NB SPOILERS! Only read if you have watched The Wire all the way through
HBO’s highly acclaimed series ‘The Wire’ has won praise for a number of reasons. However there is one serious criticism that has been levelled against the series – the way that women are portrayed. This article by Sophie Jones on popmatters http://www.popmatters.com/pm/feature/women-and-the-wire puts specific criticisms of the show better than I can. Even the usually glowing Guardian blog felt it had to devote a blog to the issue http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/organgrinder/2009/jul/07/the-wire-re-up-women
A quick word on Masculinity in The Wire
The two main worlds that The Wire explores, the Baltimore Police Department and the drug gangs, are both male dominated. Both worlds are governed by a tough version of masculinity where there is little room for sentiment or compromise. This is to be expected when the drug trade is to put it mildly ‘highly competitive’ and the Baltimore police department copes with the strains (social and political) of dealing with Baltimore’s appalling homicide rate.
Both the Baltimore Police Department and Drug organisations have rigid power structures, where masculine posturing and assertiveness is required both to advance within these structures, then maintain a position of power.
Male friendship and male bonding is shown as an important component of ensuring the formation of an efficient unit in both the police and drug gangs. It is a useful part of this male bonding to have women as ‘the other’ who can be either looked down on or rebelled against. Derogatory terms for women are used as put downs for men who fall short of their roles and fail to assert power over others.
Both worlds involve covert actions which require high levels of secrecy and trust. Because of this ‘Snitching’ is one of the worst sins that you can commit in either world.
Both the police and drug dealers use force, both direct and implied, to assert or maintain power.
Indeed the logical implications of the term ‘War on drugs’ is carried through in the show. The language that the police use when discussing or addressing the drug ravaged communities (Herc’s infamous quote ‘maybe we won’ and Carvers’ ‘You do not get to win, We get to win!’ to the young drug dealers in series three) betrays the aggressive attitude towards these communities. The drug gangs often speak of going to war with each other.
What role is there for women in such a world?
The Drug trade
The Wire has an unapologetic social agenda to explore the disintegration of a major US city and the failure of the US political system is failing to halt this. The show focuses on why the drug economy has become so entrenched in Baltimore and why the ‘war on drugs’ will never be able to properly address this. As part of this, the show gives voice to the young African American men who become involved in this trade. These young me are usually highly demonised and made in to amoral figures of fear in the media. The show illustrates the social conditions and pressures that lead these young men into the trade and they have intelligence, loyalty, courage and moral codes that govern their behaviour. The term ‘solider’ (with its connotations of bravery, stoicism and comradeship) is used for the ‘muscle’ and to a certain extent the ‘middle management’ of the drug organisations (such as D’Angelo and later Bodie).
The show also gives us some complex and charismatic men who work in the drug trade. These characters explode stereotypes of African American male criminality. There is Stringer Bell, a highly intelligent individual who applies economic theory to the drug trade and who but for circumstances would be a major CEO on Wall Street and Omar Little a free lance ‘stick up artist’ who keeps to a clear moral code and is a monogamous gay man.
But while The Wire allows for any number of complex male characters in the drug trade there are few corresponding female characters.
These usually fall into various categories
‘Dragon lady’ mothers
The central woman in the Barksdale organisation is Brianna Barksdale, who is mother of D’Angelo and sister of Avon. Her first appearance in the series is when she delivers lunch to D’Angelo when he is working in the pit. In the audio commentary, David Simon says this scene illustrates how entrenched the drug trade is in Baltimore.
When D’Angelo is arrested with a ‘re-up’ at the end of series one, Brianna pressurises him into taking a twenty year sentence rather than taking a plea bargain which would involve implication his uncle Avon and other Barksdale crew members, citing the importance of family. While he takes the prison sentence, he becomes further alienated from the Barksdale organisation and this results in Stringer Bell having him murdered.
Avon clearly respects Brianna as he discusses business with her (for example he discusses the problems with getting a reliable source of heroin and cocaine with her in Series two and Stringer gest her to try and persuade Avon to accept sharing the Franklin terrace with Prop Joe in return for a good drug supply). Indeed Brianna is put in charge of Barksdale’s finances at the end of series one when Avon is arrested. After Avon is imprisoned again in series three, Brianna is again left to administer Avon’s finances and Avon has financial transactions go through her (he asks Marlo to give Brianna $100,000 in order to arrange the meeting with Sergei). However Brianna’s role in the Barksdale organisation is never investigated by the police. Even Freamon and McNulty do not realise her significance.
