{"id":7477,"date":"2019-10-25T23:22:52","date_gmt":"2019-10-25T21:22:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/?p=7477"},"modified":"2019-11-05T10:19:17","modified_gmt":"2019-11-05T08:19:17","slug":"david-simon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/2019\/10\/david-simon\/","title":{"rendered":"When Television Grew Up: David Simon, Modern America and the Maturing of the TV landscape"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

David came in, and what you had was long-form storytelling. Characters that were nuanced, stories that were nuanced, that required your attention and required you to follow it. Nothing was wrapped up at the end of one episode or one hour. It continued. It was sort of like a novel. I think it\u2019s a visual novel \u2013 the way he looked at it.
People look at television, and you see the lead character, and you think that\u2019s the protagonist. But I think, for David the protagonist is actually America. American society is always the protagonist.<\/p>– Michael Potts, The Wire<\/em> and Show Me a Hero<\/em> (Halskov & S\u00f8rensen 2019)<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

We all know the\nstory: An external force is threatening to eliminate the world and disturb the\nsocial order, as we know it. A strong man is put on the case and uses his will\nand agency to overcome the external threat and his inner conflict before\nrestoring order and our collective faith in society and humankind. The typical\nHollywood film follows a fairly well-known formula. It has a clear and\nwell-defined plot, follows a straight\ncorridor <\/em>and takes few excursions on the way toward the happy ending at the\nend of the corridor. It has a strong protagonist at the center of the story \u2013 a\ncharacter who is promptly introduced and who sets the plot in motion, which\nthen unfolds as a neat series of causes and effects. This principle of individualized causality <\/em>is seen in most\nHollywood films, and many of these principles are also apparent in the\nserialized fiction that we see in American television (cf. Bordwell 1986 and\nNielsen 2013). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

These\ncharacteristics, however, are not typical of the fictional stories by TV\ncreator and showrunner David Simon, who began his career as a journalist and\nwho helped define the so-called \u2018Golden Age\u2019 of cable television at the turn of\nthe century. Through lauded TV classics like Homicide: Life on the Street <\/em>(NBC, 1993-1999; fig. 1), The Corner <\/em>(HBO, 2000), The Wire <\/em>(HBO, 2002-2008), Generation Kill <\/em>(HBO, 2008), Treme <\/em>(HBO, 2010-2013) and The Deuce <\/em>(HBO, 2017-), Simon has come\nto define a pivotal shift in American television, largely by going against the\ngrain of American politics and traditional formulas known from Hollywood and\nAmerican television. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a>
Fig. 1: Homicide: Life on the Street <\/em>(NBC, 1993-1999) \u2013 one of the most significant TV series of the 1990s that helped pave the way for the Golden Age of American television drama at the turn of the century. The Golden Age would largely become a cable phenomenon, connected to premium cable<\/em> networks like HBO and showrunners like David Simon. \u00a9 NBC.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

If the classical Hollywood film deals with strong individuals who prevail and restore the social order, then Simon\u2019s fictions are often about structural issues and institutions that fail. And while a classical Hollywood film has one clear protagonist with a clearly defined goal, then Simon\u2019s stories are more anthropological and ambiguous in nature, without a clear center and an evident telos<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

David Simon is a powerful\nvoice in the political debate, a crucial flagship for HBO and one of the most\ncentral and critically acclaimed TV\nauteurs<\/em> in the modern mediascape (cf. N\u00f8rgaard 2011). He has some strong\nand unflinching views on American society and the American TV landscape, and he\nhas his very own modus operandi<\/em>.\nTherefore, I have spoken with Simon about his particular approach to\nstorytelling \u2013 his use of the past, his sociological or journalistic method and\nhis stylistic and narrative choices \u2013 and about the intersections between his\nworks, the political climate and the modern TV landscape. And his conclusion is\nclear as a bell: When American television got rid of the advertisers,\nserialized television matured, and serialized, long-form storytelling and modern\ncable networks are the crucial pillars of Simon\u2019s sociological stories.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From Attraction to Allegory: (Ab)using the Past<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

