Come and Be Shocked: Baltimore Beyond John Waters and the Wire

by Mary Rizzo

Baltimore seen through the eyes of John Waters, Anne Tyler, Charles S. Dutton, Barry Levinson, David Simon―and also ordinary citizens. The city of Baltimore features prominently in an extraordinary number of films, television shows, novels, plays, poems, and songs. Whether it's the small-town eccentricity of Charm City (think duckpin bowling and marble-stooped row houses) or the gang violence of "Bodymore, Murdaland," Baltimore has figured prominently in popular culture about cities since the 1950s. In Come and Be Shocked , Mary Rizzo examines the cultural history and racial politics of these contrasting images of the city. From the 1950s, a period of urban crisis and urban renewal, to the early twenty-first century, Rizzo looks at how artists created powerful images of Baltimore. How, Rizzo asks, do the imaginary cities created by artists affect the real cities that we live in? How does public policy (intentionally or not) shape the kinds of cultural representations that artists create? And why has the relationship between artists and Baltimore city officials been so fraught, resulting in public battles over film permits and censorship? To answer these questions, Rizzo explores the rise of tourism, urban branding, and citizen activism. She considers artists working in the margins, from the East Baltimore poets writing in Chicory , a community magazine funded by the Office of Economic Opportunity, to a young John Waters, who shot his early low-budget movies on the streets, guerrilla-style. She also investigates more mainstream art, from the teen dance sensation The Buddy Deane Show to the comedy-drama Roc to the crime show The Wire , from Anne Tyler's award-winning book The Accidental Tourist to Barry Levinson's movie classic Diner .

Genres: Nonfiction, Politics

304 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2020

Reviews

[LD · Rating 5 out of 5]

Come and Be Shocked is an important and, at the same time, highly entertaining contribution to current urban and cultural studies. The book is amazingly researched and makes important and original observations about the ways that depictions of cities in popular culture both reflect and influence the political, economic, cultural, and individual plans and lives of a city. But, at the same time, don’t let the fact that it is published by an academic press fool you. Come and Be Shocked could, and should, be read by anyone who has an interest in Baltimore history, or urban history and American popular culture in general. Ultimately, Mary Rizzo reveals how there are always many cities within any city, both in reality and in the public imagination, and how the concrete and the imagined city are both cultural productions. Not to mention some heartwarming, inspiring, amusing and, yes, shocking stories that bring famous and not-so-famous characters to three-dimensional life on the page.

[Tambra · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book about my hometown, I read so much about the city and learned some things that happen in the 60s early 70s. Some great reads that reminded my of my childhood.

[Chris · Rating 2 out of 5]

Rizzo's book sets out to explore fictional depictions of the city of Baltimore and understand how reality often differs from the fiction. It traces depictions of Baltimore over the course of a half century, and in numerous formats, examining both fictional portrayals and underlying historical, cultural and political issues that both inspired and impacted Baltimore life and the art depicting it. However, two troubling facts quickly become clear. First, Rizzo doesn't seem to understand that fictional depictions are, in fact, fictional. The constant refrain throughout this book is that various depictions don't accurately depict real life Baltimore because they don't represent the Baltimore she's constructed as a scholar and are therefore inaccurate and often problematic. Second, the Baltimore Rizzo constructs  doesn't seem to capture the complexity that is the actual city. I read an interview with the author who states she's never actually lived in Baltimore, and I think that shows in her understanding of Baltimore as a place. Despite the in depth research and obvious time and care spent on the subject, in some ways she is as much as an outsider and tourist showing up for a fictional depiction of Baltimore as the ones she criticizes in the book. She correctly identifies racism and the marginalization of African-American residents of Baltimore as the central problem in the city. However she then focuses solely on a specific subset of Black Baltimoreans to represent the entire city and any fictional representation not representing their view is presented as part of the larger issue of racism in Baltimore. Other issues, often interrelated--economic issues, shifts in industrial production, government corruption, crime, etc--are only viewed as aspects of racial issues and are never really understood as broader, stand alone problems impacting all of Baltimore's residents. Central to Baltimore's fictional appeal are some of the quirks that, positive or negative, make the city unique and set it apart from other aging  industrial urban centers--ethnic and religious enclaves, the crumbling urban landscape beyond most other cities, the geographical position of the city on the East Coast. Yet instead of exploring how these issues are central to Baltimore's appeal these issues become more examples of racial disparities and a lack of representation. Examples of homophobia and anti-Semitism are presented without comment or discussion about the role of other marginalized Baltimorean's experiences. This book is very well researched, engaging, and can teach even people who think they know fictional Baltimore (or Baltimore history) quite a bit. It is well written and easy to read. Certainly the experiences and voices within Black Baltimore Rizzo highlights are an important and sometimes overlooked part of fiction (although given she cites numerous fictional depictions presenting this viewpoint, making up the majority of properties she examines in the book, it seems the issue is more one of widespread popularity vs existence) but Rizzo seems to miss the fact that a chorus of different voices with different experiences make up the totality of the Baltimore experience. Just as a lack of one 'voice' would make the wider representation of Baltimore inaccurate, pushing an idea that one 'voice' is the true Baltimore experience while criticizing all others is also inaccurate.

Strangely, in the final chapters Rizzo both discusses that things (in the context of the word Hon) that might represent one group of Baltimoreans has no meaning or even a negative meaning to other groups of Baltimoreans, and (in the context of rap music) that fiction isn't reporting and doesn't represent lived reality so much as a creative representation of it. These are both pretty basic concepts within cultural studies. While explicitly stating both these things, and making arguments focused on various groups' viewpoints and the need for a holistic, diverse representation of Baltimore in fiction, Rizzo seems to have overlooked these two key points in most of this book or become so focused on proving a specific point she missed the larger argument she was trying to make. Had Come and Be Shocked set out to argue that certain fictional depictions didn't represent an accurate depiction of the lived experiences of specific African American neighborhoods in Baltimore, I think it would have been quite successful. However a pretty fundamental misunderstanding of the role of fiction and the reality of Baltimore means the argument of this book failed to explore the  complexity that allows Baltimore to punch above its weight culturally, and instead presents a flawed and one note view of the city and the fiction representing it. It's an interesting book, and I really wish the first two thirds could have matched the final third. This is an important topic and I, as someone living just outside Baltimore, a librarian, and someone who has extensively studied problematic cultural heritage issues, would have liked to see this issue more completely explored and documented.   

[Mike · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book did not lack rigor. Though, I felt like some of Rizzo's analysis was stretched thinner than it needed to be. And I quibble with the subtitle some. The book certainly went beyond John Waters and the Wire, but those two subjects took up at least half the book and were the standard by which all others were compared.

That said, there was a lot new contained within and I learned a number of things about my fair city. I wouldn't put Come and Be Shocked in a welcome-to-Baltimore gift basket, but it's a deep cut that Baltophiles can sink their teeth into and debate about.

[Leigh]

More academic than I expected.

[Priya · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this for a book club that the National Council on Public History was hosting and was delighted. Even though Baltimore is an easy drive from my home I didn't know some of the intricately detailed histories coupled with a vision of Baltimore in pop culture brought together by Mary Rizzo.

In particular I thought a lot about this question (something posed in the book itself) as well as in the summary: "How do the imaginary cities created by artists affect the real cities that we live in?" And while the book touches on things like the Wire, it also looks at art in all forms, including a magazine called Chicory which was filled with the poetry the East Baltimore community.

High recommend if you want a different glimpse into the history of Charm City.