Brianna’s behaviour is later echoed in an even more appalling manner by De’Londra Brice, Wee-Bey’s partner and mother of Namond Brice. It is implied that she may have used money which was to go towards supporting Namond on herself. When Brianna cuts off the money De’Londra and Namond were receiving from the Barksdale organisation, De’Londra tries to push Namond further into the drug trade. She bullies him to getting a drug package from Bodie to sell himself.
So while women are shown not to be directly involved in the drug trade in terms of actually running drugs organisations or selling drugs on the streets, they are portrayed in ‘The Wire’ as having an integral part as ‘enforcers’ who place pressure on young men to go into the drug trade, stay involved once they are part of a drugs organisation and carry the can when things go wrong. The Wire shows that the reasons young men end up in drugs organisations are highly complex and numerous. Pressure from female family members is only one.
Both the Guardian piece and Sophie Jones’ piece are particularly troubled by the portrayal of Brianna and De’Londra (and Jones in particular expresses concern about a lack of understanding of the circumstances that lead women to look to the drugs trade for financial security). One of the main strands of The Wire is the failure of government bodies to address or alleviate the massive social problems that the US inner cities face and how drug organisations exploit and fill this gap. A good example of this is in series four where Marlo provides Michael and Bug with a decent home and financial support and has Michaels abusive stepfather killed in return for Michael becoming a ‘solider’ in his organisation. Michael did not have confidence in social services to take sufficient action to protect Bug and himself from any potential abuse from his stepfather (or to address his mothers neglect). The appalling fate that Randy receives within the care system, being placed in a brutalising group home, confirms Michael’s misgivings. Given these failings it can only be expected that some women turn to drug money to support themselves and their families.
There is also no corresponding act of motherly altruism to mirror that of Wee-Bey Brice who sacrifices his own rights as a father so Namond may have a better future.
Failed Mothers
As well as ‘monstrous’ mothers there is another type of mother portrayed in The Wire’- failed mothers. These women are unable to be properly present in the lives of their children due to their substance abuse problems, often with horrendous consequences.
We find out in series one that Bodie’s mother was a homeless drug addict who died as a result of her addiction when he was four. His grandmother took him in but as she tells Herc , "he was only four, but even then, I knew he was angry." This anger is regularly acted out in series one.
Darcia Wallace (Wallace’s mother) is an alcoholic who shows more interest in getting drunk that acknowledging the fact that her son is in mortal danger.
Most damaging is Raylene Lee, Michaels’ mother. She is a long term drug addict who thinks nothing of selling the food out of her two son’s mouths for feed her habit. She allows her partner Devar back into the family home after he is realised from prison, in spite of the fact he has abused her older son Michael. Bunk goes to interview Raylene in series five about the murder of Devar (which her knows Chris Partlow was responsible for). Even though Bunk correctly guesses the reasons for Devar’s murder he still uses flattery to try and get information about Raylene, asking her if his murder was a crime of passion. David Simon does allow a moment of compassion for Raylene in series five in his commentary over the scene where she attempts to reconnect to Michael and Bug.
We see that these ‘failed’ mothers are damaged women and can assume that they have suffered experiences which have driven them to become addicts. However we do not hear these women’ stories. In ‘The Corner’ (an earlier TV mini-series made by the same team and also set in West Baltimore) one of the central characters is Fran Boyd , who in spite of her drug addiction attempts to try and guide her son DeAndre away from drugs and the drug trade and to keep her family together. This storyline is based on the genuine story of Fran Boyd and her family.
Both Wallace and Michael are forced by their mothers’ addictions to act in the role of parent to younger siblings. Not only do they have to assume the practical side of parenting (such as feeding and educational support) they also have to assume financial responsibility for their younger siblings, leading them into the one profession they can make money – the drug trade.
With both types of mother, young men are left with a considerable amount of anger against women. We see this acted out on by the older members of the drug gangs.
