White Supremacism in 'Breaking Bad'? [View all]

[Enrique]

http://thenewinquiry.com/essays/the-white-market/

Which brings us to the other thing that sets White and Pinkman apart from their competitors: color. And I don’t mean blue.

The white guy who enters a world supposedly beneath him where he doesn’t belong yet nonetheless triumphs over the inhabitants is older than talkies. TV Tropes calls it “Mighty Whitey,” and examples range from Tom Cruise as Samurai and Daniel Day Lewis as Mohican to the slightly less far-fetched Julia Stiles as ghetto-fabulous. But whether it’s a 3-D Marine playing alien in Avatar or Bruce Wayne slumming in a Bhutanese prison, the story is still good for a few hundred million bucks. The story changes a bit from telling to telling, but the meaning is consistent: a white person is (and by extension, white people are) best at everything.

In Savages, another recent story of Mighty Whitey getting people stoned, Berkeley-educated botanist Chon (maybe the only name whiter than “White”) and his war-vet buddy Ben combine exported Afghan seeds and a public-Ivy STEM degree to create a strand of superweed. A narrator asserts Afghanistan is the source of the best weed on earth with the same revelatory reverence that Anthony Bourdain might declare Iberia the source of the best pork. It’s not enough that these two 20-somethings grow and sell weed; they have to do it better than anyone else by a huge margin. Chon and Ben’s bud has a THC content of 40 percent (the 2011 Cannabis Cup winner Liberty Haze tops out at 25 percent) and sells for a laughable $6,000 per pound. The botanist-manager uses his profits the way you’d expect a self-respecting white person to: sustainable charity projects in Asia and Africa.

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You see, the Mexicans need white college graduates because only the white graduates know the secret drug recipes. But these white craftsmen don’t want to work for such swarthy operations, and so, despite being far outmatched in both resources and experience, they contrive plots to bring down the heretofore untouchable organizations.

The scene in Breaking Bad’s fourth season, when Pinkman — a failure at high school chem — shows up a room of Mexican scientists is full of supremacist glee. The Mexicans can wave their skill and experience around, but the science equipment knows objective quality, and there’s no competing with the only white guy in the room. These plots expect viewers to cheer while pale protagonists repeatedly triumph over their southern enemies, leaving them dead or in jail. By the start of season five, White is so successful that Breaking Bad becomes no more diverse than Big Love, leaving the show’s anchoring team visually indistinguishable from the senior cadre of a skinhead gang. In the recent half-season finale, White goes so far as to actually enlist the Aryan Nation to perform a series of expertly timed prison assassinations. But Walter is a bad guy! He still drives the car the show is trying to sell you.

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