David Simon’s encyclopedic series has left us three names on the list of the best characters of the 21st century: Jimmy McNulty, Omar Little and Russell ‘Stringer’ Bell. Stringer makes the list having only participated in the first three seasons, which were the pivotal impetus in turning Idris Elba into the international superstar he is today. Leaving aside the fact that the list is an accumulation of subjectivities, we will analyze what reasons have led us to remember and choose him.
The empathic recollection of Stringer’s ending makes us forget some of his previous “exploits” in Baltimore. Let’s not overlook that, among other niceties, he tortures Omar’s lover to death, orders a few assassinations, from gang members to senators, and practically forces a teenager to kill a child for the questionable good of the business. Eternal second in command of his childhood friend, Avon Barksdale, the contrast between the two is exaggerated as time progresses, until they end up belonging to different worlds. Or almost.
The first striking trait of Stringer is the ability to always be vigilant. The intelligent look that completely controls the situation hardly ever falters. There’s nothing he doesn’t know and no one he doesn’t keep an eye on since his first moments, in what we can call “the tracksuit era”. Stringer hardly explodes like Barksdale does, but it would be interesting to consider which of the two is more cruel. One is the warrior and the other the statesman, and to maintain a heroin sales empire they form a perfect tandem that falls apart when their relationship breaks down. That last conversation on the roof remains for eternity, where they remember their childhood always in the same neighborhood, knowing that they have betrayed the other and suspecting that the other has betrayed them. The penultimate episode of the third season has it all.
The past haunts a Stringer tempted by a different way of life. His redemption is impossible because the crimes turn against him when he was already running his real estate developer business. He sees a decent way out of the drug trade: turn dirty money into buildings and live off the rents. But they won’t let him, and it’s partly because the other partners in the background still want to live the life of the neighborhood. They haven’t had the enlightenment that Stringer had in economics classes, which led him into what we might call the “suit and tie era.” He gets everything wrong for wanting to change category: Senator Clay Davis, famous for his “shiiiieetttt!”, gambles and makes him lose a quarter of a million dollars, his real estate developments are paralyzed. The rich in the “legal” system have laughed at him. That is why one of the last things his friend Barksdale says to him is the difficult to translate “They saw your ghetto ass coming from miles away, nigger”: he was not fooling anyone by wanting to do business with the big boys. Behind every great fortune there is a crime, said Balzac, and in this case he would be right, hundreds of crimes.
So that past returns when Stringer cherishes redemption – especially after selling his partner. Omar chases him through his own building, eternally under construction, and when Stringer tries to climb, escape, metaphorically get away from the street, the elegant Brother Mouzone, behind his bow tie, prevents him from the upper floor. His destiny was never to reach the top.
McNulty laments, he was about to get caught wiretapping after three years, legally. Searching his elegant, advertisement-worthy house, he wonders, holding the Adam Smith book, who the hell he’s been chasing all along. A man who saw a door to another life ajar.
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