Girlfriends
Donette is the mother of D’Angelo’s son Tyrell. As the mother of a Barksdale child she secures a stake in the Barksdale organisation and with it a measure of prestige and affluence. However her financial demands on D’Angelo and her failure to appreciate his deepening discomfort at his involvement in the drug trade mean that he blanches from committing to a long term relationship with her.
It is made clear to Donette that being the mother of D’ Angelo’s child brings responsibilities. Brianna pressurises her into visiting D’ Angelo in prison despite the discomfort these visit cause both D’Angelo and Donette.
When D’Angelo is sent to prison, Stringer Bell exploits Donette’s feelings of loneliness to start a relationship. He does not do this out of affection for Donette but as a means to find out information about D’Angelo. As a result of Donette’s reports on her visits to D’Angelo (which to be fair she makes out of concern for him), Stringer decides to have D’Angelo killed.
Donette is then used by McNulty in series three. He tells her about his suspicions that D’Angelo did not kill himself but had been murdered. Donette then reports these suspicions to Brianna (which was what McNulty wanted). This will eventually lead to Stringer having to reveal the truth about D’Angelo’s death to Avon, placing further strain on their already fragile relationship. McNulty at least gives Donette some credit for caring about D’Angelo, which he uses as a goad to Brianna.
The last time we see Donette, it is in the montage at the end of series three. She is weeping inconsolably, presumably for the recently murdered Stringer Bell. In the foreground we see Tyrell playing, near pictures of his ill fated father. I cannot help but feel rather sorry for Donette and see her as actually highly vulnerable. She represents the many women who are ‘widowed’ by the violence of the drug trade (not just once but twice). This has a considerable emotional cost (as well bringing financial instability). I cannot help but fear for Donette in the long term. She may well take comfort in hard drugs, ending up an addict herself. Brianna will undoubtedly want to insure her grandson is brought up in the family trade.
One of the murders investigated in series one is that of Deirdre Kresson, a girlfriend of Avon Barksdale. She was not happy that Avon was seeing other women as well as her and threatened to tell the police about his activities. Avon had her killed some months before series one begins. As a drug baron Avon would see it as his right (if not an outright necessity) to be promiscuous as a sign of his masculinity as it acts as sign of virility and lack of sentimentality. Deirdre fails to appreciate this. She gives into jealously and vindictiveness. She also fails to appreciate the importance of ‘No snitching’. She pays for this with her life. It is worth noting that as a college student, and therefore presumably middle class, Deirdre is not familiar with the codes that govern street activity. D’Angelo tells two versions of Deirdre’s murder, one to his crew in the pit, the second to McNulty and Bunk. D’Angelo tells Bodie, Poot and Wallace a version of Deirdre’s murder where he alone is responsible for her death. He does this in order to command more respect and authority from the young men. In the version he tells McNulty and Bunk he correctly attributes Deirdre’s murder to Wee-Bey (this is confirmed by the forensic evidence). He claims no prior knowledge of Wee-Bey’s intentions, asserting that Wee-Bey used the opportunity of D’Angelo delivering an ‘eight ball’ (eighth of an ounce) of cocaine to Deirdre to shoot her. (Of course D’Angelo may be agin lying again about what exactly what happened). D’Angelo tells Bunk and McNulty that Deirdre enjoyed tormenting him by being naked when dealing with him (she is off limits to him as the girlfriend of his uncle, a far more powerful man). Telling his crew this would undermine his authority. I cannot help but feel that Deidre is killed as much for being a ‘bad woman’ who refused to accept the offhand treatment women receive in their relationships with drug gangsters for two reasons. Firstly her friend Tywanda is informed about Avon’s activities but is not pursued (although it can be assumed Avon is not aware that Deidre had informed her). Secondly Deidre’s is the first of several murders of young women with sexual undertones. She is half naked when she is shot. Her sexuality is something which needs to be destroyed as it poses a threat to the Barksdale organisation.
