essay of wire

The Wire: A Crime-Drama Television Series Essay (Review)

Introduction, institutional failures, community struggles, lessons learned, works cited.

The Wire was a crime-drama television series that aired from 2002 to 2008. It mainly explored the community struggles of impoverished urban youth in America (through illegal drug trade). The producers of the series based it in Baltimore City, Maryland. Its narrative highlighted how the city’s police department struggled to contain the drug menace in the state. Although HBO aired more than four seasons of the series, this paper reflects on its third season, which follows the theme of the first season (illegal drug trade) in Baltimore (season two focused on drug shipment at the port). Although this paper mainly reflects on community struggles and conflict in the wire , it also focuses on showing how institutional failures create a cycle of impoverishment among America’s urban poor. The last section of this paper shows the lessons learned from the series.

The Wire shows how institutional failures and education system inadequacies have contributed to the growing social and economic challenges that affect the urban youth in America. For example, many people are aware of the high unemployment rate in the African-American community. Relative to this observation, Chaddha (9) says many young African-American men suffered from high unemployment rates before the 2007/2008 economic crisis (HBO aired the last season of The Wire before the crisis started). The Wire shows the unemployment reality by highlighting the link between institutional failures and community impoverishment. Supported by years of failing schools and government neglect, many African-American men have faced several social and economic challenges that have forced them to take part in the drug trade. For example, Chaddha (9) says, only 54% of African-American men had a job before the 2007/2008 financial crisis. Comparatively, about 75% of white males had a job during this time. The Bureau of Labor Statistics paints a grimmer picture of these struggles because it shows that after the recession, the level of unemployment soared in the African-American community (Chaddha 9).

Institutional failures outline the main theme of the series, which builds a narrative that indirectly shows how they contribute to the problems facing many young people in urban America. Overall, the wire shows how institutional failures have contributed to the disappearance of jobs and the impoverishment of urban communities. It also highlights how a “shady” world of politics supports incompetence in police investigations and inhibits police ineffectiveness through bureaucracy and excessive institutional control. The creators of the series also do not spare secondary institutional voices (or the lack of it) through media negligence (failing to highlight the important issues facing the community). Comprehensively, they show how institutional failures contribute to the problems facing the urban poor in America.

Although indirectly tied to social and economic challenges of the urban poor, the wire shows how young and hopeless Baltimore men created powerful organizations from the illegal drug trade. Despite the unrelenting quest by the police department to stop the criminal activities of these organizations, the criminals change their business model by venturing into legitimate businesses (running from the law). Partly, the audience could understand what drives many of the young men into the illegal drug trade because institutional failures “conspire” to limit opportunities for the young men to thrive (institutional failures fuel community struggles and conflict in the Baltimore society). This relationship highlights the structure of inequality in America and the role of the “system” in contributing to the social and economic challenges of the urban poor. Relative to this observation, Chaddha (10) says, “Widespread incarceration of the urban poor aggravates economic inequality, masking the hardship in urban communities and producing a growing population of ex-convicts unable to find stable jobs to support their families.”

The challenges witnessed by the officers in managing the drug problem and the little success they make in prosecuting the drug lords instill a sense of hopelessness among the audience, who now begin to understand that the war on drugs may never be won. Although this is an unfortunate realization, it is interesting to watch how the police casually interact with street-level peddlers, and how they come to know one another in an endless string of arrests and releases. In fact, after watching several episodes of the third season, the arrests made at the street level become a “routine procedure” and do not seem to have an impact on either the police or the arrested drug peddlers.

Despite the merits of the arguments highlighted in this paper, it is important to explore the often thought about, but rarely spoken about, racial stereotypes that could affect how viewers understand the community struggles depicted in the wire . For example, Chaddha (14) says the series reinforces racial stereotypes about African-American communities and their perceived widespread involvement in criminal activities and drug use. Stated differently, at “face value,” the wire almost reinforces the belief that African-Americans are “lazy,” depend on welfare, and “lost” in a criminal world. However, after deeply assessing the series, the audience could understand how the show departs from this mentality to create a deeper understanding of the social and economic problems facing the community. Mainly, it shows that, unlike the popular belief that African-Americans are “authors” of their own struggles, forces that are beyond their control limit their prosperity.

After seeing the wire for the first time, one would easily assume that it is another television program showing urban life in the African-American community. However, after closely looking at the series, clearly, the program is more than that. Mainly, it shows how communities struggle to make a living and how law enforcers have trouble maintaining law and order in a culture characterized by high unemployment rates, murders, and “street mentality.” The series shows the difficulty in managing the drug problem from one perspective. In fact, it shows that using a “one-size-fits-all” approach would not work, as a long-term solution to the Baltimore drug problem. Instead, it shows the merits of using multifaceted, and sometimes unconventional approaches to managing the illegal drug trade. The multifaceted approach highlights several instances where the police manage conflict well. For example, in season three, a newly appointed police chief (Howard Colvin) instructs his officers to allow young drug peddlers to sell drugs in designated areas of the city ( Hamsterdam ) (Vint 80). He also says the police would arrest anyone selling drugs outside the designated zones. This approach is an unconventional method of managing the Baltimore drug problem and caused many controversies in the police department because some senior officers saw the intervention as illegal, while others saw it as an effective way of controlling the street gangs. Contrary to the expectations of the critics, the strategy reduces crime, but when senior officers learn about it, they force Colvin to abandon this strategy and resign from the department. Although the police abandoned the intervention, it highlights one instance where the police managed the conflict well.

Overall, the series shows the difficulties that law enforcers encounter in managing the illegal drug trade. For example, the officers make little progress in managing the drug problem by making street-level arrests. Therefore, they realize that they cannot make significant progress if they do not arrest the drug kingpins. Similarly, the audience understands that although the police may have limited successes in solving some aspects of the drug war, the trade still goes on. For example, if they arrest one drug lord, another one comes up. For example, towards the end of season three, with the help of some insiders, the police “destroy” Barksdale’s criminal empire by arresting its main players. Similarly, other gang members kill their leader (Stringer Bell). The end of this criminal empire seems like a significant success for the police because, since the start of the series, the police had always tried to infiltrate Barksdale’s criminal empire, to no avail. However, as the Barksdale Empire collapses, another one comes up (the Marlo gang) (Marlo 61). They continue the same criminal activities that their predecessors engaged in. Overall, the audience comes to understand that the drug war is a “zero-sum game” because different gangs fill the void left by previous criminals.

The endless strings of arrests, which aim to stop criminal activities in Baltimore city, highlight only one challenge faced by the police. The changing nature of criminal activities also highlights a different challenge that the police face. This challenge manifests in season three when Stringer Bell uses the money he got from the drug trade to do legitimate business. This way, he aims to “cover his tracks” by delinking himself from the illegal drug trade. However, his criminal past haunts him and later leads to his death before he could actualize his ambitions to transform the Barksdale Empire into a legitimate business group. Nonetheless, his quest to transform the business created a significant challenge for the police to link him to the drug business. Moreover, when the police tried to follow the drug money, they uncover a deep political connection between drug traffickers and politicians. This connection poses a unique challenge to the police department because they are unable to arrest the drug kingpins without associating the names of powerful politicians in the process. This challenge is not unique to the drug problem because it highlights the challenges that law enforcers face when they try to trace illegal money (laundered through legitimate businesses). For an aspiring criminal law practitioner, the wire shows the complexity of investigating criminal activities and prosecuting criminal gangs. Indeed, although the activities of such criminal gangs may seem simple, they are not. Therefore, adopting simple solutions to complex criminal activities is wrong. Overall, the series helps me to change my focus regarding how to approach criminal problems.