When browsing the modern TV and streaming landscape, it is impossible not to notice the many popular shows that utilize or deal with the past. Period drama is in vogue, it seems, in the form of nostalgic flashbacks to a simpler time (cf. Stranger Things<\/em> [Netflix, 2016-] and Everything Sucks!<\/em> [Netflix, 2018]), aesthetic refashionings of the past (cf. Mad Men<\/em> [AMC, 2007-2015] and Vinyl <\/em>[HBO, 2016]) or more allegorical stories that use the past to comment on the present (cf. The Americans<\/em> [FX, 2013-2018] and Chernobyl <\/em>[HBO\/Sky Atlantic, 2019]). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

David Simon also utilizes the past, when he deals with the political climate and the housing problems of Yonkers in the 1980s (Show Me a Hero<\/em>) or when he depicts exploitation and sex work in New York in the 1970s (The Deuce<\/em>). In Simon\u2019s works, however, the past is not just an attraction or a setting, and the tone is never nostalgic and revisionist. This is illustrated, for example, in the end of The Deuce<\/em> which produces a shocking parallelism between New York in 1970s and modern-day America, neatly showing the things that have changed in the course of the last 40 years and the many things that have not – and never will – change. Behind the immediate sense of historical development there is a deeper and more urgent sense of stagnancy and repetition: “The more things change, the more they stay the same.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

AH: I know that\nyou are working on two different shows at the moment, and both of them are\nessentially period dramas. Could you tell us about the miniseries that you are\nediting as we speak?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

DS: The story is based on a novel by Philip Roth called <\/em>The Plot Against America. It is an alternative history of America, based around the election of 1940 that was premised on the idea that instead of Franklin Roosevelt being elected on the dawn of World War II, America elected an isolationist republican in the form of Charles Lindbergh, the aviator, who historically was, in fact, pro Nazis and also violently anti-Semitic as well. And, so, he brings America in on the side of strict neutrality while, at the same time, supporting Hitler. It was an artefact when it was published in 2004. Roth was writing with the election of George W. Bush in mind and some degree of populism as being a rallying point for American politics. Obviously, in the wake of the election of Donald Trump, it has gotten a greater significance, so we optioned the book, and HBO is making it into a miniseries that will be out in March next year.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

AH: Like The Deuce<\/em> and Show Me a Hero<\/em>, your forthcoming miniseries looks to the past in\norder to speak about the current political climate. Sometimes, period dramas\nseem like nostalgic glances into the past, which is often aestheticized or\nromanticized, but you seem to use the past as a sort of mirror. Is that the\nidea?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

DS: Absolutely. There\u2019s no point in doing period\ndrama, if you\u2019re not reflecting on the world that currently exists. The\nproblems of a hyper-segregated society and inequality are even more profound\ntoday than they were at the time of <\/em>Show Me a Hero. The same things are going on in every city about what to do with the\npoor, where to put the poor. At this moment, there\u2019ll be 67000 people in the\nhomeless shelters in New York City, which is an all-time record in one of the\nmost affluent cities in the world. That is, in fact, the case. There\u2019s a dearth\nof affordable housing. The city is a playground for the rich and hell for the\npoor. So there is nothing being said about Yonkers in the 1980s in <\/em>Show Me\na Hero that can\u2019t be applied now to our\ncurrent society. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Similarly, <\/em>The Deuce is about\nmisogyny, sexual commodification and labor and gender, and those topics are\nstill relevant. The status of women in society is being questioned as\naggressively today with #metoo and #timesup as it ever has been. The same\narguments are still unresolved. So, if you\u2019re not speaking of the present,\nyou\u2019ve got no business accessing the past.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201dThe centre cannot hold\u201d: The Structural Focus<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.<\/p>– W.B. Yeats, \u201cThe Second Coming\u201d (1919)<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Before Show Me a Hero <\/em>and The Deuce<\/em>, David Simon created one of the most significant and popular TV series of the 2000s \u2013 a piece which is often placed at the top when critics and reviewers are asked to list the best TV shows of all time. I am naturally referring to The Wire<\/em>, which differed markedly from other quality shows of its time by focusing on environment rather than plot, structures rather than strong individuals, and by changing the setting and the focal points with each season. The Norwegian TV scholar Erlend Lavik points to The Wire <\/em>as the most paradigmatic example of quality TV<\/em> and the most crucial work in the so-called Third Golden Age <\/em>of American television drama. The Wire<\/em> is also mentioned by Alan Sepinwall and Matt Zoller Seitz as one of the all-time greatest American TV series, and they, fittingly, use a string of questions when trying to summarize the plot in all of its complexity: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Wire <\/em>is about a clever cop who doesn\u2019t play by his bosses\u2019 rules.
Or is it about how that cop pushes his bosses to create a task force to take down a dangerous inner-city drug crew?
Maybe it\u2019s about the charismatic leaders of that drug crew?
Could it be about dysfunction inside the police department?
Wait\u2026 now it\u2019s about the stevedores\u2019 union?
Only now the mayoral campaign is the most important thing?
How is the show suddenly about four boys in middle school?
And here at the end it\u2019s about the inner workings of the city\u2019sbiggest newspaper?
What on earth is the show supposed to be about, people? <\/p>– Sepinwall & Seitz 2016: 37<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

