Podcast

Object Lessons: Dead Media, Live Wires, and the Twenty-first Century Police - Audio

Dr. Jann Matlock, Department of French and Co-Organiser, The Film Studies Space

What else have they got down there in Property? Eight-track tapes? Victrolas?" asks Detective Jimmy McNulty in Season 1 of The Wire, the HBO series that took as a leitmotif the inadequacy of the technology of those working in the Baltimore Police Department. Antiquated typewriters instead of computers, reel-to-reel tape recorders instead of digital surveillance equipment, black-and-white television sets and analogue cameras provide comic relief as well as commentary on …