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The Poetics and Rhetoric of the Wire's Intertextuality

The Wire (2002–8) is one of the most critically acclaimed television series of all time, praised in particular for its unflinching social realism. For example, The Washington Post’s Tom Shales finds that it ‘might be the most authentic epic ever on television’,1 while Brian Holcomb of Slant Magazine simply states that ‘The Wire is as true as television gets’.2 However, its authenticity is not without strains and ambiguities, as this article will examine. First, it provides an exploration of the show’s realist aesthetic, as well as of textual features that are often thought to come into conflict with realism, such as melodrama and satire. Second, it examines in detail another aspect that is potentially somewhat at odds with the series’ oftmentioned slice-of-life sensibility, namely its intertextuality. The aim is not merely to outline The Wire’s use of allusions and quotations, as well as their bearing on its sense of realism, but to mobilise these intertextual references, first, to analyse the series – as its throws light upon key thematic and rhetorical interests—and, second, to contextualise it, as such an understanding helps account for the show’s distinctly ‘non-postmodern’ feel.