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I’ll admit I haven’t seen Breaking Bad and I have no wish to see it. But this morning my news aggregator found me an interesting article on why it is so popular.
Walter White’s sickness mirrors America.
Very interesting. I’d love to hear the other lizard’s take on it.
7 comments
1 |
blueraven Sun, Sep 29, 2013 8:43:24pm |
Well, as someone who has watched every episode and some more than once, I think that article is a big load of crap.
If I had read that first I probably would never have watched it.
Most off- the-chart, overwrought analysis I have seen yet, by far.
| 2 |
jogiff Mon, Sep 30, 2013 2:10:43am |
re: #1 blueraven
Agreed. I’ve also seen every episode (and most of them multiple times) and I think that the author of this article had his thesis before he actually watched the show. Walter White began making meth with the understanding that he would die soon and leave his family without a bread winner because his cancer was simply inoperable. The cost of his treatment wasn’t really a factor, especially after the first season.
He was only making meth because he needed money for a short time. By the middle of the third season his motivations had completely changed.
Then there’s the completely random and unsupported accusation of racism, “In the process, he also tries to live out the Aggrieved American White Guy Fantasy of thwarting his dark-skinned foreign competitors and claiming a market that he believes to be rightfully his.” That one really came out of nowhere.
4 |
Vicious Babushka Mon, Sep 30, 2013 4:57:38am |
I have never seen even one episode of this program. It first came to my attention two years ago, when a young aspiring writer full of thin white privilege entitlement, Anna Breslaw (who writes for one of the Gawker sites) wrote a review of this show that somehow turned into a horrific screeching rant against Holocaust survivors, that somehow they must have deserved what happened to them.
It was the most WTF thing I ever read in my life. You can Google “Breaking Bad Karma” if that article is still online anywhere. It boggled the mind that she did not get fired or even reprimanded for that humongous turd of Anti-Semitism, because “Juice can’t be teh Anti-Semites!”.
5 |
Flounder Mon, Sep 30, 2013 6:25:12am |
My wife watched every episode. Me? bits and pieces. My personality is that if something is crazy popular, I stay away from it. Actually my biggest concern is making meth more sought after by people after this show. It does kind of romanticize its production and usage. Meth is not cool.
| 6 |
blueraven Mon, Sep 30, 2013 8:26:33am |
Walter was facing death and a mid-life crisis simultaneously. Think about that. The day before his 50th birthday he was diagnosed with cancer that was seen as a death sentence.
The money was really a side issue in many ways. He felt he had not really lived up to his brilliant potential…he had some bad breaks in his career path. Some chosen by him, some chosen for him.
re: #4 Vicious Babushka
Amazing how many people personalize, rationalize and project their own hatred, prejudices, bigotry and weaknesses on to these characters.
| 7 |
Charleston Chew Mon, Sep 30, 2013 9:25:29am |
I’m wary of zeitgeisty articles. They often have a couple of weaknesses:
The denial that something’s popularity is not based wholly or in part on randomness. People like watching tv. They like stories. If a show is more entertaining than others currently available, it attracts viewers. If that show didn’t exist they’d just watch something else.
The assumption that a society’s collective unconscious magically made a thing exist. It didn’t. People made it. Specific individual people. It might say something about them. But certainly not “everybody”.
Ignorance about how things actually come into existence. It’s easy to imagine how things work from a comfortable armchair. Too easy.
Specific to think pieces about movies and tv, “Filmed fiction” has to be produced with the numerous constraints of reality. To the point that it has a real impact on the show over all. Writers don’t get this. They are accustomed to pouring their unfettered imagination out onto the page and that’s that.
For instance, imagine a zeitgeisty writer going into great detail about how a particular model of car featured on a show represents a, b, and c. Then imagine calling a producer on the show and finding out that they actually wanted a totally different car but since it was going to take a beating over time they need ten identical cars and that was the only model they could find ten of for cheap in the short amount of time they had to find them. And in the original script it was supposed to be a boat but it’s too hard filming on water.
But most importantly, this article was only writen to get page views. That’s the only reason it exists. Pure self promotion piggybacking on a trending topic.
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