The Wire Depreciation No. 28889 (82221)

(Skip ahead to 1:15)

For all the praise I give The Wire, I have to take it to task for this scene. The scene is great, sure*, my ties to Korea the only reason for my nitpicking, but it's endemic of Hollywood's oversimplification and general ignorance/laziness in depicting Asians.

First, a translation. After Monk shoots cutty in the leg and Michael offers to call an ambulance and stay with Cutty until it arrives, a Korean store owner comes out of his shop to deliver these stiff words, translated from the vernacular:

What is this? Are you OK? This is bad! I'm going to call the police right away!

Keep in mind that the Korean was -- thankfully, for artistic purposes -- not translated, and my translation could be tweaked a little (for instance, 큰일 could literally be translated as "a big deal," and, duh, of course it's a big deal, which goes to show you that literal translations are cold fucking dumb). My complaint about the scene is that it's glaringly obtuse on a screenwriting level and a cultural one.

Monk shoots Cutty in the leg and ambles off with his crew sans Michael, who holds back to make sure our favorite ex-con pugilist and lady killer is all right. Then, a Korean store owner steps out (after gun shots have just been fired, remember) to play the good Samaritan. Is that logical? Is it realistic?

I don't know about you, but if I'm an elderly store owner in the inner city who has just heard gunshots outside of my establishment, the last thing I'm about to do is hop outside to see if everything is copacetic. I'd be clutching Linoleum like a motherfuck; and, yeah, that probably means I'm a pussy, but it also means I'm an elderly store owner in the inner city.

More confounding is the Korean's dialog, crassly inauthentic in my opinion. I might catch heat for this, but does anyone believe that a Korean store owner -- an elderly one at that -- would use honorific speech toward a black man who has been shot on a crime-ridden corner in Baltimore? I'm dubious.

I may have read somewhere that the Korean extra was a friend of the film crew's who got a small part for his cooperation with the production, or maybe I just retconned my brain because that scenario makes a bit more sense; regardless, for such an authentically real show**, the scene is jarring in its inauthenticity. Word to Brother Mouzone.



* even though it somewhat betrays Michael's meteoric, one-episode transition from a conflicted kid with good principles to a cold-hearted street soldier

** Or so I'm told. I'm not ready at this point in my life to move to Baltimore, so based on my own critical analysis and those of professional critics, I have to take a leap of faith.