The Wire helps us to understand the complexity of crime and the need to approach it from a multifaceted perspective. Particularly, it is important to do so because the show helps us to understand crime through the perspective of community struggles, social inequality, and institutional failures. More so, the series helps us to understand how the drug war fuels these institutional failures and offers short-term remedies to community struggles. Although it is difficult to comprehend the connection among these facets of the society, creatively, the wire shows how social, political, and economic forces shape the lives of the urban poor in America. Indeed, although the series is mainly fictional, it does a better job in portraying real social problems among America’s urban poor than any other production series of its time.

Chaddha, Anmol . Why we’re Teaching ‘The Wire’ at Harvard. 2010. Web.

Vint, Sherryl. The Wire : Contemporary Approaches To Film and Television Series: TV Milestones TV Milestones , Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 2013. Print.

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Bibliography

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Critical Inquiry Critical Inquiry

Essays on HBO’s The Wire

David Simon, co-creator of HBO's landmark series The Wire , has acknowledged his debt to the research of William Julius Wilson (Harvard), especially his classic When Work Disappears .  In this feature, Wilson himself assesses The Wire in collaboration with Anmol Chaddha.  With discussions by Patrick Jagoda, Kenneth Warren and Linda Williams, and a response by Chaddha and Wilson.

(Click each title to view the article)

Anmol Chaddha and William Julius Wilson, "Way Down in the Hole: Systematic Urban Inequality and The Wire"

Patrick Jagoda, "Wired"

Kenneth W. Warren, "Sociology and The Wire "

Linda Williams, "Ethnographic Imaginary: The Genesis and Genius of The Wire "

Chaddha and Wilson, " The Wire’s Impact: A Rejoinder"

From HBO's The Wire

Crossing the Wire

84 pages • 2 hours read

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Summary and Study Guide

Crossing the Wire tells the story of Victor Flores , a Mexican teenager who leaves his village of Los Árboles to illegally cross the border into the United States. Victor’s father died while working in the U.S. four years earlier, leaving Victor “the man of the family” (14). His family has been living off of the money Victor makes farming corn, but free trade agreements with the U.S. have made Mexican corn worthless. The only option Victor sees to support his family is to “cross the wire” into the United States.

Victor’s childhood best friend, Rico Gonzales, has recently crossed the border himself. One of Rico’s brothers who lives in the U.S. sent Rico $1,500 to pay a guide, called a coyote, to help Rico cross the border. Rico was going to attend technical school and work in a factory to support his parents in their old age, but he has always loved U.S. culture and is excited for the adventure of crossing.

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Unlike Rico, Victor has no money to pay a coyote, so he has to make the difficult and dangerous crossing on his own. He knows he will need to find another, more experienced loner to follow, and he spots an older man, Miguel, on his bus ride to the border. Mexican police stop the bus, and Victor gets kicked off because he doesn’t have documentation proving his Mexican citizenship. He fears he will get deported to Guatemala, where his family is originally from, so he runs away from the police and hops a train to the border.

On his first train-riding attempt, the police come and Victor has to jump offwhile the train is still moving. He hits his head and has to get stitches at a hospital. He sneaks out of the hospital before the police can question him, and jumps another train, where he meets Julio , a teenager from Honduras who is also traveling to the border. Julio has crossed once before, and he helps Victor stay safe on the train and navigate the border city of Nogales when they arrive.

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Julio plans to cross the wire using the tunnels under the border in Nogales, but the gates are only open during storms. When a storm comes, Julio floats across in an inner tube, but Victor is too nervous to try, so he is once again on his own. Unsure how he will proceed, he sees an older man who has been beaten limping by and realizes it is Miguel, the man he met on the bus. He follows Miguel onto another bus, and when Miguel pays the driver for an unscheduled stop, Victor gets off, too.

Miguel doesn’t want company, but Victor convinces the older man that he won’t be any trouble. They walk across the border following a route through the high mountains that Miguel has carefully mapped. Their destination is La Perra Flaca, a spot where Miguel knows they will be able to get fieldwork. They are near their destination when Border Patrol spots them. The injured Miguel cannot run fast enough to escape, so he sends Victor with his map to continue the route. Victor continues on the route, but he loses time in a snowstorm and is forced to look for a shortcut. He is caught just a few miles from La Perra Flaca, when he attempts to hide in a fisherman’s truck-bed toolbox and is subsequently taken to Tucson for processing at the Juvenile Detention Center.

The Juvenile Detention Center sends Victor back to Nogales. He is at a soup kitchen in Nogales when he spots the yellow baseball cap of his childhood friend, Rico. The two boys share their stories. Rico has also been caught across the border and deported. They plan a new route, and decide to attempt a second crossing on the border with an Indian reservation, near the town of Sasabe, Arizona.

In Sasabe, Victor and Rico meet Jarra, a tattooed and clearly wealthy former gang member and drug runner who now leads people across the border. Rico arranges for he and Victor to join Jarra on a drug run, carrying the food for the mules, but lies to Victor about the plan. By the timeVictor realizes that his friend has lied, it’s too late, and the boys are forced to join the drug run.

On the drug run, Rico learns that Jarra plans to kill the boys when they are done, because they could identify the drug runners. They boys run away, but Jarra, who is armed, follows. The boys throw rocks at him and scramble up a steep escarpment, where they wait Jarra out for the night. While on watch, Victor sees a jaguar climbing across a narrow ledge leading down the mountain, and he knows that this is how the boys will escape. They sneak across the ledge and are down the mountain before Jarra even knows they are gone.

In the valley, the boys flag down a truck and ask for help. The driver agrees to take them to Rico’s brother in Tucson, but when they arrive, they learn that Rico’s brother recently left because of trouble with the police. The driver takes them to La Perra Flaca, where they hope they will find Miguel, but when they arrive, the older man is not there. The boys are able to join a crew headed to Washington to pick asparagus. Victor is happy working in the fields, where he earns $250 in his first pay period to send home, but Rico misses his family. Rico decides to return to Mexico, where he will attend school and take care of his parents. 

