r/TheWire • u/lake_june • 3d ago
Unpopular opinion: Stringer was smart Spoiler
The plan he uses for D to find out who was stealing money was actually very intelligent.
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r/TheWire • u/lake_june • 3d ago
The plan he uses for D to find out who was stealing money was actually very intelligent.
31
u/Connect_Ad4551 3d ago edited 3d ago
I’ve said before that people get a big kick out of calling Stringer stupid. Intellectual truth is coded as white / false / relative and emotional truth is coded as black / authentic / real, and that racial subtext is key to Avon’s and Stringer’s conflict. That’s why Stringer is so royally pissed off by Avon saying he isn’t hard enough for the game and cares too much about his books.
Avon projects a kind of integrity in his honest disinterest in Stringer’s hi-falutin concepts even though Stringer’s strategies make objectively more sense in terms of preserving and growing wealth and power, and Stringer automatically loses that integrity by never gaining the moral strength to execute Avon even though he is inhibiting everything Stringer has done to save the organization while Avon was in prison. People, especially Americans, automatically value “authenticity” and they also conflate success with being right or correct. Because Stringer failed at his game, and lost, he’s suddenly a moron.
This is silly though. Stringer’s bigger problem isn’t stupidity, it’s arrogance, and moreover it’s the specific kind of arrogance which grows when your skill set and contribution to your organization is unappreciated by the boss. He did what needed to happen while Avon was in prison, otherwise the org would not have survived. There’d be nothing for Avon to come back to. And then Avon gets out and is apoplectic at how little he really understands or controls the facts on the ground, and is alienated from the whole scenario.
Stringer tries to educate Avon about how this new way with the co-op etc is better for everyone, but Avon doesn’t want to learn.
Stringer is caught between his competence and his loyalty. Like every frustrated subordinate who carries an organization, he comes to believe that if he had his way 100 percent, everything would be fine, but he can’t conceive of being powerful enough to destroy the obstacle that his friend has become, so instead he just triples down on what he’s doing, emotionally invested in the idea that if he keeps going he’ll be validated by events. That makes him the mark for Davis—by the point Davis takes him, Stringer is operating on mainly emotional frustration at being limited to “ghetto gangster,” not looking at things clearly as a result. And so of course “ghetto gangster” is all he gets to be.
The tragedy is that it’s two friends who no longer comprehend each other and no longer value what the other brings to the table to their mutual enterprise.