In series three there are two storylines which revolve about women who work for the Barksdale organisation. ‘Squeak’ is the girlfriend of Bernard, who is responsible for buying the ‘burners’ (disposable mobile phones) for the crew. She accompanies on his long road trips to buy the phones but quickly gets bored. She undermines the security of the Barksdale crew by persuading Bernard to buy several phones at one time from a shop rather than two (using sex to do so). This will make it easier for McNulty and Kima to track his movements later in the series as it both draws more attention to his actions from the shop owner and shortens the route he takes to buy the phones. More seriously, Bubbles is able to exploit his link to Squeak to persuade her and Bernard to buy Freamon’s wire-taped ‘burners’. We lastly see Squeak in the final episode of series three in handcuffs with Bernard and other members of the Barksdale crew. This leads to one of the most comic moments of the entire five series, when provoked by Squeaks’ nagging, Bernard tells another Barksdale crew member that he can’t wait to go to jail. It is worth noting Squeak has previously been a ‘booster’ (professional shoplifter), one of the few criminal roles which is traditionally dominated by women.
The other woman who works for the Barksdale crew is Devonne. She hired by Avon as a ‘honey trap’ to lure Marlo to an ambush. However through Snoop’s surveillance her duplicity is discovered and Marlo personally kills her (this is the only time in the entire series he performs a killing which shows the extent of his anger). The killing is highly sexualised with Marlo shooting Devonne in the breasts and mouth, an act which is both destructive and violating.
In both cases women Squeak and Devonne are portrayed as using their sexuality to try and manipulate men. In both cases they are punished for this. Another story line in series three which acts as a warning to young men in ‘the game’ about the perils of women is when Cutty has to deal with a drug dealer who has been embezzling money to buy gifts for his girlfriend.
The word most used by the young men who work in the drug trade use about young women is ‘shorty’, the same word they use for pre-teenage boys. Women are seen quite literally falling ‘short’ of having the necessary qualities to be part of the drug trade.
Snoop, Kimmy and Tonya
We now come to the exception that proves the rule- Snoop. We first see her in series three when she is assisting Marlo in his campaign to take over the Barksdale organisation’s territory. Many commentators on The Guardian Wire blog note that at first it is not clear what gender Snoop is. She has a slight figure, wears her hair in corn rows (a unisex hair style) and wears the same style baggy shirts and jeans, puffa jackets and baseball caps as the male gang members.
Over series four and five Snoop proves to be an efficient cold blooded ‘Solider’ who helps Chris Partlow to dispatch twenty two people in the course of a few months. However ‘Snoop’ is not seen committing any murders directly. She also helps train Michael up as a ‘solider’.
While Chris Partlow is shown to have a family he loves and wants to provide for (to the point where he agrees to accept murder charges against him in return for Marlo providing for his family) and it indicated that he was molested as a child (by his anger and violence during his killing of Michael’s stepfather), Snoop is not given such humanising touches. She is shown taken bloodthirsty delight in her work.
It is indicated by a single reference that Snoop is gay. When Bunk makes a comment about ‘getting some pxxxy’ when arresting Snoop and Chris towards the end of series four (asserting his power by comparing arresting the pair with picking up a woman), Snoop retorts she was thinking about getting some herself. David Simon confirmed that this was an ad-lib by Felicia Pearson for which he was very grateful! It is worth reflecting that Felicia Pearson chose to indicate that Snoop not only shared her name but her sexuality, making explicit what the writers chose to make implicit.
Snoop is one of several gay female characters in The Wire (I will discuss the other major lesbian character Kima Greggs when I discuss women in the police). Her sexuality makes it easier for her to work with Chris as it firstly removes any sexual tension (a dangerous distraction when they need to concentrate on enforcing Marlo’s authority) and secondly means that Chris’s partner will accept him working with Snoop as she poses no sexual threat to their relationship. However there is something rather disquieting about the way ‘The Wire’ portrays its lesbian characters. The only women who gain admittance to the drug gangs and police on equal footing to men are lesbians. Their sexuality is conflated with behaving in a masculine manner (i.e. aggressive, emotionally detached). I will return to this when I discuss Kima.
Snoop meets her own death at Michael’s hands with the stoicism and equanimity of a ‘ solider’ . It is only in her final words to Michael that Snoop becomes feminine. Her final words are ‘How my hair look, Mike?” with Michael answering “You look good, girl”. There is no longer any point maintaining a masculine demeanour.
