Breaking Bad is a middle-class horror story (more commentary about society than about the show) [View all]

[fujiyama]

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/sep/09/breaking-bad-middle-class-horror-story?INTCMP=ILCNETTXT3487

I found this really interesting and this is probably why the show resonates so much with so many people...

Michael Paarlberg

"The idea that a high school teacher might resort to cooking meth to provide for his family isn't that far-fetched in today's economy"

"Before Walter White on Breaking Bad got his swagger, declared himself "the one who knocks", and told his retiring partner he's in "the empire business", he had a humbler reason for entering the drug trade: he needed the money.

What makes Breaking Bad's anti-hero such a compelling character may be his more complex psychological motivations for staying in it: the regret of missed opportunities, the rush of power from vanquishing his foes. But what makes him believable in the first place is the depressingly unremarkable financial squeeze in which he finds himself at the beginning of the series: working a second job at a car wash, begging an ambulance driver not to take him to the ER because he "doesn't have the greatest insurance", fretting over the debt he'll leave behind for his family when he dies."

"n a country where there are no workers, only entrepreneurs, where our folk heroes are Silicon Valley billionaires, where everyone is told they are middle class, but that status is so precarious, being rich beyond one's dreams is not so hard to imagine. But more importantly, neither is being poor. The one thing that seems fanciful is working hard, playing by the rules, and having a decent income and a stable retirement to show for it."

"Breaking Bad is a truly American TV show. In its universe, bad things happen not because of impersonal structural forces but because of the choices made by bad people. That would be reassuring if that universe weren't so bleak to begin with. A morality tale, Breaking Bad asks the viewer, what would you do in the same situation? At what point do you stop sympathizing with Walt and start to condemn him? But given the economic realities of 21st century America, perhaps the real question is, why aren't more people cooking meth too?"