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The MelodRama of the UnkNown MaN

A Genre of Ethics and Poetics

Timna Rauch – 5971942 Research Master Media Studies Final Thesis February 11 2015 Supervisor: G.W. van der Pol Second Reader: J. W. Kooijman Third Reader: W. Staat The Melodrama of the Unknown Man A Genre of Ethics and Poetics

Timna Rauch – 5971942 Weberstraat 32 1223 JT Hilversum 06 28 88 99 12 [email protected]

February 11 2015 Final Thesis Research Master Media Studies Supervisor: G. W. van der Pol Second Reader: J. W. Kooijman Third Reader: W. Staat University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam

Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION – COOKING GENRE 4

CHAPTER 1 – TOWARDS A POETICS OF SERIAL DRAMA 8

§1 STUDYING SERIAL DRAMA 8

§2 A POETICS BASED APPROACH 11

§3 (NEO-) FORMALISM 14

CHAPTER 2 – GENRE, MELODRAMA AND TV 16

§1 GENRE AND ‘CLASSIC’ MELODRAMA 17

§2 MELODRAMA ON TV 21

CHAPTER 3 – GENRE AS MORAL REGISTER 25

§1 MORAL PERFECTIONISM 26

§2 THE MELODRAMA OF THE UNKNOWN WOMAN 31

§ 3 FROM MAN TO WOMAN 33

CHAPTER 4 – BREAKING DOWN BREAKING BAD 35

§1 A STORY OF CHANGE 38

§2 THE TRANSFORMATION OF MR. WHITE 46

§3 FELINA 54

CONCLUSION – THE MELODRAMA OF THE UNKNOWN MAN 59

FINAL THOUGHTS – MY OWN FELINA 62

BIBLIOGRAPHY 64

APPENDIX I 69

APPENDIX II 70

Introduction – Cooking Genre

“Some straight like you, giant stick up his ass, all of a sudden at age like what, sixty, he's just gonna break bad?” (‘Breaking Bad’ 1.01 TC: 36:21)

When Breaking Bad’s (AMC 2008-2013) creator Vince Gilligan stumbled upon a newspaper article about a man who was caught cooking methamphetamine in the back of his recreational vehicle, he couldn’t stop wondering what happened. What would drive a seemingly sane and normal guy to make such a drastic change in his life? It was this question that motivated the creation of Walter White, the elusive and much discussed protagonist of Breaking Bad. Gilligan described the series as the story of “Mr. Chips gone Scarface” when he first pitched his idea to AMC. In an interview he explains: “I think of Breaking Bad as a bit of a character study. […] We are telling a story of transformation” (Gilligan in The Guardian, 2012). Or as the protagonist himself puts it, at the beginning of a chemistry lecture: “Technically chemistry is the study of matter, but I prefer to see it as the study of change” (‘Breaking Bad’ TC: 07:31). The transformation or change of Walter White begins when the fifty-year-old overeducated chemistry teacher is diagnosed with stage-three lung cancer. Walter decides he has nothing to lose and will do anything to ensure his family’s financial future after his inevitable and early death. With the help of former-student and small time drug dealer Jesse, Walter starts up a meth lab in the back of an RV. Walter White breaks bad and over the course of sixty-two episodes, dispersed over five seasons. Walter becomes less and less Walt – the nice, quiet family man and teacher – and more and more Heisenberg – a mysterious and malicious drug lord. A transformation that is in no way unproblematic, as Walter again underlines when telling his students about the beauty of chemistry: “It’s growth, than decay, and than transformation” (ibid. TC: 08:15); which are exactly the stages through which the story of Walter will unfold. In his constant struggle to balance his two personas we see how seemingly good guy Walter slowly decays and/or transforms into bad guy Heisenberg. Series that confront their viewer with a complex and morally challenged protagonist are not entirely new. More and more series have a bad guy – or antagonistic protagonist if you will – at their centre. Think for example of HBO’s The Soprano’s (1999-2007), which revolves around mafia boss Tony Soprano and builds on the gangster movie genre, or Showtime’s Dexter (2008, 2013) about a ferocious serial killer. These series, and others like them, are immensely popular; the three titles mentioned so far are all in the top fifty of ‘IMDb’s Highest Rated TV-Series’ list.1

1 Find full list on IMDb.com < http://www.imdb.com/search/title?num_votes=5000,&sort=user_ 4

Introduction – Cooking Genre

However, in the past decade the preferred protagonist is not the only thing that has changed within the television landscape. Like Walter in Breaking Bad the medium has gone through growth, decay and is now in a stage of transformation. Television was long argued to be a medium of consumerism, made for- and enjoyed by passive couch potatoes. A medium, though much critically researched, much less critically accepted. The reputation of the medium arguably started to change with the coming of paid network channels like HBO – which is ironically famous for its slogan ‘It’s not TV, it’s HBO’. These networks started to raise production budgets and began to produce series that moved away from the classic tradition of soap opera and the occasional cop- and hospital series. Series that broke free from television’s storytelling traditions and were different from all we had seen thus far – with some exceptions like Twin Peaks (Lynch/Frost Productions, 1990-1991) and X-Files (20th Century Fox Television, 1998-2002) off course. Shows that not only demanded a more active, arguably intelligent, audience due to its more complex narration, but also shows that instigated the notion of ‘quality TV’, suggesting that TV before that had no quality. Not only are the rules for televised drama expanding, also the viewing experience itself rapidly transforms. Due to the many digital media platforms and possibilities, watching TV is no longer an in-house experience. One can take ‘television’ on the road via devices like smartphones and tablets. Also access to the material has changed via downloading, DVD’s and online streaming, and thus viewers are no longer restricted to a channel’s programming schedule. In many ways the rules have changed, both for viewers and producers and thus also for scholarly research one might assume. However, it appears that the academic field in some way is falling behind on this fast changing medium, in particular the form that appears to be the most important to these changes: serial drama 2. The changing landscape of television has been extensively researched over the past decade, but in most works serial drama is not considered as a mode or art form in and of itself. With this project I want to take on the second transformation – of the medium – via the first – that of the protagonist. Because first of all I strongly feel that the complex morality that became more and more popular over the past decade and has arguably reach its pinnacle – thus far – with Breaking Bad, lies at the heart of understanding the transformation of the medium. Secondly I have found that most research regarding the changes of television is often too restricted to scholarly traditions related to television studies; traditions in which context is

2 I prefer the term serial drama instead of terms like ‘quality TV’, television series etc. Because this form is no longer restricted to the singular medium of television. This not only goes for the changed viewing practices, but also for the academic focus as shall become clear in this project. 5

Introduction – Cooking Genre preferred over content. With this project I want to demonstrate how serial drama should be understood as an art form of its own right and show how such an understanding can shed a light on the moral struggles many shows confront us with nowadays. For this I will develop the melodrama of the unknown man as a genre; a genre that is by no means a set list of generic features. The melodrama of the unknown man should rather be understood as a mode, an outlook. It is a means by which method and theory guide questions for analytic and interpretational goals and via which the morality in series that could be defined by this genre can be better understood. Creating a genre is not an easy endeavour – and as genre is depended on many factors, perhaps impossible – and I am well aware of this. Also I must already note here that this project is a first step towards a new understanding of serial drama via genre, rather than a full circle development of a new genre. However, by the following steps I will demonstrate both the need for a new understanding as well as demonstrate how the specific recipe that I propose can bring us towards a new understanding, or could be part of this. In the first chapter I will address the way in which I find the dominant academic perspectives on serial drama too restricted. Also in this chapter an alternative to those perspectives will be presented: a poetics based approach. This approach, that is borrowed from David Bordwell and reworked for television by Jason Mittell does not disregard context – being it historical, productional or other. However, within poetics the object itself forms the centre of the research because it is a means to discern the storytelling mode of an object; hence its content. As I do not mean to develop a full genre in this project I am also not interested in further developing the poetics approach of Mittell. Rather I want join the idea of a general poetics with a specific mode of analysis. The idea of genre as part of poetics will be the end point of the first chapter and the starting point of the second. Mittell, in his project on poetics, initiates genre – as a mode – as an important part of a poetics of television. Melodrama as a distinct storytelling mode holds a particular place in this part of his project. In the second chapter I will therefore discuss melodrama in its classic form as well as the understanding of melodrama and genre as a mode. It will be particularly the moral implications of these perspectives that will be central here. In the third chapter another scholar who understands genre as a mode will be introduced: Stanley Cavell. His ideas formed the initial inspiration for my project, because he links genre as a mode to genre as a specific moral outlook. Via Cavell I will be able to unite the academic challenges instigated by the changes of television and the moral complexity that is part of this change.

Introduction – Cooking Genre

By the end of this chapter all ingredients for the melodrama of the unknown man will be complete and they will be united in a demonstrative analysis of Breaking Bad in chapter four. Via a close reading of this series I will be able to present how the melodrama of the unknown man as an outlook actually works and what insights on Breaking Bad in particular can be gained via this perspective. I hope that with this project I will be able to instigate a new strand of research, the way that Mittell and others are already trying, in which serial drama will be seen as a separate media- form and an art form in its own right, with its own methods, poetics and genres. The melodrama of the unknown man will be just the tip of an iceberg that needs much more exploring.

Chapter 1 – Towards a Poetics of Serial Drama

Chapter 1 – TowArds a Poetics of Serial DrAma

WALTER: God. This entire process has just been so...It's always been one step forward and two steps back. We need your help. (‘Mandala’ 2.11 TC: 11:24 )

The television landscape has gone through some vast changes over the past decade. As explained in the introduction, content, production modes and viewing practises all are rapidly changing. This change forms a grand challenge for those with an academic interest in TV, and in particular those with a keen interest in serial drama. Outside of media studies serial drama has been accepted as a cultural practice that, like film or literature, can be linked with philosophy or societal developments. Within media studies however scholars seem rely too much on the traditional modes of television studies to understand the phenomenon. I argue that serial drama should be understood as a medium, art form and/or cultural practice in its own right, and thus needs its own methods of research. Before I come to the possibility of such a method, and what it could or should be, I will discuss the main tendencies in research on serial drama thus far; I will light out some of the academic trends on the subject and show how these in my opinion fall short.