Any discussion of Snoop cannot be divorced from a discussion of Felicia Pearson herself. Felicia is from East Baltimore and her memoir ‘Grace after midnight’ relates life story that would not out of place as a ‘Wire’ story line. Felicia was convicted at 14 of the second degree murder of another girl and served time in prison. Felicia’s story illustrates that girls and young women are not as immune to falling into drugs gangs or being involved in the violence that results as ‘The Wire’ would have. Felicia is also openly gay.
There are two other women, rarely discussed when looking at The Wire I want to finish by looking at. These are Tosha Mitchell and Kimmy, Omar’s associates in series two and three. Omar first spots them robbing a stash hose he himself was planning to rob. Impressed by this, he invites them to join himself and Dante, his then boyfriend. Dante, however is highly hostile to the two women. He believes that Omar wants to sleep with them, in spite of his protestations otherwise (I don’t bag no babies!) . It is never spelt out, but that Tonya and Kimmy are themselves a couple (again the show seems to be arguing that lesbians are the only women who are truly able to integrate themselves into the violent world of the drug gangs). Kimmy and Tonya prove adept at disguise and help Omar get into several stash houses. They often take on traditional female roles (nurse, mother) to do this, exploiting expectations of female behaviour. It is no coincidence that it is Omar, a gay man, who can appreciate the women’s skills and who can work with them without any issues of sexual attraction or misogyny.
Eventually Tonya is killed in a raid on a Barksdale stash house in series three. Dante accidentally shots Tonya in a gun battle, unconsciously acting on his ongoing hostility towards herself and Kimmy. Kimmy leaves Omar’s gang shortly afterwards. Bunk is assigned to investigate Tonya’s death and first assumes due to her sex that she was an innocent bystander who got caught in cross fire. However the forensic evidence indicates that Tonya was participating in the gun battle. He deals with considerable tact and sympathy with Tonya’s ‘people’ (family). We see that Tonya’s ‘people’ are all women. This opens up questions about what effect this would had on Tonya- did it show her a strong model of female independence? Bunk continues to strive to find out the circumstances of Tonya’s death, even reminding Omar about it in series four.
Kimmy returns to assist Omar with his raid at on Prop Joe’s major ‘Re-up’ at the end of series four. She disguises herself as a crack addicted prostitute (the most debased form of womanhood in the eyes of the drug gang members) to distract the men guarding the drugs. She knows the reaction of the guards will be annoyance, not arousal. She takes great delight when she drops her disguise and can brandish her gun. When Prop Joe complains to Cheese about the raid, Cheese retorts the consignment was attacked by a commando unit, specifically citing Kimmy pulling a gun from her pudenda as being an example of what he was up against. His final line ‘Shit was unseemly!’ reveals that he is if anything more offended by Kimmy’s transgression against female propriety than the stealing of the drugs. Kimmy makes literal the drug gang member’s misogynistic fear that female pudenda (and by implication female sexuality) are a place of concealed danger and treachery. She does this with considerable style!
Some final thoughts on masculinity and the drug trade in The Wire
While ‘The Wire’ may be harsh in its portrayal of women attached to the drug trade, there is also an unspoken but implied criticism of absent fathers. The only role models the young men who work in the drug trade have are older drug dealers. The absence of fathers leads to ‘hyper masculinity’ which values machismo, aggression and misogyny.
bell hooks, the noted African American feminist writer, explores the effects that the white patriarchal model of male/female relations has on the African American community. Single mothers are demonised. She illustrates the anger African A Kevin Powell in ‘Keepin it real’ “I remembered hating my mother and blaming her for everything terrible in my life”.
’The Wire’ shows how the escalating violence of the drug trade becomes a zero sum game, and it is not women who are responsible for this. As poet Essex Hemphill told filmmaker Isaac Julien “It is important to realise that it isn’t black women who are gunning down one another. Black women are not gunning us down and beating us to death. We are doing this.”
Women in the sex trade
As well as the drug trade there is one other illegal economy shown in The Wire which women most certainly are involved- this is the sex trade. The two are shown to be intimately related.
Drug Gangs and the Sex trade
In season one of The Wire the Barksdale organisation owns a strip club ‘Orlandos’ which Avon and Stringer use to run business meetings. This club is one of the organisations legitimate ‘front’ business. However Shardene, a dancer/hostess at the club, explains that prostitution does go on. Whether the Barksdale crew makes any profit from this is not ever made clear.