AH: What\u2019s\ninteresting about The Wire<\/em>, as I see\nit, is that it explores the problematic structures and failed institutions in\nthe USA, instead of focusing on strong individuals and immediately exciting\nplots. It was a groundbreaking show, and it has been described as neo-realism,\nsociology, anthropology, a systemic critique of America and many other things.\nHow do you see it?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

DS: It\u2019s a critique of why we can\u2019t solve any of\nour problems nationally. There are problems that have to do with how we live\ntogether, and how we live together in the 21st<\/sup> century is inevitably\nan urban question. Urbanity is now the future of humankind, and the shape and\nstructure and viability of the city is going to determine whether or not we\nsurvive as a species. In that sense, we\u2019re using the city allegorically to make\narguments about what has gone wrong with our society that our institutions no\nlonger perform or even attempt to perform as they once did and how problems and\neven the attempts to solve problems become more and more elusive \u2013 and why the\ncenter of our society, which used to be some communal sense of responsibility, can\nno longer hold. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, yeah, listen, I have no interest in telling\nstories about characters. Characters are building blocks, and you have to write\ninteresting characters, and you have to care about your characters as a writer,\nbut characters are basically a tool in the tool box to tell a story about\nsomething larger. At least it is in our construct of what we\u2019re doing, and\nthat\u2019s true not just for <\/em>The\nWire, but for all of our pieces. Every\nsingle one. We\u2019ve done seven pieces now for HBO, and we\u2019re about to cut\ntogether an eighth, and they\u2019re all about structure. They\u2019re all about the\nsystemic. And that has to prevail for us to care about it. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

And one of the reasons we found that to be a plausible\npursuit is that we\u2019re doing long-form. We\u2019re doing long-form television shows.\nWe\u2019re doing miniseries and series, so there\u2019s time to lay out the structural\ncritique. There\u2019s no time to do that in a two-hour movie. It\u2019s an improbable\nthing to do in two-hour movie. Around a small structure, you can do something\nspecific about a problem in a certain institution, maybe, in two hours, but\nyou\u2019re not going to be able to critique the larger constructs of society in an\nhour and a half, two hours or even two and a half hours. For that, you are\ngoing to need six, 12 or 20 hours, depending on what you\u2019re talking about. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

AH: Indeed. Many\npeople have pointed to The Wire<\/em> as\ncentral to the so-called Golden Age of cable television. What precipitated that\nshift in American television?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

DS: American television was a juvenile form in fundamental ways, until there were some channels that could get rid of advertising and commercials as the revenue stream. When they were the revenue stream, you could not present a story that was particularly dark or disturbing or problematic or argumentative in a political sense because it disturbed the consumer class. It disturbed the dynamic between the advertiser and the consumer. It didn\u2019t put anyone in the mood to buy cars or blue jeans or iPods or anything. But once you got rid of the advertisers and made it a subscription model, now you started having grown-up stories. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a>
Fig. 2: David Simon at the 63rd Annual Peabody Award with two actors from The Wire:<\/em> Lawrence Gilliard, Jr. (left) and Dominic West (right). Photo: Anders Krusberg \/ Peabody Awards, 63rd Annual Peabody Awards Luncheon, Waldorf Astoria Hotel, May 17, 2004. Creative Commons.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