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The Cultural Significance of “The Wire”, Essay Example

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When premium-cable network HBO launched the series The Sopranos in 1999, few could have predicted the impact it would have on the medium of television. In an era dominated by sitcoms such as Friends and Seinfeld , and dramas such as ER and Law & Order , The Sopranos stood out in stark contrast. While ER has been recognized –and appropriately so- for pushing the genre of television dramas beyond its typical limitations, the show was, for the most part, little more than a primetime soap opera with better-than-average production values. Set against the backdrop of television programming in which shows such as Seinfeld were considered edgy and even groundbreaking, The Sopranos was something entirely unique: a complex, layered portrait of the life of modern-day Mafiosos. The impact of The Sopranos cannot be overstated in terms of how it strayed from the conventions of television dramas, even for subscription-based HBO. In the decade-plus since the show debuted, a new era of antihero-centric shows achieved enormous popularity, changing the landscape of television and paving the way for challenging, thought-provoking, and occasionally even disturbing themes to be presented in a medium that once ceded such storytelling to the world of cinema. Of all the shows that appeared on television in the wake of The Sopranos , one towers above the rest: HBO’s The Wire . By tackling themes related to poverty, racism, class warfare, economic inequality, politics, and education, The Wire served as an example that the greatest artistic accomplishments are those that challenge audiences to confront and consider truths that were sometimes painful but entirely real.

Background and Overview

In order to make a case for the assertion that The Wire is one of the best and most culturally significant television shows in the history of the medium, it is helpful –and perhaps even necessary- to consider it in the context of other shows that have received and achieved equal or greater critical acclaim and commercial success. The Wire was not the first show to tackle challenging social and cultural themes; there were several notable shows in the 1970s, for example, that pushed beyond the typical limitations of network television. Among these were shows such as M*A*S*H , which was ostensibly a comedy but often featured dramatic and (for the time) realistic characters and storylines. M*A*S*H –an acronym for “mobile army surgical hospital”- was set in Korea during the U.S. conflict in that nation in the early 1950s, though it was clear that it served as a thinly-veiled allegory for the Vietnam War (Norton, 2001). The television version of M*A*S*H was based on the 1970 film of the same name, and both the film and the television series offered characters and storylines that reflected the social and cultural upheaval in the U.S. during the Vietnam era (Norton). While it may have been impossible for Hollywood to address such themes directly, it was possible to address them indirectly by setting them in an earlier time.

Another 1970s comedy that tackled relatively serious themes was All in the Family , a show that focused on the interpersonal dynamics of a middle-aged blue-collar married couple and their daughter and son-in-law who all lived under the same roof. The lead character Archie Bunker was used both to give voice to and to satirize a generation of Americans who were trying to maintain a grip on values and traditions that were becoming increasingly untenable in the face of the cultural and social upheaval of the time (O’Brien, 2009). Archie routinely argued with the son-in-law he called “Meathead;” this son-in-law represented the voice of the younger generation that questioned Archie’s views on the war, politics, race, and gender roles (O’Brien). Although All in the Family was a groundbreaking show in its time, it still had to lighten its drama with comedy, and often skirted the edges of serious topics rather than face them head on.

This approach of playing serious issues and topics for laughs as a means of making them palatable for television viewers (and network censors) was also used in shows such as The Mary Tyler Moore Show , a sitcom centered on the exploits of a young, single working woman in the 1970s; Maude , a spinoff of All in the Family that once featured an episode where the main character underwent an abortion; and even Three’s Company , which was one of the first shows on television to discuss homosexuality, even if the main character was only pretending to be gay to fool his landlord into allowing him to cohabitate with two female roommates (O’Brein). For every show that discussed formerly-taboo subjects, however, there were dozens more, from Fantasy Island to Charlie’s Angels to Mork& Mindy that played it safe and made no effort to challenge the sensitivities of viewers. This trend continued into the 1980s and 1990s; as a few shows such as Roseanne presented a somewhat-realistic portrayal of life in a working-class family, many more continued to present situations and settings that were relatively tame and non-threatening. Then, as now, much of television programming was designed to keep people tuned in between commercial breaks, rather than to challenge or upset them. Television networks did not want to give viewers a reason to change the channel, so they produced programs that were safe and, to a great extent, mind-numbingly simple.

The real turning point for the medium came with the advent of cable television, where viewers paid subscription fees for the privilege of watching programming that was not as beholden to the whims and limitations of the traditional networks. While most cable channels then and now still rely on advertising revenue to supplement subscription-based revenue, these networks had less pressure to offer programs with mass appeal, instead relying on niche programming to appeal to specific audience sectors. For those viewers willing to pay a larger premium, commercial-free networks such as HBO and Showtime offered viewers the opportunity to watch movies and shows that were not subject to the sort of censoring and editing typical of traditional networks. As HBO and other premium cable networks gained viewership and popularity, they began to develop original programming to supplement their main menu of movies. These subscription-based premium cable networks may have started off as little more than a novelty for those with the disposable income to afford them would soon grow into viable challengers to the primacy of traditional commercial networks.

It was in this historical and cultural context that HBO introduced The Sopranos , inadvertently setting the stage for a new golden age of television. Freed from the limitations imposed by network censors, and without the need to appeal to a mass audience, The Sopranos offered viewers an antihero named Tony Soprano, the leader of a group of modern-day group of Mafia gangsters. What made Tony Soprano so unique and so compelling was the way he was not portrayed as a typical “bad guy,” but was instead a rich, contradictory character who often lamented his role as a criminal (Polan, 2009). Tony Soprano even sought the support of a psychologist to counsel him on how to deal with the emotional demands of balancing fatherhood and family with his criminal and often murderous lifestyle as a Mafioso. The Sopranos achieved great critical and commercial acclaim, and opened the door for a slew of similar antiheroes.

Just as The Sopranos was nearing the end of its eight-year run on HBO, the commercial cable channel AMC debuted its now-famous character of Walter White in the show Breaking Bad . While The Sopranos set the bar very high in terms of presenting a potentially hateful character in a lead role, Breaking Bad sailed right over that bar by telling the story of how Water White gained his antihero status. Groundbreaking though it was, the character of Tony Soprano was already fully formed when viewers first met him.  There was no need to question why or how Tony Soprano became a bad guy; his role as a member of the Mafia was all the explanation that was offered or required. Walter White, by contrast, started off as a mild-mannered high school teacher who, over the course of five television seasons, evolved “from Mr. Chips to Scarface” (Snierson, 2014). When Walter learns that he has cancer, and is told he has only a few months to a few years left to live, he makes the decision to employ his skills in the chemistry lab to make and sell methamphetamine. From the moment Walter White cooks his first batch of meth, his fate is sealed. There was never any question in the minds of viewers if Walter White’s story would end badly; the only question was how quickly he would meet his doom. Breaking Bad gave viewers the chance to follow Walter on his downward spiral, and to be both empathetic to and repulsed by the increasingly-horrible choices he made along the way. As Walter raced inexorably towards his destiny, Breaking Ba d’s popularity and critical acclaim grew exponentially, and the show has been widely hailed as one of the greatest in television history (Snierson).

Debuting in 2002, The Wire ’s first season was set in modern-day Baltimore, and focused on the exploits of a group of young African Americans living in the projects and the police officers and detectives whose job it was to combat the drug dealing and the attendant violence that typified life in the inner city. The Wire was the brainchild of David Simon, a former reporter turned author who previously had his book “Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets” made into the NBC drama Homicide: Life on the Streets (Brown, 2013). Both Homicide and The Wire covered the same ground Simon had mined for his book, but it was The Wire that explored that material much more extensively (Brown). As a regular network show, Homicide was constrained by the same limitations as other shows that had come before it, and had to downplay the realism of its themes and storylines to meet the demands of network censors (Brown). As an HBO production, The Wire faced no such constraints, and the result was a series that had the sprawling, complex plotting and rich, fleshed-out characters of a great novel.