§1 Studying serial drama

It appears that television studies’ approach to serial drama in most cases falls into two categories: the first is the ongoing debate on the notion of ‘quality TV’, the other is a rather traditional cultural studies approach. Cultural Studies has always been one of the dominant discourses within the field of television studies. This is in part due to the fact that television studies emerged from communication- and cultural studies (Mittel, 2006: 30), rather than from film- and literature studies. However some scholars, like myself, find that a cultural studies dominated approach does not suffice to understand serial drama. Christine Geraghty for example finds that the medium, due to the dominance of cultural studies, is marked by a lack of an “agreed canon”, “critical reviewing”, and “basis for judging […] aesthetics”, in contrast to film. (Geraghty, 2003: 30,31). Before reading her article I actually did not realize this, but it is true that even though the term quality TV keeps turning up in both academic and non-academic discussions of recent television, there is no canonical agreement on what this quality actually beholds. Geraghty therefore argues for a more aesthetic approach towards – what she deems – television drama, rather than a cultural or contextual one. (ibid: 42) For this more formal approach Geraghty for a large part turns to film studies and away from cultural studies. Though I strongly agree with her call for a more aesthetical approach towards serial drama, I find it problematic that in this article the

Chapter 1 – Towards a Poetics of Serial Drama debate on aesthetics becomes a discussion of quality rather than one of method. I do not mean to say here that quality and aesthetics are not related, however I do not think that a method of aesthetics should necessarily involve a quality discussion. Gergahty wrote her article before the actual full-blown explosion of serial drama; series like Dexter, Mad Men and my central case-study Breaking Bad all began to air after this article was published. However her article is exemplary to me because the move away from cultural studies appears to almost force her into the arms of the quality TV discussion. Because she connects quality and aesthetics or formal analysis so strongly in this article, Geraghty is unable to fully develop a method for critical analysis. Many of her observations and her critique on the – at that time – current state of research on serial drama are valuable, and in line with my own ideas on the subject. However, because of the lack of a methodological outcome her project clearly does not suffice. The problem, in the work of Geraghty and other discussions and research that employ the term quality TV, is the fact that quality implies a form of judgment and therefor a personal opinion. This is something Geraghty tries – but is not fully able to – avoid with her call for a new and formal approach to serial drama. Many other scholars too agree upon the fact that ‘quality TV’ is no longer a working qualification for those shows that move beyond television’s generic and narrative traditions. As Sudeep Dasgupta for example puts it: “the term quality needs to be shunned […] because critiques of quality produce a conceptually inaccurate and politically disturbing invocation of the people” (Dasgupta, 2014). However, as the term politically perhaps already suggests, his approach is quite a cultural studies one. The argument he makes against the term of quality TV is based upon the cultural and political implications of ‘taste’, rather than on the aesthetic form of series nowadays. So where Geraghty’s move away from cultural studies makes her turn to the debate on quality, Dasgupta’s critique on the term quality is based on a cultural studies discourse. I certainly do not want to dismiss these two articles as incorrect or irrelevant, nor do I wish to say that these articles are exemplary for all research performed on serial drama. Rather the works of Dasgupta and Geraghty are exemplary of the two sides of the spectrum I found in the early stages of my research on serial drama, during which I found these and similar perspectives quite dominant.1 There is a third quite prevailing perspective that concentrates on historical and technological development as a grand influence on production- and storytelling modes and viewing practices. For example Martin Brett in his book Difficult Men. Behind the Scenes of a Creative Revolution (2013), traces for a great part the productional development of televised

1 In the bibliography an annotated section is added, in which a few of the consulted works from the early stages of this project are categorized according to the academic trends described here. 9

Chapter 1 – Towards a Poetics of Serial Drama drama in order to account for the structural and narrative themes that define many series of the 21st century. All though he comes to some interesting conclusions, to which I will return later, the perspective is rather limited. As for the debate on quality and the perspective of cultural studies, also this production-focused approach is definitely relevant. However I find all three perspectives quite limited and more importantly they tend to overlook the most important thing and that is the object itself.

§1.2 Studying case studies There are of course many articles out there that present a single or central case study – Dasgupta himself comes with an analysis of Mad Men to underline his argument. However, due to the domination of the above described perspectives, none of them seem to come to a exstensive close reading; formal analysis is simply not at the heart of any of these approaches. Gergaty might seem the exception here, but her call for a more formal approach is not exemplified with an analysis of a case study. However, I strongly feel that it is exactly within the content itself that many of the challenges and possible solutions concerning serial drama can be found. Therefore the perhaps most striking trend I found when looking for studies of serial drama, is how close readings are actually performed by other disciplines. For example communication studies and philosophy have both taken a keen interest in popular culture in general and serial drama in particular. For example there are (at least) two series of books on popular culture and philosophy2, in which different articles that discuss the philosophical links and references in the same case study are collected. These case studies range from rock bands to movies, but mostly television series (not restricted to drama). In most of the articles published in these series, a form of close reading is actually performed. However, again there is no clear method for analysis presented and the analyses are strongly guided and limited by the chosen philosophical perspective. A full collection therefor does give some interesting insights or even a new perspective on the case study at hand, but in the end the case study forms the illustration of the different philosophical perspectives presented. Thus even though in these books the case study is put quite central, the close readings do not give insight in the overall themes, formal aesthetics or storytelling strategies of these case studies, nor are they able to present a perspective on serial drama as an art form in its own right. Communication studies, like all the above presented perspectives, comes to relevant observations concerning serial drama in general and on specific case studies, but they are more concentrated

2 The Blackwell Philosophy and Pop Culture series. Published by: John Whiley and Sons Inc., Hoboken. Popular Culture and Philosophy. Published by: Open Court Publishing Company, Chicago.

Chapter 1 – Towards a Poetics of Serial Drama on either fan cultures or audience reception (for example: Fiske, Bourda and Tramborini et. al.) Therefore, though the case study is often presented as the central object, the insights gained via this academic strategy are again not on the content of the case study itself. I cannot emphasise enough that all the above-mentioned forms of research are relevant to understanding serial drama, however I find them all restricted in their own way. Because I strongly feel that the challenge in understanding serial drama in large part lies inside the objects, in their narrative- and formal construction and the way this new visual art form generates meaning. The ethical difficulties that are often present in serial drama, the problem of analytic method because of the vast amount of material and the popularity and new forms of viewer engagement are perhaps in part explained by the above-mentioned perspectives, but even when we would bring these works together a clear solution cannot be found. Perhaps, like with many art forms, there is no clear solution because interpretation is always an important part of understanding these objects. However it is exactly a form of well-substantiated interpretation that appears to be somehow lacking in the field.

§2 A poetics based approach

I am certainly not the first or only one that finds the dominant approaches limited and lacking a strong analytical focus or strategy. Jason Mittell, too has found research on serial drama – which he deems ‘Complex Television’ – not sufficient in method and results. As he explains: “Television scholars have typically been reluctant to focus their analysis on the medium’s narrative form […]” and they “tend to foreground social impacts over aesthetics” (Mittell, 2006: 30) His counter proposal is a poetics based approach. With such an approach it remains possible to take factors like production, social effect, fan culture or philosophical references into account, but the object itself can be maintained as a central point of analysis. As Mittell explains in one of his articles in which he calls for such an approach:

To understand [complex television] we must use formal narratology to chart its structure and boundaries while incorporating other methods to explore how this narrative mode intersects with dimensions of creative industries, technological innovations, participatory practices, and viewer comprehension (ibid.: 39)

The approach Mittell proposes is strongly based on David Bordwell’s historical poetics and his ideas on narratology in which a “narrational mode is a historically distinct set of norms of narrational construction and comprehension” (Bordwell in Mittell, 2006: 29). The aim of the work of Mittell is to identify this narrational mode for Complex Television.

Chapter 1 – Towards a Poetics of Serial Drama

Complex television according to Mittell is a new storytelling mode, which emerged of the past two decades with series like Seinfeld, Lost, X-Files and so on (ibid: 29). Hence it is what I refer to as modern day serial drama. Mittell, understands these and other series as:

[…] a new paradigm of storytelling […] with a reconceptualization of the boundary between episodic and serial forms, a heightened degree of self-consciousness in storytelling mechanics, and demands for intensified viewer engagement focussed on both diegetic pleasures and formal awareness (ibid: 38, 39)

In this article Mittell proposes a poetic based approach to understand this storytelling paradigm, because it includes many aspects of serial drama. The earlier described approaches exclude more aspects then they seem to include, a poetics based approach tries to understand the storytelling mode that can be found by close reading of the object in combination with the historical, cultural and or productional context of the object. Instead of asking “what does it do?” or “what does/could it represent?” the question central question in poetics is “how does it work?” In Mittell’s latest book, which is still in development3, Mittell tries to answer this question. Via close analysis of different important elements of the narrative structure – like character development and beginnings and endings – and relating these analyses continually to historical, social and technical developments he is able to take the first steps towards a poetics of complex TV. Because his book has a serial structure – Mittell published different chapters over time like a serial airs different episodes over time – there is a rather open conclusion; the last words of the final chapter aptly are “to be continued” (Mittel, 2012-13. ‘Endings’ §78) Mittell’s book than should be read as a demonstration of analyses with a poetics background, but by no means is it recipe or checklist for such an analysis. As Bordwell himself strongly states in his article ‘Historical Poetics of Cinema’: “What I shall be discussing is not a method at all” (Bordwell, 1989: 371). Bordwell describes historical poetics rather as an approach that is guided by two broad questions:

1. What are the principles according to which films are constructed and by means of which they achieve particular effects? 2. How and why have these principles arisen and changed in particular empirical circumstances? (ibid. 371)

These questions are central to Mittell’s book on complex TV, and he is in a large part able to answer them. Via readings of different elements of different series, and comparing and contextualizing these readings, Mittell proves able to lay bare important elements of complex

3 Jason Mittell made the book available via an online open source publishing website and asks readers to comment on this work in progress: http://mcpress.media-commons.org/complextelevision/ 12

Chapter 1 – Towards a Poetics of Serial Drama television’s narrative structures. He discerns different forms of serial beginnings, endings, character building etc. These are not as easily defined or explained as for example Bordwell’s idea of Classical Hollywood, which has a clear and consistent narrative and stylistic structure4. Also these structures are not the most relevant for my project, in the sense that I am more interested in the moral meta-level series present – the moral implications of this narrative form – than in the bare elements of this new narrative form. In a way one could say that I want to take up where Mittell ended this project (thus far); I want to continue at Mittell’s ‘to be continued’. As he himself explains in his final chapter, there is a difference between asking ‘what does it mean?’, ‘why does it matter?’ – which are the questions cultural studies for example asks – and ‘how does it mean?’, ‘how does it matter?’ – which is the poetics perspective. (ibid. §48, 49) Mittell thus answers the second set of questions for the different series he addresses, and presents in this final chapter the next step and asks: “what does it mean, through how it means” (ibid. §51). Mittell demonstrates this final step with a short analysis of the possible gender politics presented in Breaking Bad. He chooses this example and this political subject because of an earlier analysis he provided of this series. This analysis is one based on genre, and it is Mittell’s specific idea of genre that is most relevant to this project. Mittell understands genre as mode, rather than as a set of features and therefor the specific generic mode he lights out in his work is what comes closest to a summarization of the storytelling mode of complex TV. Understanding genre as a mode has another advantage because it also provides a way of laying bare an underlying meaning; it is the clearest exemplification of an answer to the question ‘what does it mean, through how it means?’