AH: Many people have also pointed to the level of attention and patience that a show like The Wire<\/em> requires. I guess we could say the same thing about Treme <\/em>(a show about the effects of Hurricane Katrina as both a natural and social disaster), which had such an interesting opening, almost reminiscent of Italian Neo-Realism, and such a jazzy, slow-paced style. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

DS: I\u2019m particularly proud of that one, actually, in that it avoids, it denies itself, all of the tropes and metrics by which American television usually measures itself. It only has enough violence to depict the actuality of violence in the city. It only has enough sexuality to accurately chronicle the lives of ordinary people. It\u2019s not trading on the things that make television shows go forward. It\u2019s a lot harder to get people to watch a show where you put a trombone in a guy\u2019s hand, than if you put a gun or a blonde, and we were determined to say something, again, about the American city. What in urbanity matters? What is resilient? What must endure? <\/em>Treme is a show about culture. It\u2019s about the culture of a city that\u2019s steeped in culture, and it survives only because of culture. It was an attempt to make an argument for the city. There were a lot of people who watched <\/em>The Wire and said, \u201cMan, why don\u2019t they leave?\u201d, which I thought was an astonishing reply to what <\/em>The Wire was presenting. Nobody\u2019s going anywhere. Baltimore\u2019s going to be there tomorrow. The question is what it will be and whether or not we have the national stamina to address our problems. So I was a little bit distressed to find that people thought Baltimore was in any way aberrant or was enduring more than many other American cities like it. Baltimore is no different than St. Louis, Cleveland or New Orleans. In fact, there are only three cities in America that have any reprieve from these forces that are arrayed against them, and that\u2019s New York, Los Angeles and Washington. And the reasons are obvious. New York is the financial capital of the world, and so the run-up on Wall Street eventually trickles down and allows them to rebuild the city and an incredible revenue stream. Los Angeles, at least the west side of Los Angeles, is floated by the American entertainment industry which is recession-proof. And Washington, being the federal city, which survives on the largesse of the government itself, is also recession-proof. Everything else in America has to fight. We have to fight the poverty of our politics and the poverty of our spirit, and we have to fight bombs of national contempt for the idea of the city, which is self-defeating. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Creative Treatments of Actuality<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The Scottish filmmaker\nJohn Grierson famously defined documentary as \u201cthe creative treatment of\nactuality\u201d, and this definition has since been echoed whenever dealing with\ndocumentary films or reality-based fictions. David Simon creates serialized\nfiction and is hardly a documentarist, yet his pieces reflect reality \u2013 current\nevents or historical facts \u2013 and are often based on meticulous, journalistic\nresearch. I asked Simon about his anthropological or sociological approach and\nthe fact that he still lives in Baltimore and goes out into the field when\nmaking TV series, in order to depict reality with a high degree of authenticity\nand an almost Griersonian ethos.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

AH: I know that\nyou still live in Baltimore, and I was wondering whether your projects would\neven be possible if you lived in LA \u2013 far removed, both geographically and\nconceptually, from the places that you explore and depict in your shows? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

DS: Listen, the last three projects I\u2019ve done\nhave been in the New York and New Jersey area, and I\u2019m from Baltimore, so the\ntrick is to do as much research as you can, spend as much time on the ground as\nyou can, so your view is clarified, hire other writers, researchers and experts\nwho know the material and know the geography \u2013 which we did in New Orleans and\nwhich we did, when it came to the Marine Corps in <\/em>Generation Kill, and which we did in New York. Do the work.\nThat\u2019s it. You\u2019re obliged to do the work. There\u2019s nothing to say that someone\nfrom LA can\u2019t write a good and precise piece about Baltimore, but they have to\ngo there. They have to meet people, they have to do the research, and they have\nto deliver. If they\u2019re just going to sit where they are and guess from what\nthey know in LA \u2013 or, even worse, West LA \u2013 then you can imagine how it\u2019s going\nto turn out. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