Over the course of five seasons, The Wire focused on a different set of characters and plot structures each time. After exploring the world of inner-city drug dealing and gang life in the first season, the show moved on to a variety of settings and characters, including a group of unionized dockworkers facing the challenges of a shrinking economy, a local politician whose campaign becomes mired in corruption and scandal, and a former-cop-turned teacher who takes a job at a failing high school and sees his idealism shattered by the harsh realities of trying to teach a group of kids whose lives are already shattered. In each season, Simon presents viewers with characters and stories that resonate with a gritty realism that was –and remains- unprecedented in the history of television. While a show like Breaking Bad was justifiably lauded for the Shakespearean scope of its dramatic storylines and characters, it was set in a world of heightened and even exaggerated reality. Breaking Bad relied on the strengths of its actors and writers to overcome the potential pitfalls of questionable coincidences and increasingly unlikely plot twists; in lesser hands the show could have been comically ridiculous. There is no question that shows such as Breaking Bad or The Sopranos earned their fame and success, but they did so in spite of, not because of, the ways in which they diverged from reality.

The Wire , by contrast, remains one of the most realistic portrayals of the worlds of crime and law enforcement ever offered in any medium, from books to television to film. While the lives of cops and criminals have been featured in innumerable films, for example, the limitations of movie-making mean that even the most realistic portrayals of such stories and characters are necessarily constrained by the need to wrap up a story in two hours or so. Novels, by contrast, have no such limitations, giving writers the luxury of developing characters with complex back stories and rich emotional lives and set them in plots that do not need to finish up in three acts. What Simon was able to do with The Wire was combine the best elements of film and literature; the visual elements of The Wire bring viewers right into the heart of the action (the first season was in fact filmed in and around a recently-closed Baltimore housing project) while the plotting of the show unfurled with the unhurried pace of a great novel.

In a medium where the lines between the good guys and the bad guys were historically drawn in stark, black-and-white terms, the characters in The Wire were all drawn in shades of gray. In the typical portrayal of an African American gang member, the only things the audience sees are when the character is buying or selling drugs, participating in a drive-by shooting, or committing some other crime. In The Wire , audiences see these same sorts of behaviors, but they also see these young men dealing with the harsh realities of poverty and the challenges such poverty imposes. One young man, for example, goes home after shooting someone to feed his younger brother breakfast before walking him to the school bus stop. For the older brother, it appears to be too late to escape the pull of gang life; he clearly hopes that his young sibling will avoid the same fate by getting an education and getting out of the ghetto. Simon does not give viewers any false hope, however; in later seasons the younger brother follows in the footsteps of his criminal older brother.

The police officers and detectives in The Wire are equally trapped between two worlds, precariously walking the line between good and bad. At first glance it appears that the cops are the good guys, doing the best they can within their limited budgets and legal restrictions to combat the scourge of drug dealing and violence plaguing the local neighborhoods. As Simon digs deeper into their stories, however, it becomes clear that many of these cops are deeply flawed, engaging in bribery, blackmail, and other forms of corruption. There are a handful of officers and detectives who seem committed to doing the right thing, but they stand in stark relief against the backdrop of a police force that is mired in corruption and criminality. There are few clearly-defined good guys in the world of The Wire ; there are mostly just realistic human beings, doing their best to survive in a world that offers little hope that doing the right thing is even possible, let alone worthwhile.

A thorough discussion of the themes, plot structures, and characters in The Wire could easily fill a book, and as such is beyond the scope of this discussion. In short, The Wire serves as an example of how the medium of television can be used as a platform for the creation and presentation of truly great art. As a cultural artifact, The Wire represents a microcosm of the hopes, fears, and expectations of a generation of Americans living through the death of the American Dream. David Simon pulls no punches in The Wire , and refuses to allow audiences off the emotional hook by grafting an unrealistic happy ending to his spiraling, detailed story of life in contemporary Baltimore. The Wire has been compared favorably to the works of Charles Dickens, who painted vivid literary images of life in 19 th -century London (Steiner et al., 2012). Like Simon, Dickens did not shy away from showing his audience the dark underbelly of city life; like Dickens’ take on London, Simon’s portrayal of Baltimore reads like a plea to a lost lover and an ode to its former greatness.

While shows such as Breaking Bad , The Sopranos , and the recent True Detective demonstrate how the medium of television can be used to tell powerful and meaningful stories that both reflect and comment on the state of our contemporary culture, they also remain at a slight distance by exaggerating and heightening the details of character and plot. Though they may provide allegorical lenses through which we can collectively view ourselves and each other, they are, at their core, created more to entertain than enlighten. Where The Wire exceeds the greatness of these shows is in the way it refuses to maintain any distance from its themes and characters; Breaking Bad offers a magnetic and compelling lead character, but this character also skirts the edges of hyperbole, and borders on being cartoonish. In The Wire , the characters are drawn realistically; where Walter White is highly stylized, the characters in The Wire are photo-realistic. This is what sets The Wire apart from the rest of television, and what makes it among the best shows –if not the best show- in the history of the medium. Despite the dark themes explored in The Wire , its contribution to and place in contemporary culture is entirely positive. Cultures are both defined and shaped by the stories they tell, and The Wire allows us to look in the mirror and see the truth about ourselves.

Brown, J. (2013). Introduction to TV’s The Wire.  Labor ,  10 (1), 9–10.

Norton, M. (2001).  A people and a nation  (1st ed.). Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co.

O’Brein, J. (2009).  Encyclopedia of Gender and Society, Volume 2  (1st ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Polan, D. (2009).  The Sopranos  (1st ed.). Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.

Snierson, D. (2014). Vince Gilligan on the ‘Breaking Bad’ finale, the abandoned ‘Wild Bunch’ bloodbath ending, and the all-time best finale | EW.com.  EW.com . Retrieved 19 June 2014, from http://insidetv.ew.com/2014/04/14/vince-gilligan-breaking-bad-finale-better-call-saul/

Sociology and The Wire. (2011).  Critical Inquiry ,  38 (1).

Steiner, L., McCaffrey, R., Guo, J., & Hills, P. (2012). The Wire and repair of the journalistic paradigm. Journalism , 1464884912455901.

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Electrical Wires and Cables: The Complete Guide

Electrical wiring is used in every circuit, from power transmission, to household electric service and electronics. At some point, every professional or hobbyist will need to select a wire or cable, or at least understand the basic requirements of wiring for a particular situation.

Wiring codes and regulations are designed to protect people and property. Before embarking on your next project, ensure that you have a good understanding of the wiring needed to ensure operational safety.

Choosing the Right Electrical Wire or Cable

There are a few steps that make choosing the correct wire or cable easy:

• Determine if you need a wire or a cable . Use a wire where you need a simple, single conduction path between two points. Use a cable when you need multiple conductors, such as a standard ‘hot’, ‘neutral’, and ‘ground’ wire setup to complete a grounded circuit.
• Determine the voltage , current , and power of the system that the wire will be used in. Wires and cables are rated for these factors so ensure that your chosen wire or cable is rated for higher parameters than what you expect to see in the complete circuit. Factor in resistive losses for longer wire or cable runs. Use these parameters to determine the right type and gauge of wire or cable to use. It’s often recommended to choose a thicker (lower gauge #) wire or cable to ensure lower losses and greater current carrying ability (ampacity).
• If selecting a cable for a special application such as outdoor or underground use, make sure you select the right type of cable. Standard nonmetallic (NM) cable, also called Romex, is designed for indoor residential use. UF, or underground feeder cables, are common for running power to a shed or garage, and metal sheathed cables such as BX are common for outdoor use.
• Use the right color wire for any permanent applications. It’s okay to have an assortment of colors in a breadboard or prototype electronics circuit, but for home wiring or any permanent installation, stick to the designated colors. Wire color standards vary from one country to another so ensure you are using the right colors for your location.

Electrical Wires and Cables

Although the terms ‘wire’ and ‘cable’ are often used interchangeably, they have distinctive meanings. A wire is composed of metal in solid, stranded, or braided form.

A solid core wire is made of a single piece of metal, whereas stranded and braided wires are made of smaller strands of metal that are bundled or braided together. Solid core wires are cheaper, more mechanically rugged, and have lower electrical resistance than stranded or braided wires. However, stranded or braided wires offer superior flexibility and more resistance to fatigue cracking over time.

Wires are manufactured in specific diameters, called gauges. The lower the gauge, the thicker the wire. Larger diameter wires can carry more current while also having less resistance and thereby reducing power losses. Standardized gauges help improve safety while decreasing manufacturing costs. We’ll cover gauges and specifications in this article.

Wires are often insulated to prevent accidental contact with the conductor. Polyethylene, PVC, Kapton, and Teflon are common insulators.

Side Note: Wire is used in many applications other than electrical service. Wire is used structurally, such as in buildings and on bridges. It is also commonly integrated into jewelry and furniture.

Cable vs. Wire

Wires are frequently defined as single conductors, with cables distinguished as assemblies that contain multiple conductors.

However, according to the most commonly accepted definition (such as Encyclopedia Britannica ), a cable consists of one or more conductors that are packaged together.

In other words, every wire is a cable, but not every cable is a wire.

Most of the time, anything that isn’t a single conductor with or without insulation is referred to as a cable. A good example is a coaxial cable, which has a single conductor but is referred to as a cable due to its’ shielding.

The important thing is that the wire or cable is built to the specification you need.

Wire Gauge Sizes

Wire gauge is the most common measurement of the size, either diameter or cross-sectional area, of a wire. A wire’s gauge determines not only the maximum rated current for the wire, but also the resistive losses as current travels through it. Gauge represents only the size of the conductor and does not include the thickness of the wire’s insulation.

Different wire gauge systems have been developed over time. There are three dominant systems that are used across the world: AWG, SWG, and IEC 60228.

In the US, the most commonly used wire gauge system is AWG, or American Wire Gauge . The higher the gauge number, the smaller the wire. The largest AWG size is 0000 (4/0) which is pronounced ‘four aught’, representing a diameter of .46″. The smallest is 32 AWG, representing .00795″.

AWG should not be confused with SWG, the Standard Wire Gauge developed in Britain during the 19th century. SWG has largely fallen into disuse but is still used for certain applications like guitar strings. SWG ranges from 7/0, representing .500″, to 50 SWG, representing .0010″.

The most common system outside the US is IEC 60228, which defines a standardized set of wires based on their cross-sectional area in mm 2 . IEC 60228 sizes range from .5 mm 2 to 2500 mm 2 .

Click here for a complete table of AWG wire sizes .

Wire Color Coding

Countries have different standards for color coding (based on the color of the wire’s insulation).

In the US, black and red are typically designated as ‘hot’ wires, white or silver are used for neutral lines, and green or green with yellow stripes for ground wires.

It’s always important to be careful and not rely solely on color coding, particularly with older installations or those that have not been confirmed.

Wire Labelling: THHN, THWN and Others

Wires are labelled with letters that represent properties of the wire, such as heat resistance or wet-use application.

In residential applications, THHN and THWN letters are the most common types of electrical wires. The letter code labelled on the wire can be deciphered as such:

T – Thermoplastic insulation  

H – heat resistant  , hh – high heat resistance up to 194-degrees fahrenheit  , w – rated for wet locations  , n – nylon-coated to resist damage from oil or gasoline , x – synthetic polymer, flame-resistant .

Many other wire designations exist.

Reading Cable Classifications (i.e. 14-3)

Electrical cables are typically identified by two numbers that are separated by a hyphen or slash, such as 14-3 or 14/3. The first number represents the gauge of the conductor of each wire in the cable. The second number represents the number of conductors in the cable.

However, most cables also include a bare copper wire to function as a ground wire- so in effect, there is an extra conductor in each cable.

A 14-3 (or 14/3) cable contains a total of four (4) 14 gauge wires, which would generally be used as two (2) hot wires, one neutral, and a ground wire. A 12-2 (or 12/2) cable contains three (3) 12 gauge wires; one hot, one neutral, and one ground.

Manufacturers do also sell cables without a bare ground wire, so it’s always best to confirm before purchasing.

Metallic vs. Non-Metallic Sheathed Cable

Common cables can be sheathed in metal or an insulating polymer. Metallic sheathed cables are used for conduit wiring, and exposed or outdoor applications, where the metal sheath offers greater protection for the wires inside as well as the ability to ground through the sheath itself.

NM Cable : NM, or nonmetallic cable, is the most common cable for residential use. Commonly called Romex, these cables are color coded based on their gauge size.

BX Cable : The most common metallic sheathed cables are referred to with the designation ‘BX’.

MC Cable : Another common metal sheathed cable, designated ‘MC’, also offers metallic cladding but the outer sheath cannot be used as ground; these cables carry an extra wire with green insulation to be used as the ground wire.

NM Cable Sheath Color Coding

Sheaths are typically color coded and labelled for specification. Adherence to the standardized color coding is optional, but has been adopted by most manufacturers.

BLACK  = used for 6 AND 8-gauge wire. 6-gauge wire is typically rated for 60 amp circuits, while 8 gauge is usually rated for 45 amps. Check sheath labeling for gauge and circuit specifics.

ORANGE  = 10-gauge wire, 30-amp circuit

YELLOW  = 12-gauge wire, 20-amp circuit

WHITE  = 14-gauge wire, 15-amp circuit

GRAY  = Underground cable. Since all UF (underground feeder) cable is gray, check the sheath labeling for gauge and circuit specifics.

