Amid the news of "The Wire"'s renewel for a fifth season, creator David Simon tells the Inquirer's Gail Shister that he thinks the reason the show isn't more popular is because most of the cast is black.
"A lot of people who see this many black faces staring back at them think, 'That's not my story. That's somebody else's story,' " Simon says. "Unfortunately, I think there are limits to human empathy."There's some truce to what Simon is saying, of course, but I'd put that lower on the list as explanations for the lack of popularity, behind the show's extreme complexity. It's an incredibly difficult show to jump into in the middle, which might explain why I can count the number of people I know who watch it on one hand.
But this brings up something interesting about Simon. Every time I see an interview with him, he comes across as your typical left-wing entertainment industry figure- spouting hard-left-sounding political rhetoric at virtually every turn. But unlike most like him, his work itself is distinguished by its remarkable subtlety- rather than bash the audience over the head with his conclusions, he shades them remarkably, to the point where it's not altogether clear what political argument the show is making. And for that, Simon deserves great credit.
Posted by Stephen Silver at September 15, 2006 12:33 AM