In series one, some of the dancers at Orlando’s work as prostitutes at a party that various members of the Barksdale organisation throw. In series three both Avon and Cutty have threesomes arranged for them. It is obvious that Cutty’s threesome is with prostitutes. It is not made clear if these are women who work for the Barksdale organisation or have been hired for these occasions. What is clear is that prostitutes are used as payment/inducement to members of drug gangs. Devonne who works as a honeytrap in series three may possibly be a prostitute.
At no point in all five series do Avon, Stringer or Marlo ever discuss prostitution. There is never any reference to any person who works in the role of ‘pimp’ or ‘madam’. In series two, Prop Joe is getting his heroin through ‘the Greek’ who is also trafficking women into prostitution. However apart from this there is no connection between Prop Joe and the brothel the women are trafficked into. The makers of the show were obviously concerned to not show the drug organisations directly involved in prostitution.
However there are a couple of women who work whose stories whose stories begin to reveal some truths for those women involved in the sex trade
Shardene Innes
One of the dancers/hostesses at the Orlando’s is Shardene Innes. As well as dancing she encourages patrons to buy expensive drinks and flirts with them. D’Angelo becomes intrigued by her while socialising in the club. He is impressed when he sees pacifying a dissatisfied customer who claims to have been ripped off (similar to the way that D’Angelo has to pacify drug addicts in the pit). She initially resists his request to go out, hesitant about getting involved with someone from the Barksdale organisation and dating a patron of the club. This indicates Shardene is trying to avoid drifting into prostitution. However they start going out and things appear to be going well. Part of the attraction of Shardene for D’Angelo is that she is not as demanding as someone like Donette. D’Angelo also senses that Shardene feels as trapped in their world as he does.
Another dancer at the club Keisha dies as a result of a drugs overdose at a party thrown by the Braksdale organisation and is dumped in the streets by Wee-Bey. Freamon and Kima decide to show Shardene Keisha’s body in order to persuade her to become an informant. They had sensed when looking at records of the dancers at Orlando’s that Shardene was a ‘civilian’ i.e. not interested in illegal activities i.e. not a prostitute. Shardene, horrified by the circumstances of Keesha’s death agrees to spy at Orlando’s. As part of persuading her to become an informant Freamon offers Shardene a piece of his miniature furniture – a baby’s crib (a symbol of maternal respectability and domesticity). This turns out to be more than a symbolic offer of domesticity as Freamon also offers to let Shardene stay at his apartment while she rebuilds her life.
This turns into a relationship and in series two Kima goes to interview Shardene in order to make links to some of her ex-colleagues. We see that Shardene is training to be a nurse and is blissfully happy. Shardene’s new hair style and clothes testify to her more respectable position in society. We meet Shardene again briefly at the end of series five, when she attends Freamon’s ‘wake’ with him. Although it is never stated Freamon prominently wears a wedding ring in series five indicating that he has married Shardene. We last see Shardene in the closing sequence of the series, when she looks adoringly at Freamon while he makes miniature furniture. The implication is that while Freamon may not have achieved high rank in the Baltimore Police Department or received the decorations he deserved as an outstanding police man, he is given his just reward in a beautiful adoring young wife.
In many ways Shardene starts out as a female equivalent to D’Angelo. While D’Angelo challenges the audiences’ assumptions about young men who deal drugs so Shardene challenges assumptions about women who work in the sex industry. Shardene conducts herself with dignity and courage. When Shardene is allowed an escape from her seedy profession, she takes it and becomes a ‘useful member of society’. However it is disappointing we do not see any domestic scenes between Shardene and Freamon to give more substance to their relationship or see any scenes of Shardene working as a nurse. Shardene’s story plays out like a piece of male wish fulfilment.