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• / Resistance of a Wire

Resistance of a Wire

Essay by review   •  November 17, 2010  •  Essay  •  315 Words (2 Pages)  •  1,353 Views

Essay Preview: Resistance of a Wire

ؠAmmeter- measure the current of the circuit

ؠVoltmeter- to measure the voltage of the circuit

ؠConstant wire

ؠBattery pack

ؠMeter ruler

ؠWires

ؠCrocodile clips

ؠMicrometer

To record and measure the resistance I will use an Ammeter to measure the current in amps and a voltmeter to measure the voltage in volts. I will work out resistance in ohms by using Ohms Law which is the formula shown below:

R = V ЃЂ I

Resistance (in Ñ"¶) = Voltage (in Volts) ЃЂ Current (in Amps)

The results from the table and from the graph show how the resistance compares to the length of the wire. From my graph it is clearly seen that there is a very positive correlation, this shows that the longer the wire the higher the resistance, the results obtained are directly proportional, I can see this if I do a couple of simple calculations. I will take the average resistance for 40cm wire and the average of resistance of the wire twice the length i.e. 80cm.

Resistance of wire of 40cm = 1.8 Ohms

Resistance of wire of 80cm = 3.63 Ohms

3.63 / 1.8 = 2.016 ohms

The resistance of 80cm wire is double the resistance of 40cm wire. This proves my prediction where I said that the longer the wire the greater the resistance, and it also proves what I said about the results being directly proportional ie if the wire is twice as long the resistance is twice as great.

The line of best fit on my graph shows that the results have followed the expected pattern. The points are very close to the line of best fit or even touching it. This showed that the results were directly proportional throughout the experiment, as the line does not curve suddenly or curve or bend at all in any way, as the gradient of the line stayed the same throughout.

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Telegraph Wires Summary & Analysis by Ted Hughes

• Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis
• Poetic Devices
• Vocabulary & References
• Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme
• Line-by-Line Explanations

"Telegraph Wires" was published in Ted Hughes's 1989 collection Wolfwatching . The poem examines the complex relationship between humankind and technology. On the one hand, the speaker seems to consider telegraph wires a technological marvel, capable of connecting towns across vast, unwelcoming areas of land. At the same time, the poem implies that human technology is fleeting, fragile, and even insignificant in the grand scheme of the universe.

• Read the full text of “Telegraph Wires”

The Full Text of “Telegraph Wires”

“telegraph wires” summary, “telegraph wires” themes.

Humanity's Relationship with Technology

Line-by-line explanation & analysis of “telegraph wires”.

Take telegraph wires, ... ... in your ear. 

Towns whisper to ... ... the bad weather. 

So oddly, so ... ... hears, and withers! 

In the revolving ... ... empty human bones.

“Telegraph Wires” Symbols

The Telegraph Wires

• Lines 1-4: “Take telegraph wires, a lonely moor,  / And fit them together. The thing comes alive in your ear.  / Towns whisper to towns over the heather.  / But the wires cannot hide from the bad weather. ”

“Telegraph Wires” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language

Alliteration.

• Line 1: “Take telegraph”
• Line 3: “Towns,” “to towns”
• Line 6: “picked,” “played”
• Line 9: “ballroom”
• Line 10: “Bowed,” “bright”
• Line 11: “telegraph,” “tones”
• Line 1: “wires, a”
• Line 2: “together. The”
• Line 5: “oddly, so”
• Line 8: “hears, and”
• Line 10: “moor, a”
• Line 5: “oddly,” “daintily made”
• Line 6: “picked up,” “played”
• Line 7: “unearthly airs ”
• Line 8: “ear hears,” “withers”
• Line 9: “revolving ballroom”
• Line 12: “empty human bones”
• Lines 5-6: “made  / It”
• Lines 7-8: “airs  / The”
• Lines 9-10: “space  / Bowed”
• Lines 10-11: “face  / Draws”
• Lines 11-12: “tones  / That”
• Line 3: “Towns whisper to towns”
• Line 3: “Towns,” “towns”
• Line 5: “So,” “so”
• Lines 7-8: “Such unearthly airs  / The ear hears, and withers! ”

“Telegraph Wires” Vocabulary

Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.

• Telegraph wires
• (Location in poem: Line 1: “Take telegraph wires,”)

Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “Telegraph Wires”

Rhyme scheme, “telegraph wires” speaker, “telegraph wires” setting, literary and historical context of “telegraph wires”, more “telegraph wires” resources, external resources.

Ted Hughes and the Moors — View pages from Hughes's book of poetry published in collaboration with photographer Fay Godwin, featuring Godwin's photographs of the Yorkshire landscape.  

Five Views of Ted Hughes — Listen to a series of short radio documentaries exploring different aspects of Hughes's life and work. 

Hughes's Influence — Watch contemporary poet Alice Oswald discussing Ted Hughes's work.

Ted Hughes on Film — Watch a documentary about the poet.

Telecommunications — A short history of the telephone (and telegraph).

LitCharts on Other Poems by Ted Hughes

Anniversary

A Picture of Otto

Bayonet Charge

Cat and Mouse

Football at Slack

Fulbright Scholars

Full Moon and Little Frieda

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The Harvest Moon

The Thought Fox

Ask LitCharts AI: The answer to your questions

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Welcome to a new era of trans-authored cinema

3 breakthrough movies are ushering in a new age of trans film

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Queer cinema has always been in a state of continual evolution, but the evolution of trans depiction has come slower, even during agreed-upon golden eras of queer cinema. But in 2024, we are in the midst of a potentially new movement in which three trans-authored films are reshaping the possibilities of what a trans film looks like, and how transness can be expressed in cinema.

In the 21st century, Hollywood saw the potential money in telling more “authentic” mainstream queer stories due to the advent of the New Queer Cinema of the 1990s. This movement saw radical directors like Todd Haynes, Marlon Riggs, Gus Van Sant, Cheryl Dunye, and Gregg Araki reshape the concept of how queer cinema could function, and they made a name for themselves alongside the booming popularity of the Sundance Film Festival.

At the conclusion of the decade, Hilary Swank took home an Oscar for playing Brandon Teena in Boys Don’t Cry in a moment of misguided cross-gender casting. Boys Don’t Cry was considered an instant classic at the time, and its prominence as an image of the New Queer Cinema meant its Academy Award victory was a pivotal moment for queer cinema and trans depiction alike. While this film was not perceived to be conformist at the time of its release, it has since become a model of upholding the transgressive, negative concepts of trans film images of the past, obfuscating the reality of the trans masculine body, and consigning stories of transness to familiar modes of biological underpinning: mirrors, outings, reveals, and tragedy.

For queer cinema to be viable and artistically revolutionary, it must upend the status quo of form and depiction. In the case of transness, this means a reinvention of how trans films are conceived at a visual level. Many of the trans-authored films of 2024 are promising an exciting new way forward for the concept of trans cinema, which refutes those trends of the past or renegotiates their status in a modern context. This burgeoning period feels like the trans equivalent of the reshaping of queer cinema that took place in the ’90s.

