Started The Shield marathon on Thanksgiving, on season 7 now. The Shield is pretty good for a plot driven drama, meaning person A going to places X,Y,Z, do things B,C, and D, then goes home. However, I still like thematically driven series like The Wire better, where every action aims to build a narrative, i.e. the criminalization and oppression of the economically deprived, betrayal of political promise that traps everyone in a vicious cycle, etc...
The balancing of plot and theme is difficult, The Shield does an o.k. job. Other crime related drama, for example a movie like American Gangster, is ultimately disappointing because it strives to build a narrative, but then gets stuck trying to entertain the big screen audience with bland plot base drama. Exceptionally few shows have managed to pull off both simultaneously. I'm not sure where The Shield lies on this spectrum; it has a strong conceptual element to it, yet it is always hidden in the background.
12/06 finished the series.
11:06 PM me: the popularity of the Vic character, and the setup of Aceveda as his opposite half indicates that you have the tolerance for corruption part switched. Generally, people are sympathetic to a face (i.e. Vic.), but when corruption goes up a level, responsibility is abstracted from the person responsible (aceveda) to the system, then it becomes tyranny
11:07 PM basti: Yes, but not exactly.
I am not sympathetic to their actions
I can just empathise with their plights
I can want Vic to go to gaol, but still feel sorry for him as a person
11:08 PM me: then you just have abstracted a human being on a personal level
basti: No, not really
This kind of sympathy is independent of their actions
11:09 PM For example, I have little sympathy for the criminals on the show.
Their portrayal is very one dimensional
They are objects to be hated
But I like the show, because I find the characters, who are not good people, to be sympathetic in how they are humanised
11:10 PM I mean, at the end of `Revenge of the Sith,' do you feel badly for Darth Vader?
He has become completely alienated from his family.
He has killed his wife, and he will never meet his children.
me: I didn't care, he was a bad actor
basti: He has been seduced to evil, and his best friend has tried to kill him.
EXACTLY
Bad actor and bad characte.r
11:11 PM Really, really bad actor and bad character.
But Vic isn't like this.
me: I see...
basti: Chiklis is a much, much better actor
But also, his character is humanised and three dimensional
I can have this kind of ambivalence toward him
11:12 PM I can have this combination of disgust for his corruption but sympathy for his fate
He's humanised, and humans are built to empathise
This is also a strength of the portrayal of the criminally destitute in `The Wire'
11:15 PM I mean, Bubbles is not the heroic type
He is a drug addict and a petty criminal
But his situation is sufficiently humanised that we can feel sympathetic for him
Even if many of his problems are of his own creation...
11:17 PM Or look at Shane
Shane is racialist and brutal
He kills Lem
But he is, in many ways, more sympathetic than Vic as his life falls apart in the aftermath