Keisha Michaels
Keisha Michaels was a dancer at Orlando’s who also worked as a prostitute. She overdosed on drugs at Stikum’s promotion party and rather than listen to her pleas for help, Wee-Bey has sex with her. When she dies Wee-Bey leaves her naked body in a dumpster. Freamon and Kima show her dead body to Shardene in order to persuade her to spy on Avon and the Barksdale crew. Wee-Bey and other members of the Barksdale crew use crude misogynistic language about Keisha, even after her death. Kima informs Shardene about this, to impress upon her that the Barksdale crew see women like her as ‘trash’. This is the one moment in the entire series where a female police officer uses a sense of female solidarity to impress upon another woman the need for action against drug gangs. Keisha is the second young woman in series one to die at the hands of Wee-Bey and again she is naked when she dies. The sexual abuse of her unconscious body echoes a line used by Poot earlier in the episode about having sex in ‘all three holes’. Again a young woman is condemned to death by the misogynistic code of the drug economy.
The ‘Jane Does’
Series two has at its centre an investigation into the deaths of fourteen women who died while being trafficked into the US to work in the sex trade. The deaths occur when one woman gets killed when she objects to working as a prostitute. Her body is thrown overboard and discovered floating in Baltimore port. The ‘shepherd’ who was responsible for bringing the women to the USA then panicked and killed the remaining women by cutting off the air to the container they were being transported in.
The trafficked women are from Eastern Europe and far east and probably unaware what they were being transported to the USA for. There proves to be no way of identifying them as individuals (thus they are called Jane Does) and in a final indignity, their bodies are eventually passed to the anatomy board for medical research. They remain ‘Jane Does’ even after their murders are solved.
It is McNulty who works out that the trafficked women were murdered, but he does this not out of a sense of justice for the women but to get revenge on Rawls for demoting him to the marine unit. He knows that both the number of dead women and difficulty of the case will cause problems for Rawls. Freamon and Bunk make McNulty drink fourteen shots of whisky in honour of his achievement and joke at the expense of their superiors and Cole who has been assigned the case. When Landsman transfers the case to Freamon and Bunk (in revenge for their friendship with McNulty) they in turn are made to drink fourteen shots of whisky.
Interestingly it is a female police officer Beattie Russell who was first on the scene of the thirteen dead bodies. She gets involved with the case, motivated by the horror of what she has seen.
Freamon, Bunk and Beattie discover from their discussions with the FBI that each trafficked woman can earn her handlers at least half a million dollars over two years (showing the amount of money that is to be made out of women’s bodies). Beattie asks if the trafficked women know that they are going to be used as prostitutes once they get to the USA. They also discover that there could be between 40,000-50,000 trafficked women in the USA. This prompts the remark from Bunk ‘they need a whole new agency just to police them!’ This in turn prompts the remark from Beattie that ‘What they need is a union!’ So while Bunk and Freamon are concerned with human trafficking as a law enforcement issue, Beattie (the one woman in the room) shows concern for the trafficked women as human beings trapped in an appalling situation.
McNulty decides that he is going to discover the identity of his ‘floater’ in order that he can at least inform her family and get her a proper burial. Bunk pours scorn on his intentions, questioning his motivations. McNulty discovers through a letter on her body that her name is ‘Nadya’ but is unable to trace her family so has to allow her body to go to the anatomy board. He tells Bunk feels he owes her as it was investigating her death that allowed him to feel like proper police again. He does not add that another reason is that he exploited her murder for revenge.
When Frank Sobotka confronts Vondas about the dead women he does not say that the dock workers will not handle any containers which have trafficked women in them, merely that he needs to be informed. He is obviously shocked about what he has gotten involved with and attempts to put some distance between himself and ‘The Greek’ but in the end has become too dependent on his money for helping run the Union’s campaign to improve the port and support the port workers.
Kima is the other woman who gets involved with investigating the deaths of the Jane Does. When Kima, Cheryl and Prez visit Shardene’s friend, who still works as a stripper, she explains that many of the local sex workers have been made redundant by the clubs as a result of the trafficked women’s arrival. This fits in with the series’ exploration of the effects of globalisation on Baltimore. She tells them the trafficked women are kept in conditions little better than slavery, being accompanied by heavies everywhere they go (one woman had a stun gun used on her when she merely went to get some food). However the seriousness of the information is undercut by the bleak humour of the scene both of Prez’s discomfort at visiting a strip club with women and the domestic tensions between Kima and Cheryl, who does not approve of Kima being around strippers as she thinks she will misbehave. Cheryl states that most of the women who work in strip clubs are lesbian during her row with Kima about the assignment. This is borne out by the remark that the stripper makes at the end of the interview when she asks Cheryl if she is Kima’s girl and says that she was right to accompany her ‘ I wouldn’t let mine come in here without me either- the bxxxes in here are no joke’(i.e. one of the strippers would have tried and seduce Kima). These couple of scenes, while played for laughs make an interesting point that while sex workers may ostensibly be making themselves sexually available for men, their true desires lie with women. This disconnection may make their work easier.