The modern trans mise-en-scène is directly inspired by the circumstances of the past, but the major difference between these films and something like The Matrix is these filmmakers are not forced to smuggle their ideas into the film through secretive metaphor. Jane Schoenbrun’s I Saw the TV Glow is an ambient nightmare of hissing, flashing, crackling liminal analog spaces reminiscent of David Lynch, conveying trans experiences through visual language rather than direct representation.

Where to watch the movies mentioned in this piece

• I Saw the TV Glow : In theaters May 3
• The People’s Joker : Now playing in theaters
• T-Blockers : Digital rental or purchase on Amazon, Apple TV, and Vudu

The directness of Schoenbrun’s usage of thematic and personal metaphors through the guise of horror is a classic storytelling device, but the way these ideas are communicated is startling, singular, and new territory for a mainstream horror picture. Their mise-en-scène embodies the specific experience of gender dysphoria and bodily disassociation through the character of Owen (Justice Smith) over a period of decades. Schoenbrun keys into beautiful liminal images and uses the in-between spaces of static on television sets, or a close-up of saliva fizzing through a bushel of cotton candy, to evince the indecipherable physical state of knowing something is amiss but being unable to find the words to describe what’s wrong. Through this idea, they illuminate a nature of transness as a true visualized bodily experience.

I Saw the TV Glow chronicles the relationship between Owen and Maddy (Brigette Lundy-Paine) as they bond over a horror-tinged television series called The Pink Opaque in the mid-to-late ’90s. Things become strange when they are no longer sure if the characters they are watching are fictional, or versions of themselves. The Pink Opaque is deliberately crafted to look like ’90s TV shows such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Are You Afraid of the Dark? and follows heroines Isabel (Helena Howard) and Tara (Lindsey Jordan) as they try to defeat the “big bad” Mr. Melancholy.

Schoenbrun taps into the complex nature of trans viewership and nostalgia, which is typically built upon images of fantasy as placeholders until the trans person in question can fully embody their own identity. The film wonders if this type of idealized pursuit can ever truly be a healthy relationship, which acts as an enticing metaphor that questions the value of the queer gaze and the desire to have our stories reflected on screen — and whether or not that want is just another form of prolonged closeting. TV Glow subtly interrogates how trans viewers watch things — how fantasy can be formed, and how it can curdle under the tragic weight of time. When you’ve grown up without images of yourself, you’re liable to find yourself in unexpected places. Schoenbrun, importantly, never opts for classic signifiers of transness on screen (such as cracked mirrors), but indulges in what they find beautiful and where they found their voice, such as analog horror, void spaces, and modern gothic interpretations.

In The People’s Joker, director, star, and co-writer Vera Drew found her voice through a trans coming-of-age tale encased in the phenomenon of the superhero picture. Her film is a trans memoir that also functions as a satire. It directly addresses images of fantasy in relation to the trans viewing experience , and begins with protagonist Vera watching Joel Schumacher’s Batman Forever and becoming intoxicated with the image of Nicole Kidman as Dr. Chase Meridian.

Vera wishes she could look like her someday, which makes her ’90s pre-adolescent mind wonder if there’s something wrong with her. She asks her mom if she was born in the wrong body, and is then whisked away into a montage of psychiatrists unable to fix her problems. She is prescribed “Smylex” — a drug that stretches the user’s face into an artificial grin, like Joker’s laughing gas. Years later, in this fascist, dystopian Gotham City, Vera, now an adult, performs at an illegal comedy club as “Joker the Harlequin.’’ In her avant-garde act, she intentionally bombs with material about her mother and being a trans woman before using Smylex as a crescendo, sending her into a laughing fit.

Vera initially conceived of The People’s Joker as a found footage exercise, which would have used existing footage from other sources to create a new Joker film. That impulse of remixing is still felt in what The People’s Joker eventually became, but now those images have been repurposed to illuminate Vera’s own lived experience as a trans comedian through the absurdist imagery of superhero IP.

With its bursting, tacky green screens and vibrant, animated sequences built on brash, contrasting color elements, its primary visual influence is the queer-coded Schumacher Batman films. The People’s Joker tells viewers exactly what it will be with the desire to evoke the glamour of Kidman in Batman Forever, but the experience of being trans never results in the fantasy ending of what a body will become through hormone therapy and socialized transition.

There is beauty in seeing those fragments of fantasy filter through regardless, and how the trans body is its own impossibly restless, ever-changing monument to desire and fulfillment. The fantasy is only the start, and it’s later you discover who you’ll eventually become. The People’s Joker is a monument to that very idea, because it is at once all the elements of Joker (2019), Kidman’s Chase Meridian, Harley Quinn, and Selina Kyle’s transformative moment in Batman Returns all rolled into one being. Vera’s Joker falls into a vat of estradiol at one point, and the concept of the Batman film falls with her, forcing a transition upon its frame, giving it a new trans feminine body.

Film history undergoes a similar trans-feminization in Alice Maio Mackay’s self-aware T-Blockers . The movie begins with an Elvira-like drag midnight movie hostess talking about the virtues of shot-on-video horror films made by trans people in the 1990s that didn’t actually exist, but were fabricated for the sake of this narrative. One of the defining factors of these three trans-authored films is the impulse to fill in the blanks of what was missing from trans film history. It is resulting in works that are self-reflexive, and prone to basking in camp alongside topics and scenes that are deadly serious. Fellow trans critic Juan Barquin astutely described the Australian trans wunderkind director Mackay as “the self aware gen z ed wood we deserve.”

Ed Wood has a broader reputation as a notoriously awful filmmaker, but in truth, he was groundbreaking, and one of the first architects of how trans cinema would operate going forward, and his films also lived in that space of camp and serious personal issues. His riotous Glen or Glenda (1953) is a multifaceted combination of medical drama, documentary, and horror film, and whose structural influences are felt across the generations of trans film image-making, ranging from Doris Wishman’s Let Me Die a Woman (1977) up through the recent Orlando, My Political Biography (2023) . Mackay lives with the spirit of Ed Wood, because she is making pictures with her friends about whatever she wants with meager budgets, and with the ingenuity to argue for broader political acceptance of a minority class while also indulging in the direct pleasures of genre cinema.

Mackay’s T-Blockers begins, like all of her films, with a title card that reads “A Transgender Film By,” an ode to Gregg Araki’s tendency to announce the latent queerness of his projects with a title card championing their queerness. T-Blockers is a film about art imitating life imitating art in the vein of Cheryl Dunye’s New Queer Cinema classic The Watermelon Woman (1996), and follows a young trans filmmaker named Sophie (Lauren Last) as she tries to make it in the film industry and learn more about a trans film from the past that doesn’t actually exist.

One evening, she watches a late-night internet streaming picture show that showcases an unknown, rediscovered short film from a trans filmmaker from the ’90s. The film-within-the-film was shot on video and chronicles a trans lead in the process of killing a transphobic man who was leaking parasites out of his mouth. Sophie is shocked by the short film due to its mere existence, but also because she and her friends encountered a man infested with those same parasites outside of their local gay bar not too long ago. The parasite takes the image of bodily disintegration and dysphoria prevalent in body horror films from David Cronenberg , reinterpreting it through the lens of transphobia as an infection that spreads among a population.