§2.1 Genre as poetics Mittell’s endeavour in understanding serial drama began long before he started to work towards a poetics of Complex TV. One of his earlier fields of interests was television genre, again motivated by a strong dissatisfaction with the dominant work in this field. Mittell, in his book on the subject, makes an argument to understand (television) genres as cultural categories, rather than as mere aesthetic categorizations. According to Mittell genres - particularly in television – “are not neutral categories” (Mittell, 2004: 27). Rather they are “constituted by clusters of discursive processes operative within texts, audiences, industries and cultural contexts”, and therefore should be understood as cultural categories more than anything else. (ibid.) This however does not mean that the aesthetic qualities – as in markers not as in value – should be left unexamined and that formal analysis in such an approach has no play. According to Mittell it is

4 Classical Hollywood is defined by its clear beginning, middle, end narrative structure, ending in resolution or ‘catharsis’, linear time line, use of continuity editing et al. 13

Chapter 1 – Towards a Poetics of Serial Drama particularly in the case of “narrative driven” television that we should turn to a combination of formal and cultural analysis; which Mittell for this project already found in Bordwell’s historical poetics. (ibid. 121, 122) In his generic chapter in Complex TV he builds from this idea of genres as cultural categories explaining that “Complex TV is not a genre” and that “Television genres are cultural categories that bundle texts together within particular contexts and cultural circulations, not simply sets of textual conventions” (Mittell, 2013: ‘Serial Melodrama’: §1). The poetics, or storytelling mode, of complex television is in part defined by its play with conventions, in particular genre traditions. Many series Mittell discusses – both in the book on television genre as in his work on complex TV – derive their appeal in large part from a blend of aesthetics and narrative conventions from multiple genres. However in most cases ‘melodrama’ is part of this mix, and it is in part therefore that Mittell decided to foreground the multiple melodramatic elements in complex television, instead of categorizing the different series he discusses according to a more mainstream use of the term genre. Also melodrama in the work of Mittell has a very particular meaning: he understands melodrama as a particular mode rather than a simple set of generic features. (ibid. §2) What this exactly means will be discussed in the following chapter – which is entirely devoted to melodrama – but the word ‘mode’ already points towards the relation between melodrama and complex TV’s storytelling practices; since Mittell often speaks of poetics as a narrative- or storytelling mode.

§3 (Neo-) Formalism

Before continuing on the path of a melodramatic mode as part of a poetics of serial drama, I would like to shortly touch upon another important notion from David Bordwell. Though Mittell employs formal analysis throughout his work, he does not explain Bordwell’s ideas on how such an analysis should be formed. However, since the ideas of Bordwell, are central to the work of Mittell, it is important to shed some light on neoformalism, an analytical strand of which David Bordwell and his colleague Kirsten Thompson are seen as the father and mother. Neoformalism is closely related to Bordwell’s ideas on poetics; it is best described as “a set of assumptions, an angel of heuristic approach, and a way of asking questions” (Bordwell, 1989: 379). Neoformalism is an approach of exception rather than confirmation because it treats meaning and the analytical concepts that generate meaning as flux. Like one should by now expect from a poetics based approach, concepts and meaning are strongly dependent on context, for example a genre or a historical place and/or time. The idea Bordwell poses is that: “neoformalist poetics makes theoretically defined, open-ended, corrigible and falsifiable claims”,

Chapter 1 – Towards a Poetics of Serial Drama and that it takes an particular interest in what stands out and, though focused on historical context, does not exclude interpretation. (ibid. 379, 385) In short neoformalism is again nor theory, nor method, rather it is a way of looking, comparing and seeing. Neoformalism is almost a protest of Bordwell, Thompson and others to the institutional tendency of Grand Theory, in which films are employed as illustration of an idea. According to Bordwell this approach is a self-fulfilling prophecy; a psychoanalytic reading of a film will always lead you to finding Oedipus complexes, phallic symbols and distorted fantasies. This is not a problem because they are not there, however these signals will be the only thing you are looking for. Neoformalism, as an approach of exception rather than norm, forces you to look at a film with a blank mind, because it hands you the tools to dissect the film little by little. It is only after that process that you begin your interpretation, based on the data you collected and combining it with a context of other films, history, cultural- and stylistic conventions and in some cases theory. Or in the words of Bordwell: “Historical poetics needs no such [Grand Theoretical] stories to guide its work. It offers explanations, not the recasting of films into the form of a master narrative” (ibid. 390). I see myself as quite the neoformalist film scholar, though I employ many (Grand) theoreticians, I always try to let the films (or series) speak first. It might therefore appear strange that I pose such a strong theoretical preference for the work of Stanley Cavell in the introduction. However, as shall become clear later, I do not employ his work as an al encompassing theory but as a means to come to ‘theoretically informed, open ended, corrigible and falsifiable claims’. As poetics and neoformalism, Cavell for me becomes a way of asking questions rather than answering them. However before coming to his work, the first step towards the melodrama of the unknown man is found in the word melodrama. A genre that has a long history and that has left quite a mark on serial drama.

Chapter 2 – Genre, Melodrama and TV

Chapter 2 – Genre, MelodRama and TV

WALTER: […] I'm just...I'm making a change in my life is what it is, and I'm at something of a crossroads and it's brought me to a realization: I'm not a criminal. No offense to any people who are, but...this is not me. (‘No Mas’ 3.01 TC: 40:36)

As explained in the previous chapter, genre holds a particular place in Jason Mittell’s project on complex television. However, the reason to choose genre as an approach towards a new understanding of serial drama is not simply borrowed from his work. I found the work of Mittell quite late in my project, when I had already decided to employ genre and the ideas of Cavell – which will be presented in the following chapter. This choice was motivated in the first place because genre, to me, is a way to ensure the object of study stays at the heart of your research, since generic features are primarily found in the structure and style of an object. Also I found it striking that research on television genres is often restricted to either defining different formats: game show, reality TV, or soap, and when applied to forms of drama one often turns towards genres associated with film and/or literature – something Mittell also discusses in his book on television genres. Though the melodrama of the unknown man to some extent borrows from film- and literature melodrama, it is a genre of its own right, which, as shall become clear later, provides a certain perspective on the narrational and stylistic mode of series nowadays. This latter feature is also the reason why Mittell turns to genre in his project on complex TV. However there is another reason to turn to genre in order to get a better understanding of serial drama. Within serial drama some clear trends have appeared over the last decade that might be considered as generic development. In the first place the protagonists of many modern day series have quite a deviated moral compass and most of them are male. This brings me back to the observations of Martin Brett who, as myself and Mittell, strongly argues that serial drama should be understood as an art form in its own right. In his book, aptly titled Difficult Men, Brett discusses a productional and historical development that not only “transform[ed] TV […] into a serious art form, but the dominant art form of the era” in which “new kinds of stories [are] free to wend their way through an approximation of real life” (Brett, 2013: 279). This ‘approximation of real life’ is part of a thematic trend Brett discerns in which difficult men are at the centre of many of the series that define this transformed TV. According to Brett:

Men alternately setting loose and struggling to cage their wildest natures has always been the great American story, the one found in whatever happens to be the ascendant medium at the time. Our favourite genres – the Western; the gangster saga […] – have all been literalizations of that inner struggle, just as Huckleberry Finn striking out for the territories was, or Ishmael taking to the sea. (ibid. 84)

Chapter 2 – Genre, Melodrama and TV

Similar stories of ‘men struggling to cage their wildest nature’ are now, by their adaptation towards serial drama, taken to their extremes in a seductive game in which viewers are dared “to emotionally invest in, even root for, even love, a gamut of criminals whose offences would come to include everything from adultery and polygamy to vampirism and serial murder” (ibid: 5). The trend of stories about difficult men therefore also appears to relate to ethics and moral. Viewers are now willing to engage with highly complex characters via whom they are presented with difficult moral dilemmas. Before coming to the particular role that melodrama as a genre plays within this trend, it is helpful to shortly discuss the more classic notion of melodrama and some of the complexities of the term genre.

§1 Genre and ‘Classic’ Melodrama

Genre is a complex, almost elusive concept. Though strongly embedded in the film industry, and viewers’ vocabulary, genre is a concept that is not easily construed. To categorize an object as part of a genre, for example ‘Western’, tells countless things about that object. A genre often comes with many assumptions, sometimes even appraisals, of the object at hand. These assumptions are partially guided by common knowledge, but often also personal.1 When it comes to genre, filmmakers, viewers, critics and scholars agree on as much connotations as they might disagree on. Melodrama is arguably one of the most elusive of all genres. It has been investigated by many scholars, from a multitude of perspectives, by a multitude of methods, resulting in a multitude of definitions. In the introduction of Imitations of Life (ed. Landy, 1991) the complex nature of the genre is made evident. Marcia Landy defines the content of melodrama as follows:

A constant struggle for gratification and equally constant blockages to its attainment. Melodramatic narratives are driven by the experience of one crisis after another, crises involving severed family ties, separation and loss, misrecognition of one’s place, person and propriety. Seduction, betrayal, abandonment, extortion, murder, suicide, revenge, jealousy, incurable illness, obsession and compulsion [are all] part of the familiar terrain of melodrama (ibid. 14)

Thus, melodrama is a very multi-layered, and perhaps multi-definable, genre. According to Landy, “melodrama [also] traverses a number of genres”. Melodrama is often coupled with

1 For example, when you look up ‘Western’ on Wikipedia you find that: “Westerns are devoted to telling stories set primarily in the later half of the 19th century in the American Old West”. According to the website this genre can define film but also literature or painting. However when I think of Western I immediately think of film. I think of John Wayne, Clint Eastwood, Ennio Morricone and The Great Train Robbery (dir. Porter, 1903). Western, for me, brings up images of horses, cowboys and Indians, piano players drinking too much whiskey in an empty bar, guns, stagecoaches, tumbleweeds… Perhaps some of these associations are also part of what you might call textbook Western or the Wikipedia definition of the genre, others are quite debatable – Ennio Morricone’s music for example is perhaps rather part of the so-called Spaghetti-Western than of the regular- or classic Western. 17

Chapter 2 – Genre, Melodrama and TV something else like: crime, romance or Western. On top of that melodrama traverses media, it can be found in literature, theatre, film and television. It could even be said that melodrama is one of the most persistent genres in fictional narrative. Despite the elusiveness of the genre, Landy emphasises that “in all cases […], what is at stake are questions of personal and cultural identity, social power, and continuity.” (ibid: 15, 16) This final quote also hints at a moral dimension that lies within the genre, in such that questions of identity and social power often involve a moral question. That this moral dimension is important to the genre is made evident in the work of Peter Brooks. In The Melodramatic Imagination (1976) Brooks investigates melodrama in literature and theatre in the nineteenth and early twentieth century. He explains in the introductory chapter that:

We may legitimately claim that melodrama becomes the principal mode for uncovering, demonstrating, and making operative the essential moral universe in a post-sacred era (ibid. 11)

Brooks’ particular interest throughout the book lies in how melodrama can be seen as a mode of expression of the nineteenth century secularization of ideas on good and evil. This moral dimension has stayed an important interest for those who discuss, critique and theorize melodrama over the years and in different forms. Moral however, as a concept, is perhaps just as elusive as genre and melodrama are. Morality is highly culturally dependent; religion, history, ethnicity, all have a strong influence on what one finds moral or immoral. My goal, or perhaps rather challenge, here is bringing these three complex concepts together and by doing so present a certain perspective on these concepts. I aim not to give an overall definition of genre, melodrama and/or moral; it is the relation between the three that is key here. It will become clear that moral, as an important aspect of melodrama, is present in-, rather than explained by the generic features of the genre. When in the following chapter Cavell is added to this complex mix the specific outlook that I deem the melodrama of the unknown man will make me able to provide a new perspective on Breaking Bad in particular and on the study of serial drama in general.

Chapter 2 – Genre, Melodrama and TV

§1.1 Classic (?!) Melodrama – a semantic/syntactic approach The word melodrama can be understood on multiple levels: it can define a certain narrative structure – a narrative driven by crises for example – it can refer to specific narrative or cinematic elements – often in cases in which melodrama is coupled with another genre – and it can even be used to define a certain mood or feeling – ‘being melodramatic’ about something. These different levels are not simply part of the multitude of meanings of the word melodrama but are also present in the term genre. To separate these elements and understand how they complement each other, even when they seem opposed, I turn to the work of Rick Altman. In his work on film genre Altman proposes a linguistic model to understand genre, which he defines as the semantic/syntactic approach 2. Here he borrows from the work of Ferdinand de Saussure on language, in which the semantic defines the building blocks of which language is made up, and the syntactic is the structure in which these blocks are arranged to create – a deeper level of – meaning. (Altman, 1999: 219) In genre studies the semantic and the syntactic are often seen as two different approaches. The problem, according to Altman, with this separation is that:

The semantic approach has little explanatory power, [but] it is applicable to a larger number of films. Conversely, the syntactic approach surrenders broad applicability in return for the ability to isolate a genre’s specific meaning-bearing structures (ibid: 222)

Therefore Altman proposes a model in which the semantic and the syntactic coexist and complement each other. The necessity of such a model is present in Altman’s hypothesis on the rise of different genres:

[…] genres arise in one of two fundamental ways: either a relatively stable set of semantic givens is developed through syntactic experimentation into a coherent and durable syntax, or an already existing syntax adopts a new set of semantic elements (ibid.)

This idea of genres rising both from ‘syntactic experimentation’ as well as from the implementation of new ‘semantic elements’ accounts for the multiplicity of genre because in both ways genre derives from multiple, at first perhaps incoherent, features. The textbook example to Altman’s idea is the movie series Star Wars (dir. Lucas, 1977-2005), in which the semantics are clearly taken from science fiction but these elements are arranged in the syntax of a Western.

2 Rick Altman’s syntactic/semantic approach is presented in an article that is an appendix to his full project on genre Film/Genre (Altman, 1999). In this full investigation of genre Altman adds the pragmatic level to his approach to account for the multiple uses of the term by, for example, film producers or film audiences. The book is thus dedicated to revise his earlier semantic/syntactic approach. However, for my project the divide between semantic- and syntactic elements is the most important and therefor I have chosen not to incorporate Altman’s further work on the complex nature of the term. 19

Chapter 2 – Genre, Melodrama and TV

Altman’s approach to genre thus “by taking seriously the multiple connections between semantics and syntax, establish[es] a new continuity relating film analysis, genre theory and genre history” (ibid.). Melodrama – as a word and as a genre – also takes place on these multiple levels and not simply because, when following Altman’s line of thought, these levels are present in all genres. Though Altman argues that semantics and syntax are often understood as different approaches, in many investigations of melodrama syntax and semantics – though not referred to as such – are actually seen as complementary. For example in John Cawelti’s article on melodrama in late nineteenth and early twentieth century literature, melodrama is understood as a coherent narrative structure that remains very much the same over the years. Cawelti understands melodrama as a space for social critique and this critique, and this critique is established via different choices on the level of semantics – whereby for example the protagonist is from a certain milieu (Cawelti, 1991). In this case the ‘pure’ melodrama lies merely in the syntax, but the semantic choices are of utter importance to Cawelti’s understanding of the genre. Thomas Elsaesser, in his view on melodrama, also emphasizes the genre as a space for social critique. The key to melodrama as a site for social critique for Elsaesser lies in the “interiorization and personalization of primarily ideological conflict” (Elsaesser, 1991: 71). Melodrama, for Elsaesser is the ultimate genre to show the contradictions of American civilisation. It is a genre in which the characters put “such high demands upon themselves, trying to live up to an exalted vision of man, but instead [live] out the impossible contradictions that have turned the American dream into its proverbial nightmare” (ibid: 89). Though this is explained as a narrative structure, and thus would fall in the category of syntax rather than semantics, Elsaesser too underlines the importance of the semantic elements of melodrama throughout his work. The semantic elements like “colour, gesture, and composition of frame” are strongly in service of the emotions of the characters in melodrama, and thus to the narrative that unfolds. (ibid: 76) However there are also – perhaps just as – many scholars who consider melodrama as a set of purely semantic elements. Durgnat for example states that: “melodrama is to drama what slapstick is to comedy” (Durgnat, 1991: 136). In his work melodrama is defined as those – semantic – elements that enhance the sense of drama in a narrative. Melodrama is, as in the work of Durgnat, often defined as a genre of excess, as “enlargement beyond the normal” (Asheim, 1991: 342). This excess can however be purely semantic or syntactic, but is often both.

Chapter 2 – Genre, Melodrama and TV

Because there is so many research done one the genre and the arguments often are quite different in both method and outcome it is hard to speak of ‘classic melodrama’. Classic in general is just as a debatable term as genre and melodrama are. However, some features of the genre keep reoccurring: first of all the understanding of melodrama as a site of critique trough internalization of social conflict. Secondly, melodrama is often described as a genre of – dramatic – excess and third semantic or rather cinematic elements are understood as means to enhance emotion, drama and narrative development. These elements are not only part of ideas on melodrama in film but they traverse media, and also appear in literature, theatre and television.

§2 Melodrama on TV

By the end of film melodrama’s heydays, television had become a more and more important and popular medium. It should come as no surprise that in the late 1950’s the genre found its way into the living rooms of this new and broad audience. Especially the domestic character of melodrama – it is another reoccurring feature that the melodramatic narrative particularly takes place within the domestic environment – and the domestic nature of television, made melodrama the textbook genre for the medium. As Lynne Joyrich explains in her article on the relation between TV melodrama and consumer culture: “With a broadening appeal to a general audience of viewer-consumers melodrama moved to television” the problem of this move is that melodrama “so dominates [TV’s] discourse that it becomes difficult to locate as a separate TV genre” (Joyrich, 1988: 131). The soap opera is perhaps the clearest television genre that is dominated by features taken from melodrama. Joyrich mentions for example the use of music to convey emotion, visual metaphor to enhance dramatic effect, and the intensification of the meaning of every day action. Also the themes that are addressed in soap opera are similar as the ones disseminated as features of (film) melodrama: “Like the film melodrama, soap opera expresses what are primarily ideological and social conflicts in emotional terms” (ibid.). However, in television the melodrama has become much more ambiguous, and the presence of melodramatic elements in TV-drama is even more persistent than in film. As Joyrich explains:

It seems that soap operas have been able to move into realms not usually associated with melodrama, while at the same time TV forms not typically seen as melodrama have become more and more melodramatic (ibid: 132)

Chapter 2 – Genre, Melodrama and TV

Melodramatic elements can be found in hospital-, crime- and even science fiction oriented series. While the emphasis in these series might lie on the action, they display many melodramatic features. A narrative structure similar to melodrama – a melodramatic syntax – is even one of the favoured structures for news stories. (ibid. 132, 133) In short: “television melodrama stands strong [and] its conventions are employed in a wide range of texts” (ibid: 135). One of the explanations Joyrich provides for melodrama’s persistence is the moral dimension of the genre. Melodrama isn’t just a genre of internalization of social critique it is also a genre of morality. According to Joyrich “Moral struggle is made visible [in melodrama], announcing itself as a disputable force. By enacting irreducible imperatives, melodrama serves to reassure a doubting audience of essential truths” (ibid: 138). However, contemporary series are not as reassuring on a moral level as the series Joyrich discusses might be. However, this does not mean that melodrama does not prevail throughout television history; and not only by the persistence of soap operas and its derivatives.

§2.1 Television Melodrama; a genre of ethics and poetics Linda Williams wrote an article about the changing modes of television series and relates this to a different use of melodrama, which she refers to as ‘mega- melodrama.’ (Williams, 2012: 523) Williams argues that in the recent development of television drama, the narrative structure of series has “gone increasingly horizontal in its utilization of time” (ibid: 531). Horizontal time here refers to the way in which television series employ multiple forms of extended time. For example in soap opera’s time structure, which is “as slow as and parallel to life itself”, or in recent series that employ open ended episodes and season finales and thereby create a fan-base that will be involved with the series over a long period of time (ibid.) According to Williams the ‘mega’ in mega-melodrama refers to this extended form of time, which allows for a more complex character development, focus on multiple characters, and thus a more complex narrative structure. In her own words: “Time affords a more expansive economy of storytelling that can build and intersect multiple worlds” (ibid: 532, 533). This expansive economy also gives series the possibility to put a stronger and different emphasis on the moral dimension of melodrama, which according to Williams reaches beyond melodrama as a site for critique. She finds that melodrama is often mistaken for a genre in which the fall of the evil and the triumph of the good are seen as central. She instead argues that the moral of melodrama is rather about “the recognition of virtue and villainy” (ibid: 535). Melodrama according to Williams is therefore a mode rather than a genre; a mode that by becoming mega – by expanding time and thus narrative possibilities – can open up a broader view on moral and a

Chapter 2 – Genre, Melodrama and TV broader idea of good and justice (ibid: 526, 540). Modern mega-melodrama is thus no longer about the right overcoming the wrong but about registering the right and the wrong in all its forms and all its possibilities. It builds from literary, theatrical and filmic elements recognized as melodrama, but broadens the moral perspective often related to the genre. Mittell too understands melodrama rather as a mode than a set of generic features: “melodrama is […] an approach to emotion, storytelling and morality that cuts across numerous genres and manifests within a wide range of media forms” (Mittell, 2012-13: ‘Serial Melodrama’ §2). Mittell explains that melodrama is part of a poetics of complex TV especially because it is a mode that traverses forms and genres. It is for example present in the dramatic “excess in Revenge, the adult family drama of Six Feet Under, the weighty political debates in The West Wing, and in the realist social critique in The Wire” (ibid. §19). The latter example he takes from Williams, who had this series as her central case study. For Mittell the argument that melodrama should be understood as a mode has two major consequences for our understanding of serial drama:

First, it disrupts a dichotomy that has been posited for decades, pitting the “primetime soap” marked by stylistic excess and trashy sensibility, against the “quality drama” heralded as serious, socially engaged, and more aesthetically mature than its lowbrow competition. […] [And it] has an important impact on how we see the narrative mode’s gender politics (ibid. §22, 23)

Due to the prevalence of male protagonists many of the series that Mittell considers are often seen as (too) masculine. However – as the mass appeal of these series might already suggest – they attract both male and female viewers. This is, according to Mittell, in part explained via the melodramatic mode and the light it shines on gender roles in complex television. In short the melodramatic mode, in combination with the masculine elements of these series gives complex TV a sort of dual attraction. (ibid: §26) That is not to say that the masculine elements simply attract a male audience and the melodrama is directed at the female viewer. The combination rather describes one of the multiple layers and cross-combinations that lie at the heart of Mittell’s poetics of complex TV. However the introduction of melodrama into a poetics of complex television is not simply a means to explain the mass attraction of such series. Embracing melodrama as a mode also broadens up the interpretational possibilities because in terms of gender politics for example, it can shift our attention from the male protagonists towards the point of view of the female character. Mittell demonstrates this with a short analysis of the position of Skyler, Walter’s wife, in Breaking Bad, and broadens this analysis in his final chapter. It is a quite fruitful endeavour, and definitely repositions Skyler. However, gender politics are not all that relevant to my own ideas

Chapter 2 – Genre, Melodrama and TV on serial drama and the melodrama of the unknown man. Something I will explain more extensively in the next chapter. What I do take from Mittell, and from Williams is the fact that understanding melodrama as mode broadens the perspective on the narrative structure and the stylistic elements – thus, the poetics – of serial drama. More importantly, it shows how these poetics can become circumstances under which gender politics can shift and be reread and morality gets a different meaning. It is the latter effect that I am most interested in, and to take a step further into understanding this ‘new morality’ I look to the work of Stanley Cavell.

Chapter 3 – Genre as Moral Register

Chapter 3 – Genre as Moral RegisTer

WALTER: What I want, what I need is a choice […] Sometimes I feel like I never actually make any of my own… Choices, I mean. My entire life it just seems I never... you know, had a real say about any of it. Now this last one, cancer... all I have left is how I choose to approach this. SKYLER: Then make the right choice, Walt […] (‘Grey Matter’ 1.05 TC: 35:38)

In order to get a better understanding of the moral complexity that has become a key feature or possibility of series nowadays, Williams’ notion of mega-melodrama turns out to be quite limited. In her article she speaks of a more complex moral view as part of modern series, an idea that I too have already emphasized and that goes particularly strong for Breaking Bad. Williams however stops her project before clearly defining what this complex moral view could be. Breaking Bad cannot be defined solely as ‘register of virtue and villainy’, since virtue and villainy are not always clearly separated and even seem to trade places at some points. The work of Stanley Cavell however, opens up a way to get a better understanding of the possibilities of a broader moral perspective on series. Like Mittell and Williams, Cavell too understands genre as a mode rather than a simple set of generic features. In his understanding of this mode, genre becomes a moral register or -perspective. Stanley Cavell is originally a philosophy scholar, but has a keen interest in film. Cavell understands film as a representation or registration of moral and philosophical issues. “Film […] shows philosophy to be the often invisible accompaniment of the ordinary lives that film is so apt to capture”, he explains. (Cavell, 2008: 6.) Film thus, according to Cavell, is the manifestation of our daily lives in which we are – unconscious rather than conscious – confronted with philosophical questions on a day to day basis. Film as a registration of daily life thus becomes a very apt medium through which new insights on these questions can be gained. One of the strategies Cavell employs to lay bare this intertwinement of film, philosophy and daily life, is defining a certain corpus as a genre. It is by looking at what certain films share in their presentation, or registration, of ‘life’, that Cavell is able to address complex philosophical issues, in particular those related to ethics.

Chapter 3 – Genre as Moral Register

Cavell has come to define two, rather opposing, genres: ‘the comedy of remarriage’ and ‘the melodrama of the unknown woman’. In the comedy of remarriage the principal pair – often literary married, but sometimes represented in a similar relation – find their marriage in a crisis. The narrative is driven by their struggle to find their way back to one another, which in the end they do. The melodrama of the unknown woman is opposite to the remarriage comedy because it presents a comparable crisis within a marital relationship, but there is no solution or catharsis for the principal pair in the end; where the comedy of remarriage has a forward moving narrative, the melodrama of the unknown woman “concludes where it began or [to the moment] in which it has climaxed, a place of abandonment and transcendence” (Cavell, 1996: 6). Though these genres are each other’s opposites when it comes to the question of solution or perhaps resolution, the melodrama of the unknown woman is derived from the comedy of remarriage. This means for Cavell that similar features or elements in these genres stand out, and create meaning. (ibid: 5.)

§1 Moral Perfectionism

In his book Cities of Words. Pedagogical Letters on a Register of the Moral Life (2008) Cavell sets out to rethink moral philosophy trough film. The main goal of this book is to create a ‘register of the moral life’, or rather a ‘register of moral thinking’. (ibid: 5) He comes to this register by seeking a common ground in different philosophical writings on morality; he finds this common ground in ‘moral perfectionism’. For this project Cavell employs the two corpuses of films he defined – in earlier work – as the previously mentioned comedy of remarriage and melodrama of the unknown woman, because the issues that are at stake in these specific genres reflect on philosophy in a particular way. As Cavell explains:

The issues the principal pair in these films confront each other with are formulated less well by questions concerning what they ought to do, what would be best or right for them to do, than by the question of how they shall live their lives, what kind of persons they aspire to be. This aspect or moment in morality – in which a crisis forces examination of one’s life that calls for a transformation or reorienting of it – is the province of what I emphasize as moral perfectionism (ibid: 11)

Chapter 3 – Genre as Moral Register

This province is what Cavell refers to as Emerson’s idea of “an unattained but attainable self” (ibid: 13). In contrast to more traditional moral philosophy – in which morality, righteousness and virtue form a final stage – it is not the end stage, but the process towards it that is central in moral perfectionism. Traditional moral philosophy is often defined via two strands: deontology and utilitarianism. The deontological strand establishes a point of departure for the moral life, a fixed rule or law that is universal and should always inform one’s actions, and so it establishes a duty to do the right thing. The utilitarian or teleological strand evaluates actions afterwards, based on the question if an action is good for the most of us, if it maximizes happiness for all, or at least most of ‘the people’; it therefore establishes a goal. (ibid: 9) The fact that moral perfectionism differs from these two strands because it focuses on the process does not mean that there is no duty to do the right thing, or that there is no goal. In moral perfectionism it is however not about the actions in itself but about the evaluation of the desires and motivations that inform these actions. An oversimplified interpretation of this idea – in relation to the two other strands of moral philosophy – would be that as long as the duty that came before-, and the goal that is aspired after the action are just, the action itself should be morally justified. Moral perfectionism is much more complex, but this statement does already show that moral perfectionism can borrow from the other two strands. Cavell emphasizes the relation between moral perfectionism, deontology and utilitarianism throughout his book. He discusses many philosophers who are traditionally defined as part of one of the two main strands, but they are continually related back to the ideas of Emerson and moral perfectionism. The work of Emerson revolves around “two dominating themes”, according to Cavell, which are central to moral perfectionism as a whole. The first is the human self, which is always “becoming”, always in a process of development, on a journey towards the attainable self. (ibid: 26) The second theme is the importance of the friend, or the other, the helpmeet. This friend is central to the moral outlook, the process of evaluation that is the key to moral perfectionism. The friend is part of the process of evaluating and re-evaluating one’s moral choices and motivations. The friend can be both the instigation and the end goal of the journey towards the attainable self, but above all he or she is the accompaniment, takes part in that journey, a part of utter importance. (ibid: 27)

Chapter 3 – Genre as Moral Register

§1.1 Making oneself intelligible Intelligibility is one of the key concepts in the work of Cavell. According to Emerson it is necessary to make oneself intelligible for and by moral reasoning in order to come to the attainable self. Cavell explains:

What I characterized as making oneself intelligible is the interpretation moral perfectionism gives to the idea of moral reasoning, the demand for providing reasons for one’s conduct, for the justification of one’s life (ibid: 24)

According to Cavell it is by “confrontation and conversation” that this process of moral reasoning works in moral perfectionism. As Cavell explains in his introduction:

[…] the moral life is not constituted solely by consideration of isolated judgements on striking moral and political problems but is a life whose texture is a weave of cares and commitments in which one is bound to become lost and to need the friendly and credible words of others in order to find one’s way, in which at any time a choice may present itself […], in pondering which you will have to decide whose view of you is most valuable (ibid: 16)

The confrontation is thus the choice that is presented, or the crisis that forces an examination, transformation and reorientation of one’s life that forms the earlier mentioned province of moral perfectionism. (ibid: 11) The conversation is that with the friend, it is the need, or rather necessity of “friendly and credible words of others in order to find one’s way”. Moral perfectionism is therefore part of our day-to-day lives, rather than part of governments, institutions and laws, or as Cavell puts it: “the issues [moral perfectionism] assesses are typically not front-page-news”, because not every moral dilemma is and should be a matter of public debate. (ibid: 38) According to Cavell every choice, every decision has an influence on our lives. This is related to the Emersonian idea that “Character teaches above our wills”: everything we do, communicates meaning and not always, perhaps even more often than we realize, an intended meaning. (ibid: 33) Thus our habits, our day-to-day behaviour is just as important, or perhaps even more important, to the morality of our lives, than our ideas on front-page moral dilemmas. Therefor Cavell emphasizes, both in the films he chooses, and in the things he looks at in the analyses, day-to-day behaviour, habit, routine, character. The selected films are a: “pure enactment of the fact that in each moral decision our lives, our senses of what, and whom, we are prepared to consent to, are at stake”. (ibid: 39) Thus Cavell’s outlook on the relation between film and philosophy implies to look at certain things that in a more classical analysis would easily be overlooked.

Chapter 3 – Genre as Moral Register

Hence Cavell not only presents a theoretical framework but also implies a certain method for analysis in his work. The question Cavell asks regarding these films is not: ‘Are these characters morally perfect?’ but: ‘Are they intelligible according to the principles of moral perfectionism; intelligible to and by moral reasoning?’ By crisis, by confusion over one’s desires, one is forced to evaluate and re-evaluate one’s life. This evaluation needs to take place with the help of a friend, through conversation that has to lead to the justification of one’s actions or choices, the justification of one’s moral standing. (ibid: 42) In the case of the comedy of remarriage the principal pair is able to find this justification by communication with each other, in the case of the melodrama of the unknown woman they are not.

§1.2 To turn is to return Besides Emerson there is another philosopher that stands out in the work of Cavell, especially in relation to this project’s aim towards a poetics of serial drama: Plato. Cavell addresses the work of Plato near the end of Cities of Words, which appears to be an allegorical choice to end at the beginning. This is not mentioned by Cavell himself in so many words, but is nonetheless something that should not be ignored. Cavell describes Plato’s work The Republic as a journey. Not only because of the literal journey made by Socrates, or because of the journey theme that is key in moral perfectionism. The journey in Plato that is most important to Cavell is that of the philosopher himself. As Plato describes in the allegory of The Cave, the philosopher needs to break free from the chains and move out of the cave to investigate the world that is on the outside. Afterwards he needs to return to the cave in order to enlighten the other people, hoping that some of them will join him on his quest in the outside world. The philosopher in Plato thus takes a journey from down (into cave) to up (out of the cave) and back down again. And so does Cavell in his book; by ending with Plato he moves back (down) again to enlighten his readers further. This is off course an oversimplification of the myth and of the structure of Cavell’s work, but this journey, this circular movement, this (re)turning is a key theme to understand Plato’s relation to moral perfectionism, and a key theme to both the melodrama of the unknown woman and the remarriage comedy. According to Cavell Plato’s The Republic is: “[…] directed not to the assessment of individual acts as right or wrong, good or bad, but to the evaluation of the worthiness of ways of life, an earmark of perfectionist ambition” (ibid. 317) and it could thus be read as a moral perfectionist text. In such a reading of Plato the main question in the Allegory of the Cave is no longer which world is real – the shadows on the cave-wall, the cave itself, or the world outside of the cave – but the allegory is about the act of turning and returning in itself.

Chapter 3 – Genre as Moral Register

The central movement in the allegory of The Cave is thus the moment when the prisoners become aware of their chains and break free, in order to turn and see what is behind them.

[This] captures the sense that philosophy's task requires a reorientation of thought, and one which amounts to a reorientation, if momentary, of one’s life, invoking implicitly the idea, important early in The Republic, of our entrapment in false necessities (ibid: 328)

It is the act of turning that aptly captures, not only the task of (moral) philosophy, but also the province of moral perfectionism; the reorientation of one’s life. The false necessities, our confused desires, need to be evaluated over and over again, just as the philosopher in Plato has to turn around, move away and than return in the allegory of The Cave. Later on in The Republic Plato addresses the ‘Myth of Er’, which again for Cavell is important because of it’s central movement: turning and returning. This myth is part of the tenth and final book of The Republic and concentrates on the idea that the immortal soul not only has to take responsibility for one’s choice during life, but also in the afterlife. Like the Allegory of the Cave, the Myth of Er too holds explanatory power in relation to moral perfectionism and philosophy:

Taking […] the Myth of Er as about our present life and as illustrating the totality and trauma of real change in the progress of the soul, each movement out of the Cave (turning, confusion, walking up, being dazzled, returning changed, that is without returning to the same), […] is to be thought of as coming to life, a further life, being reborn, a moment of metempsychosis, in which a soul, altered by life […], chooses its own (altered) body again, that is, assesses again its rewards and punishments (ibid: 337)

The Myth of Er thus aptly describes the moral evaluation, the process or journey towards an attainable self, as a form of movement. This movement is also present in Cavell’s work on the comedy of remarriage and the melodrama of the unknown woman. As has been discussed earlier the narrative of the remarriage comedy moves forward. Here the principle pair finds a way to re- evaluate their marriage through communication, by making themselves intelligible to one another and return changed: they find their way back to each other. Due to the unknowness of the woman – the impossibility of making herself intelligible to the man, which will be discussed more extensively later on – the process in the melodrama’s Cavell discusses at first sight seems to fail. However in the melodrama of the unknown woman there appears to be a more literal case of “returning, changed without returning to the same”. Because the narrative “concludes in the place from which it began”, the narrative and often the principle pair themselves in these films,

Chapter 3 – Genre as Moral Register

(almost) literary return. The problem however in these films is the question of change, because the process of re-evaluation is problematic.

§2 The Melodrama of the Unknown Woman

The difference between the melodrama of the unknown woman and the comedy of remarriage should not be seen as merely the success or the failure of moral perfectionism. The two genres are better understood as different ways to analyse morality. The first analytic point in which the two genres Cavell discerns differ is the function of the past. The fact that the melodrama of the unknown woman ends where it began means there is a different conception of time in this genre, a conception in which the past is “frozen, mysterious, with topics forbidden and isolating” (Cavell, 1996: 6). Part of the women’s unknownness is due to this forbidden past, because in the films Cavell addresses the women often cannot trust their memories or are prevented from remembering at all (ibid: 50). This conception of time as frozen or circular is furthered, according to Cavell in the strong symbolism of (all) melodrama in which mise-en-scene, cinematography, music all emphasize the emotional state of the characters. Because Cavell reads this symbolism as a form of frozen meaning; syntax and semantics are not complementary but almost the same so to speak. (Cavell, 2008: 109) The symbolism present in classic melodrama is also important to the second theme that Cavell finds important for analysing the melodrama of the unknown woman in relation to moral perfectionism. Coming towards the attainable self, turning and returning changed, is impossible without the friend or helpmeet in moral perfectionism. However in the melodrama the helpmeet is not found, at least it is not in marriage since the genre is the negation of marriage for Cavell. The woman cannot make herself intelligible to her husband, but does this mean that she cannot make herself intelligible at all? Not necessarily, the goal in the melodrama of the unknown woman remains the same it is the journey towards it that is different. (Cavell, 1996: 117) Instead of making herself intelligible to her husband, the woman needs to find a way to come to terms with the impossibility of make herself intelligible altogether. She does so in the melodrama of the unknown woman by metamorphosis: a change within the self rather than a negotiation of her relationship to another. This metamorphosis is present in many symbolic ways in the melodrama of the unknown woman. Again, setting and props contribute to this symbolism, such as the returning image of the butterfly. In language this is found for example in women who change their names, or have multiple identities – which occurs as legal issue as well as psychological illness – and in narrative structure metamorphosis is present in the returning ugly duckling structure: the woman wanting to become the swan, the attainable self. (ibid: 118)

Chapter 3 – Genre as Moral Register

Therefor the negation of marriage – the failure of moral perfectionism within the marital relationship – does not mean the woman fails to find her attainable self. Only she has to find it outside of that marriage, which often means giving up on her marriage. (Cavell, 2008: 108) This structure can again be related to The Myth of Er, because this means that she in fact does “return changed without returning to the same”. When she is forced to re-evaluate her life without the helpmeet, she is able to find the possibility of metamorphosis within herself. Thus the negation of marriage in the melodrama of the unknown woman is not a negation moral perfectionism, it is rather a different outlook. The women in the melodramas of the unknown woman transcend marriage rather than sacrifice themselves at the expense of it. (ibid: 271 & Cavell, 1996: 127). The process of turning and returning is not the only element of the Myth of Er that can be related to the melodrama of the unknown woman. The transcendence from marriage that the women in these melodramas go through is also an important theme in this myth. In the work of Plato the Myth of Er refers to the idea that the choices one makes in life, bare an effect on the immortal soul’s after life. The myth describes what is referred to as metempsychosis or the transmigration of souls. In Plato this process is part of the souls afterlife: as a consequence of the life one has lived the afterlife one will live, is chosen. Cavell sees metempsychosis rather as a way to understand our earthly lives as a live we have chosen. This choice again comes with the – moral – responsibility to make oneself and one’s choices intelligible. The meaning of the final journey of metempsychosis as described by Plato than for Cavell means:

That we are the successors of ourselves (in our “journey from here to there and back again,” 619e), and not necessarily succeeding in a given order or direction (but capable of choosing upward or downward or neither), is a reasonable figure of the perfectionist life, seizing crises of revelation, good or bad, clear or confused, as chances of transformation (ibid: 337)

What Cavell seems to emphasize here again is that the crises one is confronted with, presents us with a choice, a choice that should be made by moral evaluation with the friend, which again is only possible by making oneself intelligible. The Myth of Er thus becomes a way to understand the province of moral perfectionism; both in the importance of movement: turning and returning, and in its focus on transformation: metempsychosis as a result of choices and evaluation. The myth underlines, or rather exemplifies moral perfectionism as a process of evaluation and re- evaluation. Again this goes for both genres Cavell defines in a different way: in the comedy of remarriage it is about the affirmation and re-affirmation of marriage, in the melodrama of the unknown woman about the negation of marriage and the re-negotiation of the woman’s place in the world outside of the marriage.

Chapter 3 – Genre as Moral Register

It is thus by defining a corpus as a genre, and combining film with philosophy that Cavell creates a method for investigating morality in life. In the classical ideas of melodrama the films reflect on – often front-page – moral dilemmas or social issues by the internalisation of these issues. Cavell takes this internalization to the next level by making the representation of daily life in these films his central point of analysis. His method asks different questions in which the front-page moral dilemmas are abandoned in favour of the daily moral confrontation. Questions that focus on the evaluation of desire and of the self, on the willingness to make oneself intelligible and coming to the attainable self, rather than the question if one actually reaches that goal – or does his or her duty. It is by lighting out habit, conversation and symbolism that Cavell is able to register the moral life presented in these films. Also it is this question, this mode of analysis, that can shine a different light on Williams’ mega-melodrama, because it can help define the broader, more complex morality presented in mega-melodrama series. Genre thus can become a tool – in method and theory – to lay bare the complex narrational form that serial drama has become, and get a better understanding of the morality that is part of this form at the same time. Genre here than becomes a mode, or perhaps rather an outlook, in which known versus unknown, intelligible versus unintelligible and affirmation versus negation become central themes; themes which I believe to occur in many modern day series and themes that are part of both the narrational as the cinematic form of these productions. Genre thus becomes a moral outlook, a mode of analysis as well as a theoretical perspective and can therefor contribute to the idea of a poetics of serial drama. However one final step should be taken before coming to a sample analysis of Breaking Bad to show how this conceptual perspective actually works. The question namely still remains why come to a new genre, why move from man to woman?

§ 3 From man to woman

As already became clear in the earlier discussion of classical melodrama, the genre is often defined as a woman’s genre or as woman’s pictures: “narratives motivated by female desire”, “governed by a female point-of-view” and “directed at a female audience” (Kuhn, 1984: 18). The stereotype of melodrama as a genre particularly about- and for women has been abundantly discussed via feminist perspectives and these readings have been just as abundantly debated. Cavell’s work on the melodrama of the unknown woman itself has been subject of such a debate. Some of the chapters of Contesting Tears had been published before as articles, and these articles where heavily criticised by feminist scholar Tania Modleski, who in short claimed that Cavell was

Chapter 3 – Genre as Moral Register to some extent gender-biased, and that his work had no contribution to the cause of emancipation, perhaps even obstructed it. (ibid. 32-37) The fact that Cavell counter-reads some of the films he discusses and sees the women in these melodramas not as victimized or self-sacrificing, but rather as transcending, immediately counters Modleski’s argument; something that Cavell throughout his book also underlines. He also explains in his introduction – in the section where he addresses Modleski’s critique – that he does not have the aim, or the will, to include his work within the complex feminist debate (ibid: 31). Thus even though gender differences in a certain way are at stake in Cavell – men and women differ, and thus their terms of intelligibility do – and even though he focuses his analyses on male-female relationships – as marriage during the time his corpus was produced was defined – his aim at no point has been to get involved with any gender debate. Neither is mine, because I consider the ideas of moral perfectionism to be universal. In the coming analysis I will allow myself, in my adaptation of Cavell’s ideas, to see intelligibility as the main goal in any relationship. Emerson speaks of a ‘friend’ and not of a wife or husband, and as far as I’m concerned ‘friend’ has no pre-set gender. There is off course no sense in denying the fact that in many of the series that could be analysed via the melodrama of the unknown man, the focus is on a male protagonist. However this is not the main reason to move from woman to man, neither is the idea of moral perfectionism as universal the fundamental motivation of this choice. To derive the melodrama of the unknown woman into a melodrama of the unknown man, allows me to not only be quite free in my adaptation of Cavell’s work at some points, it also opens up the possibility to integrate the notion of mega-melodrama in the analysis. The close- reading of Breaking Bad that will follow, will build from many of the theories set out in this project, and though at most points I will stay close to Cavell I want to have the opportunity to move away from him as well. A new genre is thus necessary not because I propose an entirely different set of generic features, but rather to broaden the features and the outlook the genre presents. Cavell derived the melodrama from the unknown woman form the comedy of remarriage, by employing similar features and theory, but providing different forms of analysis. I in my turn will derive a genre from the work of Cavell, and that of Williams and Mittell. The aim here is thus not to provide a completely different perspective, but rather a perspective that builds from other work. By re-naming the genre I want to make the genre more intelligible so to speak; it is a way of distinguishing my project form that of Cavell. It is in the coming analysis that I will show how the melodrama of the unknown man works as an outlook, an outlook that for a large part borrows from Cavell, but is also invested with the ideas of Mittell and Williams.

Chapter 4 – Breaking Down Breaking Bad

Chapter 4 – Breaking DoWn Breaking Bad

My name is Walter Hartwell White. I live at 208 Negra Arroyo lane, Albany, New Mexico, 87104. To all law enforcement agencies: This is not an admission of guilt. I am speaking to my family now … Skyler, you’re the love of my live. I hope you know that. Walter junior, you’re my big man. There are going to be some things, things you’ll come to learn about me in the next few days. I just want you to know that no matter how it may look, I only had you in my heart. Goodbye. (‘Breaking Bad’ 1.01, 2008 TC: 02:27)

These are the first words spoken in Breaking Bad; Walter White introduces himself to his future audience. The scene began with a Winnebago driving by fast, disrupting the calm heat of the New Mexican desert. Behind the wheel is a man wearing nothing but tighty-whiteys and a gasmask, besides him is another man wearing a gasmask, he’s passed out. In the back of the van lie two other men, also passed out. Equipment, fluids and the two bodies slide around the floor as the RV drives fast and uncontrolled; eventually it crashes. The driver gets out of his seat, takes a gun from one of the bodies in the back, grabs his camera and puts on a shirt. The man turns on the camera and starts to talk: ‘My name is Walter White…’ The first few minutes (ibid. TC: 00:00-04:05) of this very first episode function as a pilot within a pilot to some extent. Like a pilot episode – which is meant to introduce and sell a series to a potential production company – the viewer, in this one scene, is introduced to the series main characters, story line and themes. Besides the introduction of Walter White, the series main protagonist, a short glimpse is given of a second important character: Jesse Pinkman, Walter’s partner in crime and protégé. The complex friendship will become one of the central relationships in the series. Also Walter’s family is introduced in the on-tape statement: Skyler, his wife and Walter junior, his son. Walter White appears to be a man who will do anything for his family: “no matter how it may look, I only had you in my heart.” Hence, Walter tried to do something for his family but apparently his actions completely backfired. Throughout the series Walter’s family forms both the catalyst as well as the excuse for many of his actions. The first important theme of the series is thus already presented in this ‘pilot in a pilot’ scene: family, or rather relationships. A second important theme is the question of guilt, or responsibility; which is arguably the most complex question throughout Breaking Bad. Walter says: “To all law enforcement agencies: this is not an admission of guilt. I am talking to my family now.” It is still unclear what Walter has done, or what he is ‘not’ admitting guilt to, but it is clear breaking the law is involved somehow. However the most important question here is not what Walter is ‘not’ admitting guilt to, but rather if he is or isn’t admitting guilt in the first place. By emphasising he is ‘not’ admitting guilt,

Chapter 4 – Breaking Down Breaking Bad

Walter seems to imply that he is in fact feeling guilty, or at least responsible for what happened. He seems to be well aware of the fact that this tape could be used as proof for his ‘misbehaviour’; whatever it may be. By saying the tape is not an admission of guilt, Walter in fact acknowledges he did something wrong, or at least recognizes that other people might think he did. The question of guilt becomes even more complex when the intended audience is taken into account. Judging by the words spoken, Walter is directing his statement to his family and it appears Walt believes this exonerates him to some extent. Walter implies that the tape is no admission of guilt because he is talking to his family. However, his family never gets to see the video, because Walter will later on destroy it. Strikingly to prevent it from being used as proof, from being used as admission of guilt. It could therefor be said that the most important audience of this tape is the viewer. Walter perhaps believes his audience to be his family, and possibly the law enforcement agencies, but in fact we, the viewers are the only ones who actually get to see it. That the relation between Walter and the viewer is complex, but utterly important to the series is made clear from the beginning of the scene. The very first appearance of Walter White is a shot of him wearing a gasmask; hence in the first glimpse of the series’ protagonist he is hiding to some extent. As soon as Walter gets out of the Winnebago he does take of the mask, but he keeps moving away from the camera. To emphasize the chaotic state of mind of Walter the editing and cinematography are chaotic. In an unsteady shot Walter begins his on-tape statement. He looks away from the (non-diegetic) camera and stares directly into the lens of the camera he is holding himself (which is thus part of the diegetic world). Walter states his name and his address, the factual things that are to know about the man behind the mask. After this part of the statement the editing cuts to the shot of the diegetic camera. We see Walter directly from the front in an extreme close-up looking straight at us. However, Walter is looking through a camera in a camera, and becomes part of the film within the film. He is thus not looking directly to us, but is again wearing a mask; again there is a filter between the Walter and viewer. When Walter tells the things that truly matter, when he talks about the question of responsibility and guilt he is presented as ‘hiding’ or ‘pretending’. Unlike a non-diegetic camera that is often impartial, the diegetic camera is controlled by the protagonist himself and thus we only see what Walter wants us to see. The contrast created in this statement by showing the factual part of the statement via a non-diegetic shot and the emotional part of the statement through the diegetic camera, emphasizes the fact that the statement is a form of performance.

