The hero journey - The Wire

The hero journey - The Wire

In The hero with a thousand faces (1949), Joseph Campbell claims that a large amount of myths are based on the same fundamental structure and stages: that’s the concept of the hero’s journey.

Joseph Campbell declined twelve periods for the hero journey that can be resumed in several narrative stages: a call for adventure that can be accepted or declined by the hero, a series of challenges succeeded or not, the achievement of a goal that helps the hero to learn about himself, a road back to the ordinary world, and then the use of the achievement to make the world better. The diagram below shows the typical hero’s journey.

The Wire, the US series broadcasted by HBO and considered by many as one of the best TV drama of all time, is famous for being quite realistic about the urban life of Baltimore in the 2000’s. The different stages of the hero’s journey can be identified in many episodes of the first season. For instance, a crime happens that invites McNulty and his colleagues to solve the case, then a series of challenges to find the criminal, then comes the revelation and the suspect is pursued in the court. This is the atonement. At the end of each episode there is a come back to the personal life and a progression in the large investigation. This process happens in many episodes of the season. Thus The Wire partially follows the cycle of the hero’s journey. This process is not only used in police series. In Dr. House or ER for instance, the cycle is even easier to identify. In every episode a patient gets sick (call to adventure). The health care team works hard and after several mistakes they finally find the source of the problem (challenges and revelation). They give the right remedy to the patient (transformation and atonement) who eventually gets back to health (return to the normal situation).

However, David Simon made some specific choices concerning the hero’s journey. Firstly because the hero is not so easy to identify: at first sight it could be McNulty, as the director often shows him and because some tend to identify themselves to him. But other characters can embody the hero: Greggs, Omar, D Angelo, and even Avon Barksdale are all potential heroes. Each of them has the particularities of a hero, referring to characters who face danger and adversity, displaying courage and self sacrifice to achieve a goal.

In fact, it would be illusory to designate only one single hero. By creating lots of complex and compelling characters, Davis Simon plays on oppositions (cops/drug dealers, black/white, gay/hetero, young/old) and thus creates more than one hero. Each spectator can identify with its own one. I think it is one of the reasons for the great success of the show. It is not a “good cop vs bad criminals” TV serie. It is nothing but a “game” between two teams. There is no Good or Evil, the spectator can choose its side because in the end all characters hold their own part of heroism.

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