Hacker Cinema
The Corner
2000 · TV series · 60 min episodes · 1 season
The Corner presents the world of Fayette Street using real names and real events. The miniseries tells the true story of men, women and children living amid the open-air drug markets of West Baltimore. It chronicles a year in the lives of 15-year-old DeAndre McCullough, his mother Fran Boyd, and his father Gary McCullough, as well as other addicts and low-level drug dealers caught up in the twin-engine economy of heroin and cocaine.
8 positive5 neutralfrom 13 commenters
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14 comments on Hacker News
> The TV shows "The Wire" and especially "The Corner" capture the flavor of the rough parts of Baltimore more than residents would like to admit.
I think The Wire was pretty accurate and a lot of Baltimoreans aren't in denial about what kind of city it was/is. However, if you're only hanging out and working with folks who don't leave the White L[1], you'd think the rest of Baltimore is pretty awful and if it wasn't for work/family, they'd leave ASAP. Not to discredit the concerns folks have, just saying that the loudest voices also seem to be the most negative without being constructive (just check various FB "safety" groups, e.g., Mt Vernon Safety, or Nextdoor).
I recently moved from Baltimore to Philadelphia and in many ways it seems like a bigger version of Baltimore. Lots of white/black segregation, crime (it's already above 300 homicides for 2021), potholes and generally poor road maintenance, poorly run city gov't, etc. Yet somehow there doesn't seem to be the same level of negativity about the city here.
[1] https://www.baltimoresun.com/citypaper/bcpnews-two-baltimores-the-white-l-vs-the-black-butterfly-20160628-htmlstory.html
Johns Hopkins APL is not far south on 95 from Baltimore. It does MIC stuff, but is also involved with various space programs. There are a bunch of small and large tech companies in and around Baltimore and Baltimore county. I've worked in Columbia, Linthicum, and Rockville MD. (Rockville commute was insane before the new highway, now it would doable for folks who don't mind driving a lot).
I lived there for 12 years. Generally speaking, Baltimore is good if you want relatively affordable housing. A number of neighborhoods are great for DINKS (dual-income, no kids). Public schooling is a hard no-go unless you really get involved and enroll your kids in a carefully selected charter or magnet school. There are some excellent private schools. Baltimore county has options too if you want something that's more suburban.
As far a crime goes, the city has some really profound problems that are the result of white flight and systematic disinvestment. It was hit hard by the crack epidemic and has not really recovered. The TV shows "The Wire" and especially "The Corner" capture the flavor of the rough parts of Baltimore more than residents would like to admit. As far as safety is concerned, like other big cities, it's not really a problem for folks that would read HN, unless you enjoy hanging out in bars at 2am and getting into arguments with armed drug-trade people. Don't leave anything in your car, get a security system for your house.
The Corner was another show by Simon. Really a miniseries. See: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Corner
That's a ridiculous characterization. How about you name the episode or indicate exactly what elements of the dialogue support your claim.
IMDB shows no series using the name "The Corner" other than a 2019 talk show.
For those looking for something more focused in terms of plotline and scope within the same genre, David Simon also wrote and produced The Corner (2000) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0224853/
The Corner https://imdb.com/title/tt0224853/
There was also the corner miniseries too!
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0224853/
Without (hopefully) detracting from your excellent points, a couple of points on tv series: 1) The Corner is also worked into a tv mini series[1] by the author -- and in case people are not aware - he also wrote "The Wire" -- which is a more dramatic treatment of the same material.
Your point about WWI and WWII are interesting -- I'd come to a similar realization, partly jolted by the (entirely fictional, as far as I know -- more so than The Corner, and probably The Wire too) tv series "The Peaky Blinders"[2].
It does seem entirely reasonable that combining unemployment with a number of young men with great skills at war, coupled with severe PTSD and no treatment or well-fare to speak of is likely to lead to violent gangs forming. I can't imagine the situation is helped by ready access to firearms.
