Hotel" -- felt a bit disrespectful to include, whether it's true or not.

Just finished this - I had the impression that Vinni was lying with this phonecall? Purposefully trying to fuck with Nick and Nay? And I thought the scene where Nay asked him about it during the vote count and he had no idea what she was talking about and she realised Vinni was lying was really well-handled.

Overall I loved this. It took a few episodes for the families in housing to feel real and not sketched out, and I thought the pacing was strange in places, but by the last half of the series it definitely worked. And Nick doesn't come off as any hero, really - why should he? He had no burning desire to make the integration happen when he got elected, he only backed it when it was clear how catastrophic avoiding it would be, and his later attempts to claim credit for the housing showed that his ego was bruised and he was a pretty selfish and damaged guy, albeit a mostly likeable one who did the right thing when it was necessary (and didn't realise that that would be catastrophic for his career in politics).