Overthinking Treme: The White Asshole’s Burden

Somewhere, in the world, a primitive people are in peril.

Maybe they’re tearing their country apart with civil war. Maybe ruthless companies have invaded their lands to exploit their natural resources. Or maybe they’re dying out because they’ve lost respect for their ancient traditions. Whatever the case, the world is in danger of losing their wisdom, forged in a hostile land (I mentioned it was a hostile land, right? sorry; goes without saying).

Fortunately, in times like these there comes a man. A White Man.

We may decry the imperialist sentiment of work like Kipling’s “White Man’s Burden,” but we should never forget that it came from good intentions. Kipling, Victoria and the rest of the Empire thought that they were helping the subcontinent out by giving them railroads, telegraphs and the opportunity to work for shillings. Of course, if the British isles happened to get rich off of tea, ink and spices in the process, so much the better! But the great empires of Europe didn’t rewrite the African and Asian continents out of malice. They thought they were helping the poor darker races. Or at least that’s what they told themselves.

Take up the White Man’s burden–
Send forth the best ye breed–
Go bind your sons to exile
To serve your captives’ need;
To wait in heavy harness,
On fluttered folk and wild–
Your new-caught, sullen peoples,
Half-devil and half-child.

[…]

Take up the White Man’s burden–
The savage wars of peace–
Fill full the mouth of Famine
And bid the sickness cease;
And when your goal is nearest
The end for others sought,
Watch sloth and heathen Folly
Bring all your hopes to nought.

As the metaphysical scope changed from the imperial (19th century) to the personal (20th), so too did the journey depicted by art. White people no longer thought they could gallivant across the world and scoop up riches by the handful. But white men, individually, thought they might travel around the world and scoop up wisdom.

Some of the most popular movies of the 20th century depict that journey. They range from epic classics (Lawrence of Arabia, Seven Years in Tibet) to derivative fables (Avatar, The Last Samurai, Red Corner). But no matter the quality, the kernel of the story’s the same. It’s the 20th century’s contribution to the catalog of monomyths:

1. White man suffers loss, tangible or psychological, in his native land.
2. White man travels to exotic country.
3. White man suffers at the hands of natives, who mistrust him and the colonizers he came with. White man is broken down.
4. White man is made new in the tradition of the natives.
5. White man aids the natives in resolving some conflict – sometimes with other natives, sometimes with the original colonizers.
6. White man retires to native territory to live in peace, or else returns to home country bearing native wisdom.

The late 20th century has liberalized the White Man’s Monomyth in allowing women to undergo similar revelations (Beyond Rangoon, Medicine Man, etc). But the arc is always the same. The natives need help defending themselves against some threat. Only a white man can save them. But the only reason a white man would have to fight alongside the natives is if he falls in love with the natives first.

Why is the white man necessary? Sometimes he has access to superior technology: firearms, radios, jet airplanes. Sometimes he has superior knowledge, like tactics or history or even just the ability to second-guess the white oppressors. And sometimes his only advantage is the perspective of the outsider: the alien who can comment on the quirks of ingrained culture. Regardless, that one aspect of the White Man’s Monomyth never changes. It takes a White Man to save a village.

And then along came David Simon.

One of the many reasons that The Wire was the single greatest thing which the medium of television has yet to produce was, simply enough, casting black people. Before The Wire, you never saw a drama with that many black protagonists that wasn’t explicitly about race. Roots was similarly groundbreaking, but Roots wore its politics on its sleeve. It’s easy to put Roots in the “issue picture” bucket and ignore its artistic merits. But The Wire was, first and foremost, exceptional television drama. And its stars were overwhelmingly black.

Season One of The Wire is about the cat-and-mouse game between Lt. Daniels (black) and Avon Barksdale (black). Aiding Lt. Daniels in his drug unit are Kima (black / Korean), Carver (black), Herc (white), Sydnor (black), Lester Freamon (black), Bunk (black) and Prez (white). The white characters are largely played for comic relief. Meanwhile, Avon Barksdale’s drug gang – captained by Stringer Bell (black) – was uniformly black. The next blackest drama on cable, after The Wire, was Soul Food.

“Ah,” you’re saying, “but what about McNulty?”

