Housing and home

You’d expect a miniseries about housing regulation and council meetings to be a bore, but leave it to politics, human nature, and HBO to spin a golden dramatic narrative out of the most humdrum issues. The six-part HBO movie Show Me a Hero, based on a same-title 1999 nonfiction book by former New York Times reporter Lisa Belkin, premiered Aug. 16 and was scheduled to continue in two-episode chunks the following Sundays. If you’re interested in race, local politics, and masterful storytelling about human nature and redemption—albeit with occasional swearing—this is a series worth watching, particularly because it’s so timely.

A political and social storm is brewing in Yonkers, N.Y., and fresh-elected Mayor Nick Wasicsko (Oscar Isaac, always a treat) is flailing in the heart of it. It’s the late 1980s, the ripening of a long movement for racial desegregation, and a federal court has ordered Yonkers to build 200 units of affordable housing in the predominantly middle-class Italian-American part of town. When Yonkers residents resist, the disgusted federal judge threatens to fine the city $100 the first day and double every day after—which means Yonkers will face bankruptcy in three weeks. The white constituents won’t hear it. They’re not racist, they insist. They’re just worried about their property values, and the drugs and crime that “those people” will drag into their neighborhood.

Barely 28 years old, Wasicsko wins the campaign against a six-term incumbent by riding on his vote to appeal the court-ordered housing decision, when the former mayor didn’t. Suddenly, voters who once ignored him swarm over to shake his hand, and reporters throng to him for soundbites against the housing desegregation plan. Wasicsko wins by 1,500 votes. He has not yet graced the mayor’s seat when the court denies the city’s appeal. His initial exuberance is rattled, but with youthful optimism he wonders, “They can’t blame me for that, can they?”

Oh yes, they can. Every council meeting becomes a mob show with angry white people hurling insults and threats at Wasicsko for betraying their trust. From rising star of the Democratic Party, Wasicsko now has to hire bodyguards and carry around a gun and a bottle of Maalox. His political career seems ruined before it even really started.

As the title implies, there is no hero in Show Me a Hero—even protagonist Wasicsko, who’s so fresh he’s yet to develop his principles, is no hero. He’s like a toothy-grinning first-grader thrilled to become class president, giddy with naïve thoughts about public service and popularity. His doctrines on leadership, integrity, and morality evolve later on as he fumbles through his first term, but the brutality of local politics leaves him no room for growing pains.

It’s a very good thing that Show Me a Hero was written by David Simon, best known for the drama series The Wire, which also deals with complex, weighty issues of race and class. Under Simon’s skillful restraint, characters talk and act like real, believable human beings. There are none of those Aaron Sorkin–blustering monologues, no manipulative pontifications, no noble-minded heroes—just regular people reacting ordinarily to a man-made disaster. In one scene, a couple watching the televised council meeting with alarm and racist remarks naturally transition into a discussion over whether the chicken is too tough.

But then, Show Me a Hero is not just a portrait of the political landscape in the 1980s. It’s a delineation of what happens when law and policy try to force humanity—messy and ugly and capable also of doing good—into an idealistic ink-and-paper plan. It peels off the socioeconomic and physical layers of “housing” and gets deep into the core of “home”: comfort, belonging, dreams, and identity. It’s a wonderfully and tragically human story.