I watched Twin Peaks 17 years after the second season finale. Lost addict that I was, I watched the
final episode of Lost—the final one—nearly two months after
everyone else had. I was avoiding Lost message
boards and Wikipedia pages like a madman. I started watching The Office regularly during the middle
of the third season. In the world of television, I seem to always be lagging
behind everyone else.
So it isn’t much of a surprise
that I’m a season and three quarters behind in watching the AMC hit show Breaking Bad. I am lurking on the
fringes of the third season—on the third episode; I am slowly (or rather,
quickly) making my way through the intertwining stories of high school
chemistry teacher-turned-meth cook Walter White and his partner in crime Jesse
Pinkman, a former student of Mr. White.
I realize, of course, that I am
somewhat behind the times in commenting on troubles of the mysterious Mr.
White, but I had the thought recently—having recently been reading about
societal techniques of repression for my anthropology of death class—that
Walter White is living what amounts to the actual ‘American Dream.’
~
What I mean to say is this: the
typical ‘American Dream’ is qualified as having a rewarding (both emotionally
and fiscally) job, a nice-looking house in a nice-looking neighborhood, and a
happy family. While the national literature—i.e. the Declaration of
Independence—establishes nothing so specific as those three elements, it offers
that each person (or “man” in the exact reference) has the right to “life,
liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” I should point out that I have no wish
to comment on the political views of the founding fathers—only give a passing
nod in their direction on my way to looking at Walter White’s peculiar version
of the ‘American Dream.’
It is peculiar because it is
violent and illegal. What is so fascinating with any person’s relationship with
the law is that you define yourself according to it…even if you choose to break
it. (I’m assuming the law is knowingly broken; I'm not dealing with
psychopaths.) Even though Walter has an argument with his DEA-employed
brother-in-law Hank about the legality of marijuana and other drugs, part of
the appeal of these drugs in the first place is their illegality.
There is an undeniable thrill in
breaking the law. I will openly confess here that very real personal thrill.
While there’s a thrill in underage drinking, there’s far more of a thrill in
something like trespassing. You are very physically crossing a boundary.
~
When Walter and his wife Skyler
are having raucous sex in Walter’s small compact car in the school parking lot,
Skyler (pantingly) asks Walter, “Why is this so good?”
“Because it’s illegal,” he
answers.
It’s almost as if a halo of joy
and excitement surround the possibility of illegality in Breaking Bad. Every character in the show engages in some form of
illegality—from minor offense, such as that of Hank in watching Walter provide
his underage son with alcohol, to the major offenses, such as Walter's methamphetamine production,
drug sale, and murder.
The show creator Vince Gilligan has
gone on record to note that he wanted to write a television series that started
with a protagonist who slowly shifted into an antagonist. The one issue for me is that
Walter—at least not yet—has not faded from being a protagonist. As far as I’m concerned,
he has, so to speak, stripped away his superego and let his id run rampant. All
the Freudian repressions of sexuality (to an extent, anyway, in the car-sex scene) and violence started to be
enacted.
It’s no secret that sociologists
and anthropologists (not to mention psychoanalysts like Freud) theorize that
there are dangerous impulses lingering just beneath our skins. It’s a demented
kind of pleasure to watch those impulses be acted out through the character of
Walter White...a kind of 'American Dream'?
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