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Television from the Superlab: The Postmodern Serial Drama and the New Petty Bourgeoisie in Breaking Bad

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 December 2014

MORGAN FRITZ
MORGAN FRITZ*
Affiliation:
Department of English, University of Maryland. Email: [email protected].
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Abstract

This essay considers the television series Breaking Bad in light of Nicos Poulantzas's concept of the new petty bourgeoisie and Bruno Latour's notion of the production of “monsters” in modern society as a result of the compartmentalization of science from society. Breaking Bad, which has received near universal praise from the popular press, established itself as the most recent dominant show in the recent wave of serial dramas. As a show that resembles the experimental vacuum chamber described by Latour, Breaking Bad succeeds in naturalizing its own terms so that they go unquestioned by viewers. My article views the character Walter White not as the everyman antihero presented by the show, but rather as a representative of what Poulantzas has termed the new petty bourgeoisie. A contention made in this essay is that the quarantined nature of such serial dramas allows them to work as vehicles for ideologies that go unexamined by their viewers.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of American Studies , Volume 50 , Issue 1 , February 2016 , pp. 167 - 183
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Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press and British Association for American Studies 2014 

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References

1 John Jurgensen, “‘Breaking Bad’ Finale Draws Record 10.3 Million Viewers,” Speakeasy, Wall Street Journal blogs, 30 Sept. 2013, at http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2013/09/30/breaking-bad-finale-logs-record-10-3-million-viewers/tab/video.

2 See especially Shklovsky, Victor, “Art as Technique,” in Shklovsky, Victor, Tomashevsky, Boris, and Eichenbaum, Boris, Russian Formalism: Four Essays, 2nd edn, trans. Lemon, Lee T. and Reis, Maron J. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2012), 3–24Google Scholar.

3 David Koepsell, “Is Walter White One of TV's Truly Evil Characters?” BBC News Magazine, 26 Sept. 2013.

4 Emily Nussbaum, “‘Breaking Bad’ Returns” Culture Desk, New Yorker blogs, 12 Aug. 2013, at www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/breaking-bad-returns.

5 Latour, Bruno, We Have Never Been Modern, trans. Porter, Catherine (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991)Google Scholar. Latour builds his discussion of this controversy upon the work of Shapin, Steven and Schaffer, Simon in Leviathan and the Air-Pump: Hobbes, Boyle, and the Experimental Life (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1985)Google Scholar.

6 Ibid., 42.

7 See Lotz, Amanda D., The Television Will Be Revolutionized (New York: NYU Press), 2007Google Scholar.

8 The unguarded statement is from a 2008 speech by US Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs Thomas Shannon. Quoted in Mercille, Julien, “Violent Narco-cartels or US Hegemony? The Political Economy of the ‘War on Drugs’ in Mexico,” Third World Quarterly, 32, 9 (2011), 1637–53CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 1645.

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11 Ibid., 55.

12 The titles of anti-Skyler Facebook pages include “Kill off Skyler White,” “I Hate Skyler White,” and “Fuck Skyler White.” See the opinion piece about experiencing online abuse by the actress who plays Skyler: Anna Gunn, “I Have a Character Issue,” New York Times, 23 Aug. 2013.

13 “‘Breaking Bad’: Vince Gilligan on Meth and Morals” Fresh Air, National Public Radio, 19 Sept. 2011.

14 David Segal, “The Dark Art of ‘Breaking Bad’,” New York Times, 6 July 2011.

15 Ibid.

16 Jonah Goldberg, “Life and Death on Basic Cable” National Review digital, 19 Aug. 2013.

17 As one of the anonymous readers for this essay noted, this assertion about red-state viewership is faulty in the context of factors such as Internet piracy and post-airing binge-watching on Netflix and elsewhere.

18 Ibid.

19 Marx, Karl, The Communist Manifesto, ed. Bender, Frederic L. (New York: W. W. Norton), 1988, 78Google Scholar.

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21 Ibid., 24.

22 Poulantzas, Nicos, Classes in Contemporary Capitalism, trans. Fernbach, David (London: NLB, 1975), 207Google Scholar.

23 Ibid., 215.

24 Ibid., 266.

25 Davis, Mike, “The Last White Election?”, New Left Review, 79 (2013), 5–52Google Scholar, 52.

26 Associated Press, “Service Sector Increases at Slowest Pace in Two Years,” New York Times, 5 July 2012.

27 Kate Zernike and Megan Thee-Brenan, “Poll Finds Tea Party Backers Wealthier and More Educated,” New York Times, 14 April 2010.

28 Pew Research, “The Tea Party and Religion,” Pew Research Religion and Public Life Project, 23 Feb. 2011, at www.pewforum.org/2011/02/23/tea-party-and-religion.

29 Pew Research, “Strong on Defense and Israel, Tough on China,” Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, 7 Oct. 2011, at www.people-press.org/2011/10/07/strong-on-defense-and-israel-tough-on-china.

30 Jameson, Fredric, “Realism and Utopia in The Wire,” Criticism, 52, 3–4 (2010), 359–72CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 363.

31 June Thomas, “A Conversation with Vince Gilligan,” Slate, 6 Sept. 2012. According to this interview the show's events begin in 2007, and conclude roughly a year later.

32 Brian Stelter, “Season 5 of ‘Mad Men’ Is Delayed until 2012,” New York Times, 29 March 2011.