Making facts out of make-believe. “The Wire” between news and fiction

Authors

  • Gianluigi Rossini Università dell'Aquila

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.6093/sigma.v0i2.5972

Keywords:

David Simon, Social Realism, The Wire, TV Series, factual, fiction, docudrama, realism

Abstract

In his remarkable television oeuvre, David Simon has always been committed to portray USA political and social issues. For this purpose, he has often chosen the docudrama form, that is, a fact-based representation of real events. In his longer TV series, however (The Wire, Treme, The Deuce), Simon has always used fiction. In this essay I will try to explain how The Wire, through a complex set of textual and extra-textual procedures, creates a mirror image of the docudrama: unraveling a fictional plot inside an extremely accurate reconstruction of the surrounding environment, the TV series tries to equate fictional facts with actual, real events, in order to explain their causes.

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

Downloads

Published

2018-12-30

How to Cite

Rossini, G. (2018). Making facts out of make-believe. “The Wire” between news and fiction. SigMa - Rivista Di Letterature Comparate, Teatro E Arti Dello Spettacolo, (2), 149–173. https://doi.org/10.6093/sigma.v0i2.5972

Issue

No. 2 (2018): Facing the event. The representation of the chronicle in the contemporary arts

Section

Sezione monografica

License

SigMa Journal is an open access, online publication, with licence:

cc-by-80x15_80

 CCPL Creative Commons Attribution

The author retains the copyright of his work whilst granting anyone the possibility “to reproduce, distribute, publicly communicate, publicly exhibit, display, perform and recite the work”, provided that the author and the title of the journal are cited correctly. When submitting the text for publication the author is furthermore required to declare that the contents and the structure of the work are original and that it does not by any means compromise the rights of third parties nor the obligations connected to the safeguard of the moral and economic rights of other authors or other right holders, both for texts, images, photographs, tables, as well as for other parts which compose the contribution. The author furthermore declares that he/she is conscious of the  sanctions prescribed by the penal code and by the Italian Criminal and Special Laws for false documents and the use false documents, and that therefore Reti Medievali is not liable to responsibilities of any nature, civil, administrative or penal, and that the author agrees to indemnify and hold Reti Medievali harmless from all requests and claims by third parties.