From Neo-Realism to #metoo: Topical Issues and Universal Stories <\/h2>\n\n\n\n

At the end of the 1940s, an artistic movement was born in Italy \u2013 a movement that, however short-lived, would come to change the face of Italian cinema and influence numerous waves in the international history of film. I am referring, here, to Italian Neo-Realism, a movement that rebelled against the lighthearted and reactionary telephone films <\/em>of the time (telefoni bianchi<\/em>) and the opulent dramas known from Hollywood which were often set in exotic locations, in other eras or glorious \u2018otherworlds\u2019. The Neo-Realists wanted to tell stories about \u201cthe pressing issues of the time\u201d (Zavattini 1965: 11-13) without the make-up and artifice of Hollywood and the Fascist undertones of Italian films in the 1930s and early \u201840s. They used location shooting, dialects, open-ended plots and amateur actors, and their films dealt with real problems for workers and other regular people. Not the fancy Hollywood divas on the film posters, but the guy who rides around on his bicycle, putting up those posters to make ends meet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a>
Fig. 3: The poor protagonist in Vittorio De Sica\u2019s Ladri di biciclette <\/em>(1948, Bicycle Thieves<\/em>) puts up posters of fancy Hollywood divas like Rita Hayworth \u2013 as an ironic contrast to his own working-class existence. While situated in America, David Simon\u2019s TV series have a lot in common with the Italian Neo-Realist films from the 1940s, both thematically and tonally. \u00a9 Image Entertainment.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

David Simon\u2019s TV series resonate with this movement, and the use of location shooting and the collective focus on working-class characters in pieces like The Wire <\/em>and Treme<\/em> have a lot in common with the films of Vittorio De Sica, Luchino Visconti and Roberto Rossellini. I asked David Simon about this potential source of inspiration and what he thinks about the Neo-Realist ideas, as mentioned by the script writer Cesare Zavattini. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

AH: I have always\nseen your TV series as a serialized and modernized version of Italian\nNeo-Realism \u2013 a movement which was recognized for its use of location shooting,\nopen-ended and decentralized stories, and amateurs who speak in dialect and the\nvernacular. The ideas behind the Neo-Realist movement were formulated by the\nwriter Cesare Zavattini, who claimed that all good movies depict \u201cthe pressing\nissues of their time\u201d. To me, that line could almost be a dictum of your work.\nWould you agree with Zavattini, or is it a far-fetched comparison to begin with?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

DS: I would not be so limiting. I would say\nthat\u2019s what <\/em>my work has to be because\nmy training is in journalism, not in film and certainly not in the\nentertainment industry. So what I\u2019m chasing has some rooted logic in\njournalism, and journalism is about the issues of our time. From my point of\nview, this is all I know how to do, but I can certainly conceive of great art\nthat targets not simply the social issues of our time, but maybe just the human\ncondition in general. Or maybe I\u2019m speaking in such generalities that those are\nalways issues of our time. Shakespeare works and the Greek plays work because\nman is man and his nature is his nature, and the forms by which power and\ndignity ground themselves, through humanity or through the human condition,\ndon\u2019t really ever change. The scale of hope and risk for human beings is the\nsame for Hamlet as it is for Oedipus. This stuff works because we can watch\nMedea and we can encounter her trauma through our own knowledge of domestic\npain and gender. And it\u2019s not really of our time, it\u2019s of every time. I don\u2019t\nknow, sometimes a good story is just a good story, right? I don\u2019t want to get\nin the way of a good story by saying it\u2019s all going to be rooted in\ncontemporary politics, but I know there are things I can\u2019t do, and what I can\ndo is rooted in where I came from, which is journalism. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

AH: The Deuce <\/em>certainly seems topical too,\nand it seems to address many of the issues concerning gender, sex and sexuality\nthat have been debated in the media the last couple of years. Do you think that\nmovements or waves like #metoo and #timesup will actually change the media\nlandscape?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

