Normally, When someone goes on a killing spree and shoots up a bunch of old men (gangsters or not) the audience is supposed to feel remorse for the old men, and disgust at the main character. Killing in general is a no-no when it comes to rules of the world, Killing has consequences and killing changes the innocent main character and puts him or her in the gray scale on the goodness and humanity chart that is normally white and black. And yet.. the main character in Ghost Dog played by Forest Whitaker still manages to maintain his integrity and likeability after murdering many people, for less than reasonable reasons.
D'Angelo Barksdale who played a murder/drug dealer in Season 1 ep. 1 of the Wire is also a killer. He kills in a panic a young man in front of witnesses, and at the end of the episode, the witness ends up dead. Throughout the episode, although he is a murderer, D'Angelo shows signs of kindness that make the viewer start to like him and identify with him. For example, when one of his guys unknowingly accepted fake money, D'Angelo simply reprimanded him with words, causing surprise from one of the other guys watching "That's it?" he said, inferring that usually for a mistake like this, there would be other consequences. Little scenes like this convey the meaning that although D'Angelo is a murderer, there are some redeemable qualities in him.
Redeemable qualities that are also seen in Ghost Dog, who frequently kill for money. He is also able to bond with a young girl and an ice-cream man who speaks a completely different language. The scene where Ghost Dog and the Young girl are speaking educatedly about books they have read and bonding that way, also where Ghost Dog and his best friend, the Ice cream man are bonding over chess, are scenes put there to distinguish Ghost Dog from an ordinary killing animal. These scenes are impactful because they show his intelligence and allow for human bonding moments that also highlight the redeemable qualities of Ghost Dog. The Wire and Ghost Dog are unknowingly trying to make the audience look past the the crimes of their characters, placing redeemable qualities within throughout the films so the audience questions weather right and wrong is black and white.
I'm not sure if you are making the statement that Ghost Dog frequently killed for money. But if you are I would argue that that's not entirely true. As he is only paid once a year (First day of fall), I feel that it is less about the money for him. I think that is the whole point of the ancient Japanese credos Ghost Dog lives by. It is to show the audience that it is not about money when you live on principle. But other than that I think the inclusion of the redeemable characteristics really does help the "protagonist" stay in good spirits with the audience. (I used quotes because they still are murderers)
ReplyDeleteI agree with you that these points that you have mentioned are put in to make people question right and wrong, but I also believe that it could go further than that and make the audience question themselves. Ghost Dog is, in lay terms, a murderer. When looking with this mindset, people are forced to question why they still accept him and root for him. Most murderers aren't fully evil, most have redeemable qualities, but does that mean that they shouldn't be prosecuted? Should we root for all murderers if they have redeemable qualities? I think both of these works make people really question themselves along with the lines of right and wrong.
ReplyDeleteI think that both pieces illustrate that things are not always easily categorized: good or bad; murderer or honorable code follower; family business employee or drug dealer. People can be admirable and despicable at the same time. We are complex characters in real life, so why not take that complexity and put it on the television or movie screen? Good people do bad things and bad people do good things.
ReplyDeleteDear folks,
ReplyDeleteThis is an interesting conversation, and I'm compelled to comment on this as well. Rachel brings up an interesting point that probably extends well beyond these two movies: why we often end up rooting for on-screen villains and other "evil" protagonists of our stories. To take "Batman: The Dark Knight as a recent example: most people I know found Heath Leger's Joker - a deranged lunatic who murders several people - a more compelling character than Christian Bale's Batman. So why do we enjoy watching cinematic representations of behavior we would never condone in real life? To answer this, we need a theory about the relation between fictional representations of morality and morality itself. How does film communicate ideas about the real world through fictional representations?
For Aristotle (one of the first to think about these problems) immorality in theater belongs to tragedy and has a pedagogical function. In classical tragedy, unethical actions are punished by the gods: the populace therefore learns not to behave immorally - basically, they learn through seeing representations of what not to do. And we can see often see this structure in contemporary popular culture - evil gets punished, the criminal gets caught, the hero always triumphs - these are clichés of our movies, literature, etc, that everyone will recognize. And in this sense, the eventual fall of D'Angelo Barksdale is a morality lesson for the audience. It teaches us both about the individual fate of those who break the law, yet it also acts as a critique of a society that can not find a place for D'Angelo outside of the drug business.
Freudian theory, however, complicates Aristotle's idea. For Freud, the work of art had the function of "wish-fulfillment;" it allows the audience to vicariously participate - in fiction - in actions that they are not able to act out in reality. So I would never shoot at a crowd of people with a machine gun, but watching Sylvester Stalone provides me a safe way to live out this desire. Action movies, for instance, may let us indulge murderous fantasies without living them. In this sense, The Wire might offer it's audience something more than a moral lesson - maybe it allows them to vicariously participate in a lifestyle (drug dealer) that most of the audience is not familiar with. Games like Grand Theft Auto certainly seem to meet this need. In this sense, Ghost Dog might be seen to provide a comment on this - the televised violence of the cartoons commenting on the "real' violence of the dramatic narrative.
So in terms of the Wire - I suppose I tend towards the Aristotelian interpretation. I think the Wire attempts to work as social critique and teach a moral lesson to its audience. But I think that Freud's ideas provide an important counterweight - certain elements of the representation (mostly the dramatic gun-play) seem to indulge the audience's desire for violent spectacle.