Skip to the main content

Original scientific paper

https://doi.org/10.15291/SIC/2.4.HUAMS.4

Following the Money: The Wire and Distant American Studies

Sven Cvek


Full text: english pdf 131 Kb

downloads: 829

cite


Abstract

In this essay, I argue that the pedagogical, or, more generally, heuristic potential of HBO’s crime drama The Wire (2002/2008) is related to the specific institutional developments in post-network television, the show’s didactic intention, and its focus on the delineation of the economic process, or what has been called its “openly class-based” politics. I will dedicate most time to the latter, as it represents a particularly welcome intervention for American Studies, a discipline in which the problem of class has usually been either marginalized, or articulated in terms of the historically hegemonic disciplinary paradigm, that of identity

Keywords

The Wire; American studies; cognitive mapping; capitalism; TV; HBO

Hrčak ID:

132931

URI

https://hrcak.srce.hr/132931

Publication date:

10.6.2014.

Visits: 1.447 *