DS: In the entertainment industry, I\u2019ve seen the\ndemeanor of people change, and largely for the better. Structurally, on set.\nEven on <\/em>The Deuce we\u2019ve improved the\nmeans by which we depict sexuality. We started to contemplate and emphasize\ncertain structural changes in terms of how we shoot simulated sex, which is a\nbig deal for performers. And I think the demeanor of how people respond to\nsubordinates and how you behave in the office \u2013 I think people have taken\npause, and it\u2019s a good thing. And, I think, certainly you want the most\negregious cases to be the paradigm examples of reform. I mean, Les Moonves, Bill\nCosby and Harvey Weinstein are fundamental, and there\u2019s a reason they stand\nout. They should stand out. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

To give one note of caution, which I think is fair to say: If we\u2019re going to replace The Court of Law and a determination of who is a sexual predator with judgment of employers and corporations as to whether or not someone can be employed or not employed, then that requires a certain amount of nuance, clarity and attention to detail. In the initial stages of #metoo and #timesup, all of the targets did seem to be those who were operating at great extremity and those who were actually being sexual predators. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I had an experience on <\/em>The Deuce where\none of our actors, Mr. Franco, was critiqued \u2013 there was a piece in one of the\nnewspapers about problems he had had making independent films and teaching film\ncourses \u2013 and there came a moment where we had to look at it very seriously.\nObviously, because of what the show is about it was even more important for us.\nWe looked at it with great care, case by case, detail by detail. And what we\nfound was \u2013 while there certainly may have been mistakes made with people\u2019s\nlevel of comfort on a film set, and there may have been mistakes made with Mr.\nFranco himself being a little bit oblivious to his own power to convince people\nor to get people to do what they would later on regret in terms of nudity (I\ndon\u2019t think he was aware of his own James Franconess, to be honest with you; in\nsome fundamental way, he underestimated just what it means when James Franco is\ngoing to teach you a course or put you in a small indie movie) \u2013 but what was\nmissing from all those critiques, which was obvious to the Weinstein, Cosby,\nMoonves cohort, was that James Franco wasn\u2019t trying to sleep with anybody. He\nwasn\u2019t trying to trade his power. He never asked for sexual favors. Obviously\nthings went wrong, and people were unhappy \u2013 I don\u2019t mean to dismiss that\nunhappiness; that\u2019s a cause for looking at it and a cause for reform \u2013 but I\nwas faced with working with someone who genuinely had not tried to use his\nposition to achieve any sexual favor with anyone. He hadn\u2019t asked anybody, and\nnobody was accusing him of that, so I got to the point \u2013 we were confronted\nwith a lot of calls to exile James Franco from the production \u2013 where none of\nus at HBO could find the justification to do that. That would have been an\ninappropriate level of response. That\u2019s not to suggest that what was critiqued\nisn\u2019t deserving of critique or that James should not respond to that, but to\nhave him in the same category as Weinstein or Moonves is an affront to the\nfacts, and it actually diminishes the value and the purpose of #metoo. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

When you flatten all offense and all error and make\neverything the same thing, you\u2019re not helping the cause. You\u2019re, in fact,\nmaking what is a substantial critique of sexual predation less substantial. So,\nif you\u2019re asking about the movement, I support this thing. I <\/em>support this\nthing, and I understand that it actually has the capacity to change things\nwithin the industry. But, on the other hand, its initial application has been\nrather a blunt weapon, and I don\u2019t know how we fix that. It\u2019s not like there\u2019s\na Board of Review. It\u2019s a very informal thing that happens which is, basically,\nit hits the newspapers and we all contemplate it. But it\u2019s not like there\u2019s\nsome governing body which you can appeal to and there\u2019s a ruling as to what is\nsexual predation and what is mere error. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

We made errors. In the first season of filming\n<\/em>The Deuce, we made errors in terms of\ncontributing to people\u2019s discomfort at times, and we certainly weren\u2019t trying\nto do it because we knew what we were chasing and how hard it was to film it.\nBut we got better as we went.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

So that would be my only critique: As we go on with\nthis thing, I think everybody has to get smarter about what is x and what is y.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