It’s a film communicating directly to the moment at hand, where transphobia has spread like wildfire among legislative bodies as various conservative governments across the globe have latched onto it as an agreeable fear-mongering tactic. Diegetic radio broadcasts are heard throughout the film discussing this very topic, and the climax hinges on Sophie and her friends contending with a flock of protesters looking for a return to the values of the past. This is where the parasite breeds.

T-Blockers is also a salient picture that prioritizes the importance of available images to trans viewers, so that we may learn from our history and see ourselves in film. Sophie learns how to fight the parasites through her discovery of this short film from the ’90s, and through this link to the past, she also finally believes in the possibility of making films as a trans person.

The trans film archive is one that is largely closed to trans viewers, because there is not a mainstream precedent for our inclusion in motion pictures, and the independent and forgotten films of disreputable genres have long been neglected in cinephile spaces. Due to the nature of the hidden archive, trans filmmakers are taking an oblong route in telling their own stories by finding beauty in other images, such as horror shows from the ’90s, or comic book movies, or Gregg Araki films, and introducing their own spin on preexisting modes of expression. It is a dynamic way of moving transness on screen forward and transcending limiting concepts of good or bad representation in favor of an expressionistic take on gender identity.

With I Saw the TV Glow , The People’s Joker , and T-Blockers , we are potentially witnessing the beginning of a new era of trans image-making where transness is more clearly defining itself without the imposition of cisgender assumptions about what it means to be a trans person. With these three films, and other recent pictures made by trans filmmakers such as Angelo Madsen Minax, Isabel Sandoval, Tourmaline, Jessica Rovinelli, and Louise Weard, we are seeing the formulation of a new trans cinema movement in North America that has hopefully only just begun.

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Looking Back at the Crossroads: Liberty or Socialism Audio Mises Wire

Today we are featuring the winning essays in the Student Essay Contest for undergraduates at the Austrian Economics Research Conference. Original Article: Looking Back at the Crossroads: Liberty or Socialism    

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Trump lawyers say Stormy Daniels refused subpoena outside a Brooklyn bar, papers left ‘at her feet’

Jury selection in Donald Trump’s hush money trial has encountered new setbacks as two seated jurors were excused. Attorneys now need to pick 13 more jurors to serve on the panel.(AP Video: David R. Martin)

FILE - Stormy Daniels appears at an event, May 23, 2018, in West Hollywood, Calif. The hush money trial of former President Donald Trump begins Monday, April 15, 2024, with jury selection. It’s the first criminal trial of a former U.S. commander-in-chief. The charges in the trial center on $130,000 in payments that Trump’s company made to his then-lawyer, Michael Cohen. He paid that sum on Trump’s behalf to keep Daniels from going public, a month before the election, with her claims of a sexual encounter with Trump a decade earlier. (AP Photo/Ringo H.W. Chiu, File)

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Former President Donald Trump approaches to speak to reporters as he leaves a Manhattan courtroom after the second day of his criminal trial, Tuesday, April 16, 2024 in New York. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer, Pool)

The latest: Get live updates from Donald Trump’s hush money trial

NEW YORK (AP) — Donald Trump’s legal team says it tried serving Stormy Daniels a subpoena as she arrived for an event at a bar in Brooklyn last month, but the porn actor, who is expected to be a witness at the former president’s criminal trial , refused to take it and walked away.

A process server working for Trump’s lawyers said he approached Daniels with papers demanding information related to a documentary recently released about her life and involvement with Trump, but was forced to “leave them at her feet,” according to a court filing made public Wednesday.

“I stated she was served as I identified her and explained to her what the documents were,” process server Dominic DellaPorte wrote. “She did not acknowledge me and kept walking inside the venue, and she had no expression on her face.”

The encounter, prior to a screening of the “Stormy” film at the 3 Dollar Bill nightclub, has touched off a monthlong battle between Trump’s lawyers and Daniels’ attorney that continued this week as the presumptive Republican nominee’s criminal trial began in Manhattan.

Trump’s lawyers are asking Judge Juan M. Merchan to force Daniels to comply with the subpoena. In their filing, they included a photo they said DellaPorte took of Daniels as she strode away.

Daniels’ lawyer Clark Brewster claims they never received the paperwork. He described the requests as an “unwarranted fishing expedition” with no relevance to Trump’s criminal trial.

“The process — instituted on the eve of trial — appears calculated to cause harassment and/or intimidation of a lay witness,” Brewster wrote in an April 9 letter to Merchan. Brewster didn’t immediately reply to a message from The Associated Press seeking comment.

The hush money case is the first of Trump’s four criminal cases to go to trial. Seven jurors have been seated so far. Jury selection is set to resume Thursday.

Daniels is expected to testify about a $130,000 payment she got in 2016 from one of Trump’s lawyers at the time, Michael Cohen, in order to stop her from speaking publicly about a sexual encounter she said she had with Trump years earlier.

Cohen was later reimbursed by Trump’s company for that payment. Trump is accused of falsifying his company’s records to hide the nature of that payment, and other work he did to bury negative stories during the 2016 campaign.

Trump pleaded not guilty last year to 34 felony counts of falsifying business records. He denies having a sexual encounter with Daniels. His lawyers argue the payments to Cohen were legitimate legal expenses, and were recorded correctly.

In a separate filing made public Wednesday, the Manhattan district attorney’s office said that if Trump chooses to testify at the trial, prosecutors plan to challenge his credibility by questioning him about his recent legal setbacks. The filing was made last month under seal.

Trump was recently ordered to pay a $454 million civil penalty following a trial in which a judge ruled he had lied about his wealth on financial statements. In another trial, a jury said he was liable for $83.3 million for defaming writer E. Jean Carroll after she accused him of sexual assault.

Merchan said he plans to hold a hearing Friday to decide whether that will be allowed.

Under New York law, prosecutors can question witnesses about past legal matters in certain circumstances. Trump’s lawyers are opposed. Trump has said he wants to testify, but he is not required to and can always change his mind.

As for the subpoena dispute, it marks the latest attempt by Trump’s lawyers to knock loose potentially damaging information about Daniels, a key prosecution witness.

They are demanding an array of documents related to the promotion and editing of the documentary, “Stormy,” which explores Daniels’ career in the adult film industry and rise to celebrity since her alleged involvement with Trump became publicly known.

They are also requesting Daniels reveal how much, if anything, she was compensated for the film.

Trump’s lawyers contend the film’s premiere last month on NBC’s Peacock streaming service — a week before the trial was originally scheduled to start — stoked negative publicity about Trump, muddying his ability to get a fair trial.

In the filings made public Wednesday, Trump’s attorneys accuse Daniels of “plainly seeking to promote her brand and make money based on her status as a witness.”

The subpoena also demands communications between Daniels and other likely witnesses in the trial, including Cohen and Karen McDougal, a former Playboy model who alleges she had an affair with Trump. It also requests any communications between Daniels and Carroll.

Earlier this month, Merchan blocked an attempt by Trump to subpoena NBC Universal for information related to the documentary. He wrote that subpoena and the demands therein “are the very definition of a fishing expedition.”