On February 6
th, David Simon, the writer of the television show The Wire, which airs on HBO, came to
Loyola College.
David Simon also is a former writer for The Sun and wrote the book Homicide and the television series Homicide for six years.
Since he graduated from
University of
Maryland and wrote for The Sun, he is familiar with the
Maryland and especially the
Baltimore area.
This set a good foundation for his show The Wire which takes place in the city of
Baltimore.
The television series shows life from the point of view of some on that lives in the city and goes through their role with the police and their the different things that occur while they are in Baltimore.
In this show, David Simon uses different ideas from various dangerous cities in the United States and puts them into play. He shows how bad the problems really are in the majority of the cities in America. During his lecture he explained his point of view on the whole topic and showed how his show portrayed what he felt what was going on. He led the discussion off by explaining how in America, the value of human beings is dropping, meaning less and less people are needed. For many of the jobs which require specific types of labor, technology is taking their jobs and this is making it harder for those who live in the cities to keep their jobs.
The majority of his talk was spent discussing how the future is not looking bright for America. For many reasons from the value of humans to the government to the decisions that all human beings are making today, the United States is headed for a troublesome future. He explained that sixty percent of the senate only represents forty percent of the entire population. This is extremely unbalanced and creates problems for representing the cities that are most in need. Also, he stated that the decisions that humans are making are destroying lives. Since everyone is becoming extremely greedy, they think only about themselves and not about what is good for others.
Although many of the views that David Simon have on today’s world are extremely negative and pessimistic, they are interesting and most of them make sense. Although I do not completely agree with his outtake of extreme negativity, I do feel that the majority of his points are worth paying attention too. I think that his involvement in the television show and his time spent writing for The Sun cloud his judgment for the rest of the United States. Since he is constantly around this fictional struggle that he writes for a career, he might have grown to have a far too pessimistic look on life in America, especially in the more dangerous cities.
I feel as though this lecture by David Simon was a good one to go along with this year’s whole theme of Year of the City. David Simon’s television show portrays fictional stories about how life is in Baltimore. He shows the struggles that some families in Baltimore right now may go through. Loyola College’s Year of the City helps connect the college to the city of Baltimore. This is a good thing for both the college and the city because the students learn how life is for those who live in poverty in the city of Baltimore, and the city gains the help of the students of the college to help with some of the problems that are present in today’s life in Baltimore. The whole idea of Year of the City will help students at Loyola to see what life is like when poverty sets in and will help them make better decisions for themselves in the future, while giving those who need help in Baltimore a hand.
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