This week was visual week and packed full with visual assignments. Through working on those assignment I gained a more focused attention to how things look and are presented to me, both in shows, photos and other media. I definitely paid more attention to the visual aspect of the Wire, especially with color and character presentation, all of which was furthered when I tweeted along for an episode without audio this week.
My favorite part of this week’s work was doing my Photoblitz. I had a lot of fun with it and was racing around trying to get all of my photo assignments in under the wire…(haha). As always, the daily creates helped my knowledge and understanding of little projects and other media outlets that can be used to make the daily creates. I imbibed my favorite song into a photo for my first daily create this week, with a photo of a rose representing “La Vie en Rose” and used a new website called canva.com in order to do it. For my second daily create this week I made a ridiculously terrible drawing of Professor Jim Groom and uploaded it to Flickr and twitter. The fedora was a major fail, but I think the though bubble I made was quite perfect!
I really enjoyed the first assignment I did where I made a video out of photographs I took at the D.C. Arboretum for the backyard safari photograph assignment. My second assignment was a lot of fun because I looked for color just in episode 7 and strung together the colors of the rainbow for the rainbow visual assignment and did a blog post about it. For my third assignment I looked for something in real life that presents itself in the Wire often and decided to focus on the use of angels and the idea of death in my post. I really liked the last assignment I chose where I mirrored two images from different episodes of the Wire.
The Wire:
I did the tweet along session for episode 6 and thought it was so cool to watch the show without sound! I was much more enraptured in what I was watching and trying to figure out what was happening without voice cues. The last scene with D’s murder was much more intense without the noise as well, and I also loved seeing everyone else’s comments on the episode.
Episode 6-
This episode has an interesting open scene with Omar telling the cop the answer to the crossword, which just happens to be a war God. Speaking of war, the cops seem to be figuring out how to go after the dock crime. And once again there is that parallel between Stringer and McNulty in the courtroom, and once again the control has shifted. What McNulty says about not being on the street, but in the court of law makes me think of the differences in power and how they depend on setting. In the court I think we definitely get an instance of contrast in photography with Omar’s outfit and appearance as opposed to everyone else in the court. He clearly stands out and is thus attacked as a “parasite.” Though Omar turns this all around, essentially calling everyone a player in the ‘game.’ I also noticed the depth used as we see Nick inside the car looking out the window at the scene unfolding. The camera works really well in this episode and in this instance it shows that double crime world with the perspective change.
I like that we see more with Kima and her work, but also her home relationship, and the two actually come together in this episode when the girlfriend goes to “work” with Kima. She even explains the situation she is working on to her girlfriend, both to share and to show why she is doing this, why she went back into the force.
The change in Omar and D’Angelo is really interesting and they both seem to want to fix their pasts, or at least make other people realize their wrongs. D’Angelo’s discussion at the jail was both deep and colloquial and I think expresses something we will not understand for some time. D’Angelo’s fight with his mother shows his anger and disillusionment with his family. His family brought him into the world, but he will live as he wishes and that is away from his family. I really liked the perspective we get with the hands at the end of that, but the man who follows D out of the phone booth makes me worry. The look between D and Avon and the way the camera works with perspective was really cool and telling, with D’s quick smile, although Avon wins out with the murder of his own cousin, yet another interesting perspective on life and in the actual filming.
In the dock family we get the idiot Ziggy again and his father trying to figure out what is going on with him. This is really the first time we really get the two of them alone together and talking seriously. Like D’Angelo, Ziggy was brought up in a world of drugs and crime, just a different one, and it really does affect them. The only family that even has a chance seems to be McNulty and his wife, but that would take a long time to sort out.
We get the link between the dock crime and drug crime with Sergey visiting the other crime family in the drug business. The circles are starting to overlap and family seems to be the problem and reason why certain people act out of their normal circles.
Right after we get the phrase “cadaverous motherfuckers” we get to see McNulty’s initial reason why he got into the Jane Does case. He looks at her with pity, almost remorse, and then gives up with a simple “fuck it.”
Episode 7-
The episode opening with the flower gun bouquets was both insane and hilarious. I cannot believe that this happens so often that a flower shop has gun cutouts with flowers stuck in it. The guy cannot even find a way to express D’s death and instead shows him as the criminal, rather than the human, that he was. The moment we get with the angel at the end of that scene and its juxtaposition in the foreground while the gun bouquet is in the back was really ironic. It seems to show the constant presence of death.
In this episode we find that Stringer actually had D killed and that Avon did not even know about it. Why? Avon seems upset by it but the fact that the murder was disguised as a suicide did not help with any remorse. Stringer’s presence at D’s wake was a little disquieting and I now find him the most heartless of all the characters.
The cops are really hitting the docks heavy and Russell even went “undercover” in her old job in order to confuse the dock men. The dock guys are about to get screwed over with the new dock security system and it is their crime that will be hit hard. This goes along with the new technology that even Herc is applying to the job. The efficiency of these things is actually hurting jobs, an issue the dock men have already had to deal with. The dock men seem to be constantly hit and discussing the loss of jobs. There is a fear of losing jobs and the men even comfort the wounded man at the end of the episode saying, “you’re still on the clock.”
The game continues, with Daniels explaining how he is playing to his wife. Everyone continues to get pushed around the game board without their consent.
We go back to angels and death with D’s funeral halfway into the episode. Stringer gets looked at with a bit of suspicion and the amount of flowers in this episode is really crazy. We get the black contrasted with the red of the roses, a contrast of good and bad. There is also a contrast of feeling, with some crying at the funeral and others using it as a place to propose a business deal.
The whole conversation on when and where it is okay to wiretap was crazy! I cannot believe how unprotected women are and how they are so easily put into the sex trade without hope or protection. But slowly and slowly things seem to start adding and linking up to each other.
Episode 8-
McNulty is clearly heading off the rocker, flirting with death with drinking, driving and eventually crashing. The music in his car is interesting because it shows his Irish origins that we always hear about and really sets up the insanity of the scene, in which McNulty purposely ruins his car more to make it look like a car accident. The lighting during this scene was also revealing as it really showed how alone McNulty was in the situation and in life, and served to highlight his crazy facial expressions. Later with Morland we see how McNulty wants to get back into the job because he needs some sort of distraction from his home life. We also get a sense of madness when Morland asks McNulty is the “floaters” are showing up in his dreams. Morland has Daniels fight for McNulty to get on board the case finally.
The cops seem to be matching things up, as shown by their new case board and Morland’s new costume is pretty funny, as well as how focused everyone is on it. The small parts of the show when Simon focuses on humor alone are both entertaining and telling for characterization. It’s crazy to see the contrast between the drug area and the dock. Simon clearly pays a lot of attention to how he depicts the two areas.
On the docks Ziggy seems o be going through more childish antics, as well as getting angry with his cousin for being out of the loop. The cops are starting to crack down though and even get Nick talking with the Russian. Clearly these people are not as careful as Stringer and Avon were. The cops are coming closer to the sex trade crime and getting aggressive in their work. They are picking up more and more calls and it is cool to see the wire technology being used again, but alongside other technology in order to catch the illegal activity.
Unfortunately, Frank seems to be putting things together a little bit as well, though he is as slow as ever. Like the drug dealers in the first season, though, he starts to test the cops to find if he is right in them tracking him.
I really liked looking at the visual again for the Wire and working on projects that forced me to see the effects of visual work. It’s always there and I notice it, but I analyzed visuals this week and learned different types, which completely changed my experience of watching the Wire and other media.