The unit manages to discover an address and contact for the brothel the women are trafficked into through arresting a ‘John’. The ‘Johns’ who use the trafficked women are portrayed as prosperous middle class white men, usually from out of town (thus exonerating the good citizens of Baltimore!)
The police eventually hold a raid on the brothel. Bunk’s word before the raid urging caution “ It ain't like they're going to flush a half dozen whores down the toilet!" both acts as a reminder that it is human beings they are dealing but also reduces the women to an illegal commodity. As part of the raid McNulty goes undercover as a ‘John’, and ‘accidentally’ has sex with two prostitutes in the process. I share Jones’ disquiet that the incident is treated as a joke. We have seen the conditions that these women are trafficked in and how they are treated by their handlers.
The Unit discover that the Shephard responsible for the deaths of the ‘Jane Does’ was murdered by The Greeks people in Philadelphia. So while they have been avenged, it was not out of any sense of compassion but as lost commodities.
McNulty as part of his attempt to discover ‘Nadya’s’ identity interviews some trafficked women who are about to be deported. Their faces are numb and emotionally blank testifying to the appalling experiences they must have gone through. However none of these women get to tell their story, as the ‘Jane Does’ do not get to tell their stories.
We see another presumably eastern European woman working as a prostitute in series four. Colvin has to intervene after an argument between a prostitute and a john in the hotel he works as head of security at. He can see that the young woman has sustained a bad beating and is highly traumatized and is touched by her plight. He listens to her story that the john would not pay her.
In the closing sequence of series two we see some more women being brought into the USA with their handlers ensuring they are kept under control. As with the drug trade, it is business as usual.
Prostitution in Hamsterdam
In series three, Howard ‘Bunny’ Colvin, commander of the Western District of the Baltimore police department is due to retire. Appalled at the effect that both the drug trade and the ‘war on drugs’ has had on West Baltimore he attempts a bold experiment. He sets up three ‘free zones’ where drug dealing is decriminalised, hoping that this will remove the drug trade from residential areas and lower the violence associated with the drug trade. These areas soon become known as ‘Hamsterdam’. While Colvin’s motives are undoubtedly well meaning, other consequences of the drug trade follow the drug dealers, namely drug addicts and prostitution. We witness this in Bubbles’ hellish night time walk though ‘Hamsterdam’.
When Colvin asks the Deacon (whose support as a respected community worker will help give credence to the experiment) his opinion of the free zones, the Deacon chides him for not taking these factors into account when he established them. Colvin promptly has public health services established Hamsterdam to work with the drug addicts and prostitutes who have congregated there. These health workers provide HIV testing, free condoms and health advice to the women who work as prostitutes. When ‘Hamsterdam’ is finally made public, this health work is one of the major points marshalled in its defence. While there has been much discussion around Colvin’s tactic legalisation of the drug trade, there has been little discussion of the corresponding tactic decriminalization of prostitution.
There is one last character I want to consider. Dee Dee (Genevieve Hudson-Price) is first seen in series three buying an eightball of cocaine with in Hamsterdam. She contemptuously refuses to engage in conversation with the drug dealers. In series four we see she is working as a prostitute and looking the worse for wear when she goes into Old face Andres’ shop with her pimp to buy cigarettes. Finally in series five we see her at Bubble’s Narcotics Anonymous meeting telling how she ended up as a prostitute due to her addiction. Her story, although brief, is a moving example of the grim realities of prostitution.
The series, while showing some compassion for the various sex workers portrayed in the series ultimately does not explore the issues about the circumstances of women in the sex industry in any great depth, presumably as it would be a distraction from the series’ main concern with the drug industry.
In my next entry I will be exploring the portrayal of women who work in the legislative (local government), executive (police)and judicial (justice system) side of Baltimore’s ‘war on drugs’ in the series