AH: One of the\nthings that many cable shows have utilized as something of an attraction is, in\nfact, nudity and sex. I think The Deuce<\/em>\nmanages to avoid exploitation, but how do you toe the line between depicting\nsex and exploitation without becoming potentially exploitative yourself?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

DS: We thought about every frame of film on this\nshow because we understand that if you create porn to critique porn, there\u2019s a\nlatent hypocrisy that the piece can\u2019t overcome. So we were very conscious about\nevery frame: How long the camera stays, what the camera sees, why the camera\nsees it. These discussions were had on every episode.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

AH: And Maggie Gyllenhaal\nis just wonderful in it\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

DS: I\u2019ll tell you this: The cast is so deep\nthat, as wonderful as Maggie is, I wish more people would also credit Emily\nMeade and Margarita Levieva \u2018cause they\u2019re all delivering. I just wish there was\nmore oxygen for everybody. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

AH: I see your\npoint. I\u2019ve always loved Michael Potts\u2019 character in The Wire<\/em>, for example, even if it isn\u2019t one of the most prominent\ncharacters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

DS: There\u2019s only so much oxygen, sadly.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a>
Fig. 4: Michael Potts from The Wire <\/em>and Show Me a Hero<\/em> argues that David Simon changed the face of TV by creating long, complex stories about American society and failing institutions. Photo: Jan Oxholm, New York, 2019.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Epilogue: From Cable-Revolution to Multiplatform Television<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

In 1991 David Simon wrote a journalistic book entitled Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets<\/em>, depicting a police department in the crime-ridden area of Baltimore, and the TV adaptation of that book, Homicide: Life on the Street <\/em>(NBC, 1993-1999), would help pave the way for the Golden Age of American television at the end of the 1990s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The TV landscape would not change dramatically, though, until the advent of the major cable networks and their introduction of original programming <\/em>at the turn of the century. HBO is often seen as the central game-changer in this context, and its slogan, \u201cIt\u2019s not TV. It\u2019s HBO\u201d, became a sort of motto for the general changes in the TV landscape and an illustration of the \u201cnot-TV\u201d branding of the cable networks (whether premium cable<\/em> or basic cable<\/em>). HBO promoted itself as something more <\/em>than traditional television, and their prestigious drama series are often seen as something else, entirely, than conventional TV serials. There has even been talk of an \u201cHBO Playbook\u201d which the other cable networks and major broadcasters hoped to emulate: a set of stylistic and narrative principles that HBO had almost been able to claim as their own. These included transgressive content<\/em>, social critique, narrative complexity, morally ambiguous characters and antiheroes, large ensembles, niche-marketing, narrowcasting <\/em>and an increased focus on TV auteurs <\/em>with strong names and recognizable trademarks (cf. H\u00f8jer & Halskov 2011).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is a well-known story by now, and many books have been written on the tradition of quality <\/em>in American television (Akass & McCabe 2007), also known as The Third Golden Age <\/em>(Nielsen et al. 2011), Peak TV<\/em> (Halskov 2015) or even The Platinum Age of Television <\/em>(Bianculli 2016). The importance of HBO in this context is also well-documented, and the TV scholars Kim Akass and Janet McCabe summarize HBO\u2019s history and importance in the following way:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Across its history HBO has repeatedly pushed the boundaries of the medium \u2013 in terms of delivery, form and content \u2013 motivated by its economically precarious and, at times, institutionally marginal position in the US audiovisual media ecology. HBO started as a small enterprise situated on the very fringes of the US TV industry. Without much media fanfare HBO launched on 8 November 1972, with the 1971 film, Sometimes a Great Notion<\/em> (dir. Paul Newman, 1970) starring Paul Newman and Henry Fonda, followed by a NHL hockey game between the New York Rangers and the Vancouver Canuck. Three hundred and sixty-five Service Electric subscribers in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania were the first to receive HBO (DeFino 2014). As of December 2013 HBO had an established 43 million domestic subscribers and by 2015 that figure had risen to 49 million, which included users of its newly launched streaming service, HBO NOW (Statista).HBO has gone from a small, almost regional service in the northeastern and Mid-Atlantic area of the United States to become a truly global brand and an internationally networked owner-syndicator.<\/p>– Akass & McCabe 2018.<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Akass and McCabe point\nto HBO as a sort of \u2019first-mover\u2019, and they write about HBO\u2019s ability to brand\ntheir content as particularly \u201dprestigious\u201d and \u201dexclusive\u201d. In this context,\nthe TV auteur or showrunner plays a vital role, and David Simon has become an\nimportant flagship for HBO, creating many of their most prestigious drama series\n(TV critics talk about flagship shows<\/em>,\nhigh-end television <\/em>and Quality TV<\/em>, whereas David Simon describes\nhis own TV series as \u201dteleplays\u201d or \u201dpieces\u201d, echoing the quality series of the\n1940s and \u201850s).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Much has been said\nand written about this change or paradigm shift in the TV landscape, and many\ncritics agree on Simon\u2019s importance to this shift and the modern TV series (cf.\nGjelsvik & Bruhn 2011, Lavik 2014 and Nochimson 2019).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A lot has\nhappened, though, since the premieres of Homicide\n<\/em>and The Wire<\/em>, and we could\npossibly talk of a new paradigm shift in the American (and global) mediascape\nduring the last decade. Trishia Dunleavy (2018) writes about a shift from cable-revolution <\/em>to multiplatform television<\/em>, Neil Landau talks about TV outside the box <\/em>(2016), and Martha\nNochimson (2019) argues that the TV industry and the TV series have been rewired<\/em>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The modern TV series is seen on many different platforms and in various contexts, and phenomena like Video on Demand (VOD), DVD- and Blu-ray-boxes (HBO were also pioneers in that area), smartphones, tablets and cord-cutting <\/em>have all contributed to some major shifts in the mediascape and have all but changed our understanding of the word \u201dTV series\u201d. According to Akass and McCabe: \u201dthe TV viewer has been remade within these technologies and the new technologies have [\u2026] allowed for new ways of consuming, watching and appreciating television\u201d (Akass & McCabe 2018).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the modern\nstreaming landscape, the competition between different outlets, platforms and\nproducers is bigger, and companies and conglomerates like Comcast, Apple, Disney\nand Netflix have moved the tent poles and challenged the status of cable\nnetworks like HBO. The question is where this leaves HBO, their focus on \u201dprestige\u201d,\n\u201dexclusivity\u201d and TV auteurs like David Simon. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

