subject: Good vs evil, television as display easel art: The Characters of The Wire Pt. 3 [print this page] Author: Kasan Groupe Author: Kasan Groupe
It is sort of hard to give a summary of the cast of The Wire since the lineup often changed to focus on different groups of people in and around Baltimore, MA, from the law enforcement officials to the man and women in politics to the drug dealers on the street and to the dock workers and newspaper men and women. I will try to summarize some of the key cast members in the epic show that makes television into art worthy of adisplay easel. Frank Sobotka One of the sadder characters ever seen on television, Frank Sobotka comes from a long line of Polish-American docksmen. He is the secretary treasuere for the International Brotherhood of Stevedores at the Baltimore docks but finds himself between a rock and a hard place as the Baltimore shipping industry is in decline and the lobbyists and politicians will not support him unless he backs up his talk with money. In order to pay bribes to lobbyists, Sobotka makes arrangements with a Eastern European gangster to allow them to smuggle in illegal goods through the port. After smuggled in prostitutes are found dead in a shipping can, the police are all over Sobotka and his people trying to find out what sort of illegal activity is going on. Marlo Stanfield If there is one character who is almost purely evil on The Wire, a show which seems to explicitly set out to show that there are no purely good and evil people in the world, it is Marlo Stanfield. A young, up and coming drug player in West Baltimore, Marlo epitomizes the new breed of drug dealers in Baltimore. He is unafraid of conflict and in fact often finds himself seeking it out and breaking long-standing rules of the game to get what he wants. At first the police dont even know that Marlo and the Barksdale Organization are at war until the bodies start to pile up. When the Barksdale Organization crumbles Stanfield is the new leader of the drug trade in West Baltimore and viciously protects his corners with enforcers Chris Partlow and Snoop who commit murders on his behalf and hide the bodies in vacant buildings.About the Author:
