The Class of The Wire
HBO’s The Wire, is now part of the curriculum at the Johns Hopkins University.
As reported by the Baltimore Sun, Professor Peter Beilenson believed that talking about the show would be an entertaining way to get students to discuss the “complex web of problems faced by American cities.”
Apparently this isn’t a new idea, as Harvard, Duke and Berkeley, also have built courses around the widely-acclaimed television show. However, Hopkins has the advantage of being in Baltimore and included some of the people that the characters were based on, such as State Attorney Patricia Jessamy and the former Baltimore commissioner Ed Norris (who ironically plays a cop who bemoans the poor state of the Baltimore police department on the show itself). And of course, for the slam dunk, the show creator and producer David Simon was brought in.
The show’s 60 episodes would be the textbook and the class sessions would feature experts explaining how they wrestle with the same issues in reality.
While Simon had always said he wanted the show to serve as a pretext to the larger discussion around the social constructs of society, students are loving the class because they “get to watch TV for homework.”
