season 1 - an uncritical love letter to a charismatic politician

I say Season 1 because I haven't seen the second season yet. Maybe my thread title is a little harsh, because the series was not unenjoyable and some of the characters are endearing and interesting. But I think if you're looking for the kind of penetrating indexical look at city politics a fictional show like The Wire can provide, Brick City comes up looking kind of shallow.

Booker is a charismatic politician, and I think a decent one, but the movie could have used a little more skepticism in its portrayal of him. I think the film's principle is to allow its subjects to tell their own stories, but if you let a talented politician like Booker dictate the conversation, he's going to come out looking like a tireless saint. The film shows us an endless parade of publicity stunts by Booker (playing basketball with kids, walking up to people's porches and introducing himself, 'flirting' with an elephant) but I think we're lead to believe that this is simply his enthusiasm and optimism and not self-aggrandizement. Booker is such a talented politician because he's naturally multilingual, having a foot in both the black and white community and able to pull out some Spanish or Yiddish if necessary. The film wants us to come away sharing Booker's optimism and hope in Newark, but for me (as a viewer who was already interested in and in sympathy with places like Newark) it comes off as a little too overplayed. Enthusiasm is nice but I want to see why his policies were so wonderful and successful.

Besides Booker's charisma, the big thing you take away from the film is that it's 'undeniable' that he and his police superintendent Garry McCarthy made a dramatic difference in violent crime in Newark. But why don't we get the details of how this was accomplished in the film? I gather that McCarthy increased patrols and energized the police force, but why doesn't the film present what makes his approach special, or just how it works?

Also I'm not convinced by their rhetoric that they deserve the credit for reducing crime in Newark. I'm only an amateur interpreter of crime statistics, but I looked at city-data.com to try to get a picture of violent crime over the past 10 years in Newark. If you scroll about midway down this page, you'll see a table giving some stats - http://www.city-data.com/crime/crime-Newark-New-Jersey.html

Just looking at the number of murders here, I see that 2005, 2006 and 2007 were abnormally high in homicides. The figure for 2008 is trumpeted in the film as a massive rate reduction from the prior year (even implying that it might be the lowest murder rate in the city in half a century) but the total at the end of the year would be about average for the earlier part of this decade (1999-2003) which of course is before Booker took office.

Also I don't think I agree that murder rate is such a good indicator of successful police work. We see a reporter beginning to question McCarthy about his infatuation with murder stats, but as is characteristic of the one-sided approach of the film, McCarthy gets the last word and the reporter just looks like another one of the haters in the media. Looking at the murder numbers on the above-linked table, they fluctuate so much that I would hesitate to draw any reliable conclusions from them. On the other hand, if you look at robberies, assaults, burglaries, thefts and auto thefts, you see a strikingly steady decrease in the crime rate going back well before Booker's term, to at least 1999 (don't know how to get earlier figures). It's my understanding that crime rates have declined in the recent past in most urban areas in the United States (for reasons that aren't entirely clear) and it makes more sense to attribute Newark's lower crime rate to this general trend than to the work of one hardworking cop and an optimistic mayor.

This is just one example of what I see as the film's one-sided approach. The film shows us people like Charlie Bell and the group of blacks gathered in the park to rally against Booker (on racial and class-based terms) but it doesn't take their opposition seriously. I gather that Booker believes it's right to invest in big downtown projects like a new arena because a rising tide in the city will bring up all the boats. But when Bell or someone else raises opposition to major investment downtown while their neighborhoods are crumbling, the film presents it as self-interested politicking or an unfair attack on Booker because he is "not black enough." I suspect that in Bell's case at least it's a fair dose of vain politics (because he phrases it in an emotional and divisive way) but the film misses the inherent tension in Booker's decisions by portraying the arena as simply a great place to get together to watch a circus brought to the people by their loving mayor.

The filmmakers' stacking of the deck reaches its absurd zenith when Booker gets together a group of schoolchildren to debate the controversial and serious issue of police cameras. I imagine this debate was also going on in the community and the media, but they're Newark haters so they're not to be taken seriously. Anyway, if I remember correctly, when the kids are not wholeheartedly in favor of being watched by the police at all times simply because they live in a high-crime area (a mature and reasonable response) he leads them in a chant of "Let there be light! Let there be light!"

Maybe it's the limitations of the documentary that precludes us from getting both sides. We miss out on the inside scoop of the squabble within the police department, I guess, because the people struggling to unseat McCarthy didn't want to be interviewed. But because we don't see that other side, all the film can present us is a bland situation in which some jerks that we barely see want the good police superintendent to fail for selfish reasons. That may very well be the case, but it's not a dynamic subject for a film unless we see both sides.

I have some more criticisms of the film but I'll stop now before people start saying it's too long to read (which it already probably is).