[1] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0224853/
[2] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2442560/
Baltimore has very serious and endemic issues with crime, drugs, poverty and government -- all of which combine to result in an extremely high murder rate. The numbers have improved since the historic peak in 1993 (353 murders), and Baltimore is no longer the #1 city in murders per capita in the US, but it's still not good.
If you're interested, there are several excellent explorations of the particulars of Baltimore's problems (which are present, usually to a lesser extent, in many other cities) from David Simon:
- Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets (book) - Homicide: Life on the Streets (TV series) - The Corner: A Year in the Life of an Inner-City Neighborhood (book) - The Corner (TV miniseries) - The Wire (TV series)
Much of this is true, but I think it's important not to look at the differences just through a lens of production values. Even worse to equation production values with merit or quality of the end product.
There have been several low budget films and tv shows that have become highly successful and well regarded, the same is and will be true in the online realm. Look at Mad Max, which was made for around a third of a million dollars, Primer, or Napoleon Dynamite.
But also it's not just production value or even quality but fundamental differences in character. TV was a different sort of beast than film, and even over the last decade commercial TV has changed a lot. Look at all of the independent content that sprang up on non-network TV channels, especially from HBO. A show like The Wire, or even more so The Corner, was very unlikely to ever be made within the confines of traditional network TV. TV has a different sort of character than film in terms of the sorts of productions that are suited for TV, and online video is different as well, but we haven't seen all of the ways that's so.
One example I'd highlight is the Lizzie Bennet diaries, a modern adaptation of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice in vlog form of over 100 "episodes" of typical youtube length (~3-5 minutes).
Another example would be Periodic Videos (and related projects). These are educational videos about chemistry but because they don't have the length limits or requirements of traditional TV they can be focused on a single subject without being forced to add in unrelated filler.
Or, there's Lindybeige, who's likes to talk about medieval, classical, and bronze age technology and weapons. It's just a guy expressing his opinions and trying to back them up with experience or logic but it's frequently just as informative and interesting as watching a typical historical tv show.
Yes, also The Wire, and The Corner, all quite excellent. But they are narratives, typically fictionalized. They are not non-fiction documentaries. They do not take on the issue head on, they do not discuss the statistics of the problem, etc. They come close, but a full head-on confrontation of the issue is still too taboo to be done by the mainstream press or entertainment industry.
If you want a more visceral account, "The Corner" by David Simon is a non-fiction chronicle of the Baltimore drug culture's effect on the people who live in it. Simon spent about year (~1993) following and interviewing the people who lived on a specific drug corner in Baltimore; one of those he followed was a high-school-age kid whose description is much like this teacher's description of M.W.
There's also an HBO miniseries based on it (which I haven't watched, so I can't vouch), and Season 4 of The Wire is partially about a Baltimore inner-city school (The Wire is fantastic). Simon also spent a year embedded with the Baltimore police homicide division, which became a book, a TV serial (called Homicide), and informed much of The Wire.
Some people are commenting that the solution to the problems at these schools is to completely give up on the troublemakers; I don't think it would be that clear-cut for you after you read or watch these. The kids you give up on are the ones lost to the hardcore drug culture forever. Those same kids are the ones that perpetuate the problem- there's a terrible feedback loop going on.
You know what the comments remind me of? The scene in the TV series "The Corner" when one of the female addicts finally decides to quit and go off into rehab, and how all the other addicts encouraged her and were happy for her, while themselves remaining stuck in their drug moor.
You should watch that show, by the way.
The US is the only major democracy that seems content to cheer the success of the lucky and laugh at the failure of the rest.
That has nothing to do with it. The main problem with the U.S. is that it has had 150 years of racial warfare - whites hating on blacks, blacks hating on whites. All of it has been entirely destructive, and it really needs to stop.
Try watching a couple episodes of The Corner ( http://www.amazon.com/Corner-Year-Life-Inner-City-Neighborhood/dp/0767900316 ). It's based on a the account of a journalist who spent a year following a family in Baltimore. It also matches my personal experiences in working for various inner city charities. Then tell me how somehow getting rid of this alleged mantra of "self sufficiency" and "freedom" and replacing it with X will make things better.