#proposition joe

There's a lot I could say about The Wire's depiction of Black America but to save the word count I'll say it's one of the few pieces where I've seen AAVE used in all its potent political, lyrical and intellectual power. Likewise, the lives of the speakers are treated with a similar respect and nuance, which is where we get (one of) the show's best guy(s): Joseph 'Proposition Joe' Stewart.

My first impression of Joe was that he reminded me SO MUCH of my work wife, a woman named Delise. Like Joe, Del is a native of the east side of Baltimore, she has the exact same accent he does as well as the same build and the same quiet and pragmatic sense of how to do things. She is a favorite work wife not only because she's a dear friend but because we worked together as a perfect team and she outclasses every other leader I've worked for. We were in the trenches of sbux together and it galled me constantly that other people were promoted ahead of her when she was the one running the entire store. Why, you ask? Sbux's habit of promoting sycophants aside, it was always clear that Del was too black for the corporate structure to see what they had in her. All this to say, my first impression of Joe tied him irrevocably to a figure in my life I have the utmost love and respect for. He felt like a real character from the real city of Baltimore, not just a guy on a show.

And now onto my genre reasons for loving him: As his name suggests Prop Joe is a dealmaker. It's hard to get this across if you haven't spent time writing gangsters but let me tell you, it is INCREDIBLY HARD to write a competent, efficient dealmaker who is still interesting. In real life these figures got where they were because they did not stand out, act brash, or, say, get hammered drunk with a famous Hollywood writer and novelist. Being boring and lowkey was their preferred camouflage, the same way a proposition beats a gun for efficiency. Charlie Luciano can get drunk with Raymond Chandler because Meyer Lansky is behind the scenes managing the fucking money.

Prop Joe is a character who uses his influence, whether managerial, negotiated, criminal or otherwise, to make the best of his situation. To quote the man himself, 'Have you ever known me to be a stupid man?' He, like the other figures in The Wire's underworld, is playing a life or death game with opponents that range from kings and king makers to out and out psychopaths and killers. To maintain his position he primarily uses his intellect and connection with other druglords, muscle and martial potency being provided by loyal soldiers like Slim Charles. Again, it's hard to convey this if you haven't played around with this character archetype before but it is HARD to make these specific mob figures compelling characters. Largely, if you're writing them right, they're a guy who sits behind a desk and talks some and looks threatening a whole lot more. Not so with Prop Joe.

As I mentioned, The Wire treats AAVE with a respect you don't see often. In the intervening years AAVE has been co-opted by the internet, by young people, racist morons, the right, the left, white kids from the burbs and K Pop bands and basically everyone else. Like so much of Black culture, AAVE has become a major American export and in so doing the vernacular has been robbed of its intensely political history and, to my ear, a great deal of its lyricism. The writers for the Wire and Joe's actor Robert F. Chew were using AAVE before it was co-opted and they were able to instill in many characters a near Shakespearean eloquence because they were using AAVE the way it's spoken by the people who have always spoken it. Prop Joe is a tricky character to make interesting so he's played against more classic mob kingpins like Avon and Marlo, making Joe a more sympathetic alternate to these figures. But they also let Joe be the incredibly intelligent man he is, without making him talk white or adhere to white standards of intelligence. You can play a figure like Joe off other gangsters and you can make him efficient, but it was Chew's performance and the writers' rooms commitment to capturing the language of their world that really gave Prop Joe that particular life that made him one of the best characters in the whole show.

So that's my favorite thing. Onto the second question, lmao

Least favorite thing about them:

How things ended.

Three things i have in common with them:

Live in Baltimore, pretty smart, love and respect Slim Charles.

Three things i don’t have in common with them:

Girl I am a little white lady from the county. Our similarities end at the end of that question.

Favorite line:

Cheese, indicating a somewhat shabby home full of family photos: What you see in this, old man? All the money you got? Joe, pointing to a wedding photo of a turn of the century Black couple: Your great-grandfather. First colored man to own his own house in Johnson Square. That mean something. Something you young'uns lost.

A short and intensely powerful line describing how the American Dream has been roundly denied Black Americans, even when they had fought to collect the means white people used to achieve it. Baltimore, the original home of redlining, robbed Joe and his family of a legacy that would have made them legitimate business leaders. Instead their means were turned, somewhen, to the only business opportunities available to them. Joe is a part of that legacy, he understands what it means and he feels the pain AND PRIDE of that was lost to the next generation. When I watched this scene the first time my jaw was on the floor and I have never seen a better distillation of just how much was lost to the racist systems of America.

brOTP:

Joe and Slim Charles, love a brain and brawn duo. Nothing like a kingpin and a loyal soldier.

OTP:

Not here to ship, but if anything it's Joe and the New Day Co-Op as a lifesaving and money printing endeavor.

nOTP:

Joe and Marlo. The mere thought of it tasks me...

Random Headcanon:

I don't really have any? I don't feel the need to embellish on the Wire like I would more shorthanded stories. If anything it would be some connection to a young Omar, like Joe set up him and his brother when they were young'uns or some such.

Unpopular Opinion:

Free my man, he did all that shit. Joe should have never suffered any consequences for anything ever.

Song i associate with them:

Haven't found one but I'll let you know if I do!

Favorite picture of them: