Class Warfare, the Neoliberal Man and the Political Economy of Methamphetamine in Breaking Bad

chapter 17 Class Warfare, the Neoliberal Man and the Political Economy of Methamphetamine in Breaking Bad

Michael Seltzer

Introduction

During the course of a cozy Christmas interview with the New York Times, Barack Obama confessed that Breaking Bad was his favourite television enter- tainment. One journalist commented that it was unlikely that the president had much time to watch tv so he most probably asks “one of his rich, fancy friends, ‘What should I watch?’ Rich fancy friend says, ‘Breaking Bad’ because that’s the kind of thing rich, fancy people watch”(Fallon, 2013). Given Obama’s own expensive private schooling and education at elite universities, this is not surprising since the cable network amc specifically aimed this series at ‘up- scale audiences’ (Smith 2013, 159). It was nonetheless disconcerting to learn that a series chronicling the career of a methamphetamine producer was the favourite of the leader of a nation where the drug had already ruined the lives of millions of working class families while costing more than 23 billion dollars each year in health, criminal justice and social services expenditures ( Steinberg 2009). These factors, however, represent but a fraction of the class-related fac- ets of this highly popular and much discussed program. In following the career of a middle class professional whose brilliance and ingenuity in producing and marketing a highly addictive drug brought him immense riches, the series cele- brated entrepreneurship, avarice, disdain for government controls and related neoliberal values. Yet, as we shall see, this storyline was peripheral to the main ideological work of Breaking Bad, namely the production of images and ideas rationalising the fate and justifying the treatment of those on the losing side of a vicious class war raging in the us since the 1980s. This chapter begins by briefly attending to the popularity of this series among middle class professionals before discussing its celebration during five seasons of a cluster of key neoliberal values. The focus then shifts to an exploration of the images and themes central to Breaking Bad’s treatment of the working class, methamphetamine and addiction. Significantly, nearly all the poor and working class men and women foregrounded in the series are portrayed as depraved and dangerous persons unworthy of respect, concern

Class Warfare, the Neoliberal Man and the Political Economy 289 and sympathy. In so doing, Breaking Bad becomes a media project like Benefits Street and Shameless contributing to the demonisation of working people, while ignoring the brutal forces of neoliberal capitalism and austerity regimes destroying their lives (Jones 2016). In shrinking the field of view for audiences and decontextualising the cruel realities of working class life, the series pro- vides ideational ammunition justifying the fates of those no longer of value for capital.

If You’re So Smart, Why Aren’t You Rich

First of all, some attention needs directing to that class fraction providing some of the most ardent fans of the cliff-hanging plots, highly innovative camera angles and brilliant acting of this series. Contrary to claims made by devotees about its originality, the core values presented by Breaking Bad deviate little from longstanding quintessential myths of American television celebr ating the sacredness of the nuclear family, praising individualistic competitiveness, and applauding triumphs of the individual over governmental interference (Himmelstein 1984). Similarly, the protagonist’s use of his knowledge of chem- istry and laboratory skills to solve problems in episode after episode reproduces nearly exactly the storyline of MacGyver, a us television series from the 1980s focused on a non-violent protagonist using his expertise in physics and chem- istry to solve in each episode a diversity of problems (Turley 2013). Perhaps the only feature of Breaking Bad setting it apart from comparable series like The Sopranos and Mad Men involves the contrast between its largely sympathetic portrayal of a core cast of middle class professionals and its negative treatment of working people and others from the lower strata of American society. By creating a protagonist like Walter White having a post-graduate education and experience as a laboratory scientist, the series clearly appealed to what Barbara and John Ehrenreich early identified as the ‘professional man- agerial class’ or pmc comprised of ‘mental workers’ positioned between the working class and the capitalist class (1977). Reinforcing this appeal through- out the series were law enforcement bureaucrats, physicians, teachers and others qualifying for pmc membership owing to their positions as salaried workers broadly engaged in “the reproduction of capitalist culture and capitalist social relations” (Ehrenreich and Ehrenreich 1977,7). Not surprisingly, this societal positioning was shared by many of those producing a substantial liter- ature about the series focusing on such issues as the protagonist’s masculinity (Cowlishaw 2015; Gercke 2013; Lotz 2014), his role as an anti-hero (Martin 2012; Vaage 2016) and his position as a symbol of contemporary morality and ethics