He is the fly in our ointment, isn’t he? It’s Detective Jimmy McNulty (Dominic West, white) and his meddling that kick off the whole investigation against Barksdale. He remains persistent in the face of cynicism, stalling and indifference and sees the case through to the end. Isn’t McNulty the hero? Isn’t this another case of the White Man’s Monomyth?

Sure, except for one problem: Jimmy McNulty’s an asshole.

People respect McNulty’s diligence, but nobody really likes him. The women he sleeps with despise him as soon as he’s done. His bosses hate him with a passion. He lies, schemes and shirks in order to get what he wants. He steals his neighbor’s newspapers, rats his department out to a judge to get results and reacts to every threat with bland insolence. He never learns and he never apologizes. Jimmy McNulty is an asshole.

And that’s all in the first season. Without treading too deep into spoiler territory, McNulty does not learn much from being yelled at all the time.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_X4tdPa1iU

Now consider David Simon’s newest series, Treme.

The first white man we meet in Treme is Davis McAlary (Steve Zahn), New Orleans radio DJ. McAlary is passionate about the slow disappearance of genuine N’awrlins culture – but he does almost nothing to stop it. Oh, he makes a lot of fruitless gestures, certainly, but nothing useful. And he’s presented in as unattractive a light as possible: our first glimpse of McAlary is of him stumbling out of bed, bare-ass naked, in his shit-hole apartment.

In the first three episodes (FAIRLY TRIVIAL SPOILERS), McAlary:

• Pisses off his neighbors by playing Mystikal at floor-shaking volume;
• Pisses off his erstwhile girlfriend Janette (Kim Dickens), who owns a struggling but popular restaurant, by opening a $300+ bottle of wine;
• Pisses off his radio station bosses by refusing to play songs off a corporate playlist;
• Hangs around Elvis Costello (himself) in a creepy and awkward way after spotting him at a bar;
• Gets thrown out of a Tower Records;
• Gets fired from his radio station gig after allowing a musician to sacrifice a live chicken in the studio;
• Mooches money off his parents;
• Gets fired from his next job as a hotel clerk.
• Gets arrested for mouthing off to a National Guardsman while drunk.
• Writes a gleeful (and awful) song about strippers moving into his neighborhood.
• Harangues his neighbors for gentrifying the neighborhood, even though they’re also New Orleans residents.

There is literally nothing attractive about McAlary’s behavior. He’s an asshole.

McAlary is not the only white character incensed at what’s happened to New Orleans. Local novelist Creighton Barrette (John Goodman) voices his anger, in profane and accusatory terms, to any media outlet that’ll talk to him. He throws an interviewer’s microphone in the river and curses a blue streak at NPR. If Barrette is helping, it’s not in any way we can tell. And Sonny (Michiel Huisman), a street musician who busks for change with his violinist girlfriend, reacts to every outsider’s attempts at sympathy with ill-masked contempt. He mocks tourists for “never having heard of the Ninth Ward before Katrina” and seems to harbor some resentment of his girlfriend’s superior talent. He’s at best surly and at worst dishonest. Barrette and Sonny: two more white assholes.

Now two instances aren’t quite enough to hang a chain on. But it’s enough to make a good Overthinker take notice. The problems dealt with in The Wire and Treme – how institutions can steamroll over the underclass – are not explicitly black problems. Ending racism won’t necessarily solve them. But they are problems that affect black people more than any other race in this country (until you get further west). So to tell the true story of how institutions blunder through people’s lives and the wreckage left behind, you need a predominantly black cast.

Since these are problems that affect black people, even if they’re not “black problems,” the temptation must have been strong to create a Great White Hero who would swoop in and save the situation. But Simon, Overmyer and Mills ducked that temptation. The black residents of Baltimore and New Orleans rise or fall based on what they can pull together. And the White Men who show up to help are not noble. They’re comically ignoble.

Making such unlikeable assholes as Jimmy McNulty and Davis McAlary the representatives of white America may be a conscious choice on David Simon’s part. It might be a way of thrusting the temptation of the White Man’s Burden – a monomyth that’s so easy to fall into – as far away from the writer’s table as possible. Jimmy McNulty is not going to save Baltimore from the War on Drugs. And, though we’re only three episodes in, I’ll bet Davis McAlary does not save New Orleans from the corruption of its local, state and federal governments, either. Telling an audacious, city-wide story through the medium of television is achievement enough. Rewriting the ingrained archetypes of White Men among the Natives? That’s some kind of miracle.