I finally finished watching all five seasons of The Wire. It’s unquestionably a great show, but after the months I spent with it the series left me not wanting to discuss everything it does right, but one thing it does very wrong: Why, in a show so concerned with race and ethnicity, is the only identified Jewish character a stereotypical money-grubbing, scumbag lawyer?
It’s late in the final episode. Levy cuts a deal with the state’s attorney’s office allowing murderous drug lord Marlo Stanfield to go free. Levy owes the deal in part to work done by his chief investigator, to whom he says:
Kiddo, you are a goldmine to me you know that? You’ve taken this law firm to a whole new level […] Now if Marlo takes the deal he’s going to take a walk after being charged in a multi-million drug seizure. That doesn’t happen very often and when it does happen the name and number of the lawyer goes in the front pocket of every respectable drug trafficker. You’re a genius for what you brought me on this […] Here [handing Herc his address], you should come over for dinner tonight. Yvette’s making brisket […] You’re mishpocha now.
Mr. Kahn-Harris (from whom I borrowed that transcription) points out the problems with this scene in a social and historical context, but he misses what enrages me most about and which comes from a screenwriting context.
To begin with, understand that the character of Maury Levy is introduced in the first episode of The Wire. As such I’d been willing to forgive his characterization as an unfortunate mistake spawned from a deeply complex series making a few missteps while finding its footing. Then this scene landed. It’s a pivotal, defining moment for the character. It’s nearly Levy’s final statement in the series, and it nails him as an immoral hog unrepentantly thrilled to be raking in cash by defending known criminals. And David Simon chose to mingle into that speech a reference to Levy’s wife making brisket and even a word of Yiddish. In screenwriting terms, Simon stopped one step short of having Levy say, “You know I’m Jewish, right?” As a result, this scene takes Levy’s defining traits — avarice, sleaze, connivance… all hackneyed and offensive anti-Semitic clichés — and intertwines them with the character’s Jewishness.
In that final episode, Simon had the opportunity to give Levy some nuance to make the stereotyping in the earlier episodes forgivable. Instead Simon not only passed on that opportunity but also chose to write a scene that emphasizes those stereotypes and all but guarantees that the audience will be left associating them to the show’s only Jewish character.
So again, my question is: why? David Simon is clearly a smart guy (the MacArthur Foundation says so) who’s able to see people and fictional characters as nuanced individuals. And he’s Jewish. So what was he trying to accomplish with Levy? Is he happy with how that character is perceived? Does he realize that the character’s inclusion as the sole representative of his ethnicity in an otherwise finely crafted cast makes it all the more offensive, like a turd floating in a glass of champagne?
I’m not asking those question because I want to tear down The Wire, which I truly admire, but because I’m honestly interested in the answers. It’s been several years since the series concluded, and I know David Simon has answered some of them incompletely. Maybe he’s discussed this issue since then in a forum that I haven’t found. Somebody, please, fill me in.
Sidenote: Mr. Kahn-Harris suggests that the show can be given a minor pass on this point because two other characters — prosecutor Rhonda Pearlman and homicide sergeant Jay Landsman — are likely intended to be Jewish. That might have been David Simon’s intent, but in my viewing it never once occurred to me that either of those characters might be Jewish, unlike Levy who is unquestionably identified as Jewish on multiple occasions.
