But watching Treme will help.
The missus and I have finished season three of Simon’s latest HBO series and it holds up even if it is not as good (to all about me) as The Wire. Both series are about medium-large historic American cities under siege — drugs in The Wire’s Baltimore and hurricane Katrina in Treme’s New Orleans. The characters in both are grizzled survivors, not victims, who don’t get any help from large bureaucratic organizations — police, city government, federal government — to assist their struggle to survive. In fact, the organizations that are supposed to play umpire so that bad people don’t profit from others’ suffering are either inept or have palms out positioned to be greased by profiteers.
Unlike The Wire, Treme is missing the cops/murder mystery dimension. Originally I was not interested in The Wire because I figured it would be another gussied up cop show — Hill Street Blues for the new millennium. But I was wrong. The legal dimension of the show always supplied a story line, which in turn helped to make sense of the Dickensian set of characters that come and go. It led me to conclude that “the law makes it better,” meaning, without the clear sense of injustice in pursuit of resolution through justice, arguably the narrative that holds this here planet earth in some place of cosmic meaning, a show like Treme wanders. In season three, legal aspects of Treme receive more prominence and drama heightens as a result. But this viewer has a hard time understanding what holds all the characters’ lives together other than the city.
Of course, the one prominent feature of Treme that might yield coherence — more in the form of a documentary — is music. If I were a fan of jazz I might enjoy the series more, but usually during every episode I say to my wife, much to her annoyance, “too much music.” A constant battle in the show is that between authentic New Orleans music, which includes jazz (in various forms) and zydeco for starters, and the tourists who know nothing about music and come to town to hear celebrity acts that are distant from the city’s musical heritage. Again, I don’t know enough music to weigh in on any of this, but the show did allow me to discern that Bruce Springsteen and Christina Aguilera, who recently appeared at the New Orleans Jazz Fest, were likely there because of folks trying to profit from a national perception of the city rather than because they represent anything indigenous to New Orleans or Louisiana.
Christina Aguilera! Really?
Old Life 
We’re finishing up Fringe, since we fell off from that show when it was airing. We’ll move up to the big leagues of HBO when we grow up (never).
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I normally look askance at those who rhapsodize about the redemptive value of this or that piece of entertainment. Maybe I still do, but the finale of the second season of the Danish-Swedish production “The Bridge” (Bron-Broen) brought home the terror of law like nothing I’ve ever seen (on a screen). It’s not for the faint of heart (Greg/Alexander warning), but wow is it powerful.
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I’m told the next HBO series to grace our screens (not that we have such a thing in our home!) will be “The leftovers,” based on a rapture novel by a man who is not an evangelical. Does dispensationalism, when channelled by someone who I assume is a non-believer, still have a redemptive value?
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The local community college PBS station that plays jazz 85% of the time aired live segments from the recent New Orleans Jazz Fest, none of which (fortunately) included either Springspleen’s or Aqua-leerie’s sets. Music history is extremely complicated – what developed from what and what else developed in a different direction from those, as a result. Jazz did find it’s beginnings in the South and in New Orleans, in particular, but very little of what you hear in these kinds of venues reflect much of that original heritage (unfortunately).
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CG, the value depends on the flavor of the jello in the “jello salad.” Not sure what the Brits call them.
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What’s this “I’m no fan of jazz” jazz? I might have to go reverse Alexander and question your metrosexual fruit.
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George, speaking of Springsteen and public broadcasting, he once told Terry Gross that “the subtext of all rock and roll is ‘take your pants off,’ and when rockers age it becomes ‘take your pants off, please.”
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The music is great. Try to be quiet and listen. Or at least say non-annoying things to your wife. A band marching through the cemetery is not that different from the “resolutions” of human justice.
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I do like the “connection” you make in your title with Arcade Fire.
Kierkegaard– “The present age is an age of advertisement. Nothing happens, but there is instant publicity about it.”
I thought I found a way to enter
It’s just a Reflektor
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mcmark (I better respond or JohnnY will turn victor tango, delta on me), what is an Anabaptist like you doing liking jazz?
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