With AT&T\u2019s take-over,\nit looks as if HBO is changing and approaching the model of Netflix. HBO are\nstill supposed to create award-winning drama series, but, according to AT&T\u2019s\nJohn Stankey, they are also supposed to produce more content, hoping to survive\nthe competition from players like Netflix and Hulu (cf. Alexander 2019). <\/em>The new streaming service, HBO Max,\nwill include many of HBO\u2019s prestigious shows but also a broader selections of\nshows from different channels and producers. Variety <\/em>describes this change as a jump from \u201dboutique\u201d to \u201dbig\nbox\u201d, and this could have major consequences for HBO as a brand. Can HBO\nproduce a bigger output<\/em> and let their\nprestigious TV series be part of broader bulks of entertainment and still\nmaintain their strong brand as a producer of exclusive and alternative content?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Where this leaves HBO and the showrunner David Simon, is unclear. But even if Simon deals with the past \u2013 the 1980s in Show Me a Hero<\/em>, the 1970s in The Deuce <\/em>and the 1940s in the forthcoming The Plot Against America <\/em>\u2013 it would be unfair to label him and his shows as relics of the past. Simon was a central flagship for HBO, when they revolutionized the TV-landscape in the beginning of the 2000s, and he will probably be a crucial part of HBO as they try to compete and position themselves in the modern and highly competitive streaming landscape. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In any case, we\nwill always need authentic and socially relevant stories that utilize the past\nto speak to the present, and there will always be a demand for personal TV creators\nand strong, influential voices. Someone like Simon. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

* * *<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Facts<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Literature<\/h3>\n\n\n\n