Chapter 4 – Breaking Down Breaking Bad

Still 1 - Walter looks into the diegetic camera (ibid. TC: 02:42)

The continuously emphasized doubling in these first few minutes therefor not only establishes the important themes of family and guilt. Also they point to a third theme: reflection. The word reflection in this case has a double meaning. In the first place reflection is a mirror image, a doubling of an object like the camera within the camera. Secondly reflection is the activity of reflecting upon ones actions, an act of intelligibility to speak with in the words of Cavell. The first is a cinematic tool the second a narrative one, and both are equally important to Breaking Bad. When read as a melodrama of the unknown man, as derived from the ideas of Cavell, the most important question to ask is if Walter is intelligible according to the principles of moral perfectionism, intelligible to and by moral reasoning? The three main themes presented in this first scene show that this question is important but has no easy answer. Because to who does Walter want to make himself known, how much does he want to make know? Hence what actually are the terms of his intelligibility? To unravel the answer to the question of intelligibility the series in the first place should be understood as a story of change, as Walter’s journey towards an unattained but attainable self. This will be addressed in the first part of the following demonstration of how the melodrama of the unknown man can help to lay bare the complex morality of serial drama. The second part will discuss the possibility of Walter finding his attainable self, and his coming to terms with his (lack of) intelligibility. In the concluding part of this demonstration the final episode will be unravelled in which, just as in the pilot, all important themes and questions come together.

Chapter 4 – Breaking Down Breaking Bad

§1 A Story of Change

Both the protagonist and the series creator described Breaking Bad as a story of change, of ‘growth, decay and transformation’ and as ‘Mr. Chips gone Scarface’. This was already discussed in the introduction, but in light of the work of Cavell it is necessary to take a closer look at this change. In large part Walter’s change – his journey towards an unattained but attainable self, his growth, decay and transformation – can be understood in terms of known and unknown. Again this is strongly established in the pilot episode throughout which Walter is presented as an almost classic Cavellian unknown (wo)man: mostly ignored by his wife and son over breakfast, highly educated but teaching high-school chemistry to a completely uninterested class. Even at his fiftieth birthday party it is Walter’s brother in law Hank who, with his adventurous life as a DEA agent, completely absorbs all the attention from the birthday guests. However, Walter will take a drastic turn with his life in this episode: after being diagnosed with stage three lung cancer he decides to cook and sell meth – ironically inspired by the tall stories Hank told at Walter’s birthday. Walter keeps saying – to himself and to Jesse, the former- student Walter teams up with – that he wants to get into the drug business to ensure his family’s financial future after he dies. However, it soon becomes clear that cooking meth might bring Walter something more: knownness. Because it is clear that this unknown man, this overeducated chemistry teacher, who works two lousy jobs and is stuck in his suburban and monotonous life, just wants one thing from the world: recognition. The connection between this longing for recognition and Walter’s endeavours in the meth business is established in a short dialogue between Walter and Jesse after their very first batch of meth is done:

JESSE: This is pure glass. You’re a goddamn artist! This is art Mr. White WALT: Actually it’s just basic chemistry, but thank you Jesse, I’m glad it’s acceptable. JESSE: Acceptable? You’re the goddamn Iron Chef! (ibid. TC: 42:12)

It is made clear: the drastic turn Walter takes in this first episode will change his life much more than he could have imagined. In sum: the theme’s and structures set out in the pilot all emphasize the reading of Breaking Bad as a story of change: of growth, decay and transformation, of becoming known and making oneself intelligible and thus of coming towards an attainable self. In the first place this refers to the change of Walter White the unknown overeducated chemistry teacher, into Heisenberg Walter’s known drug kingpin alter ego. In terms of intelligibility – since in the line of thought of moral perfectionism making oneself intelligible is

Chapter 4 – Breaking Down Breaking Bad more than just making oneself known – this change is rather problematic. Because the more Walter becomes Heisenberg, the less intelligible he becomes for and by moral reasoning.

§1.1 Performing Heisenberg – growth and then decay The first steps to becoming Heisenberg, or rather creating him, are off course already taken in the pilot and the first few episodes that follow. However the crucial steps towards Heisenberg as a full and performative identity are taken in the two final episodes of season one. Walter identifies himself for the first time as ‘Heisenberg’ in episode six: ‘Crazy Handful of Nothing’ (1.06, 2008). Like the pilot, each episode begins with a short scene that could be considered as a teaser of what is to come. These are not always flash-forwards, as in the pilot or as in this episode, but they are always related to the episode on a sort of meta-level. Where the introduction to the first episode could be understood as a pilot within a pilot, the opening of episode six could be seen as the introduction to what Heisenberg will later represent. Since Walter’s decision to become a meth cook a lot has happened: Jesse and Walter have been unable to find a supplier for their product; the first dealers Jesse approached, the two men in the back of the Winnebago in the pilot, were killed by Walt.1 In this scene the two men are back at the Winnebago meth-lab to restore the damage from the accident in the pilot. When the two men enter the RV Walter wants to set some ground rules for their future enterprise:

Let’s get something straight, this, the chemistry, is my realm. I am in charge of the cooking. Out there on the street, you deal with that. As far as our customers go I don’t wanna know anything about them; I don’t wanna see them, I don’t wanna hear from them. I want no interaction with them what so ever. This operation is you and me and I’m the silent partner. […] No matter what happens no more bloodshed, no violence (ibid. TC: 00:00)

This is Walter White talking, the chemistry teacher that sees cooking meth as the last opportunity to ensure his family’s future in the short time he has left. The scene is however cross-edited with images of something that takes place in the near future. We see what appears to be a ghetto: women are barely dressed, men are heavily tattooed and buildings are in decay. Police-sirens can be heard in the background. People are looking to one of the buildings as though something has happened: some look shocked, others have taken out their mobile phones and start taking pictures. When Walter in the Winnebago speaks the last words ‘no violence’, we are shown the ghetto-setting for the last time and see Walter walking away from the building: his head bold,

1 This is much more complicated than it is addressed here, but with the vast amount of corpus to address some things can not be discussed as detailed as they might deserve. 39

Chapter 4 – Breaking Down Breaking Bad wearing a black jacket, his nose bleeding. However it is not Walter anymore, it is actually the first shot of Heisenberg.

Still 2 - First shot of Heisenberg. (ibid. TC: 01:50)

The contradictory nature of this scene underlines the split in identities that is key to understand the protagonist; a spilt that is partially created by Walter to protect his real identity and thereby his family from the criminal connections that come from this job. However, it also protects Walter from the morally doubtful choices he makes. By creating Heisenberg, Walter separates the good from the bad, the family man from the meth cook. The flash-forward from this opening scene, we learn in the course of the episode, is the moment after Walter met with the aggressive and slightly manic drug dealer Tuco. In this meeting Walter introduces himself to Tuco as Heisenberg and the nascent drug lord leaves quite the impression. As weapon of self-defence – because of Tuco’s violent reputation – Walter, or rather Heisenberg, has brought what he calls “a little tweak of chemistry”: crystals that look like meth but are highly explosive fulminated mercury. After Tuco threatens Walter, Walter drops one small crystal to the floor and causes a big explosion. Tuco realizes he met his match in this mysterious Heisenberg. Shocked by the explosion but also impressed by the quality of the meth Jesse brought in an earlier meeting, Tuco agrees to become their supplier. As Walter walks away from the premises, we see a shot similar to that of the introduction and it is clear that with these first steps Heisenberg and his drug enterprise have been born. (ibid. TC: 42:00-45:33)

Chapter 4 – Breaking Down Breaking Bad

In the finale of the first season the creation of Heisenberg as a separate persona is fully completed, when Walter combines the shaven head and the black jacket, with sunglasses and a top-hat. (‘No Rough Stuff Type Deal’ 1.07, 2008) The outfit stands for the Heisenberg Walter wants the world to see and to know, it is the Heisenberg he controls, the one he willingly performs. It is this particular image of Heisenberg that will keep recurring throughout the series and it is this look that the police will associate with the mysterious new player in the drug trade they so desperately want to find. However, moral perfectionism tells us that character teaches us above will, and so will this character2 that Walter created. Though Heisenberg is a performance and image, the separation between Heisenberg and Walter becomes less and less strict as time passes.

Image 1 - Heisenberg police sketch, as seen in the series. Also popular on merchandise (Via: imgkid. com/heisenber g-sketch. shtml)

Still 3 - Full Heisenberg outfit (ibid. TC: 43:28)

Halfway through the final season of Breaking Bad it seems that Heisenberg has completely taken over Walter. By now much blood has been shed during Walter’s endeavours, and not just that of ‘evil’ drug dealers. Though he has more money than he can count, and keeps repeating to himself that the violence should be over, Walter appears to be unable to stop. The will to turn from unknown to known is too strong to be able to evaluate in the process. How big and important Heisenberg has become to Walter is strongly emphasised in the seventh episode of season five aptly titled ‘Say My Name’ (2012).

2 It should be emphasised here that, as explained in the chapter on Cavell (p. 28), character to him means the way in which we subconsciously convey meaning/intentions through our habits. Heisenberg as character that teaches Walter above will, should, as will be made evident throughout the analysis, be understood as the behavior and habits that Heisenberg will develop. Heisenberg is thus not a character as in personage, he represents a certain set of character traits, hence an identity. 41

Chapter 4 – Breaking Down Breaking Bad

Again the introduction scene, in which the following dialogue between Walter and a potential new dealer (Declan) takes place, is key to the theme of the episode:

DECLAN: Who the hell are you? WALTER: You know. You all know exactly who I am! Say my name… DECLAN: What? I don’t have damn clue who the hell you are. WALTER: I’m the cook I’m the man who killed Gus Fring DECLAN: Bullshit the cartel got Gus Fring WALTER: Are you sure? [Declan looks at Walter’s assistant, who nods his head. Declan realizes Walter is telling the truth about killing the infamous drug lord Gus Fring] WALTER: That’s right, now, say my name! DECLAN: You’re Heisenberg WALTER: You’re goddamn right! (ibid. TC: 5:09)

With these words the introduction ends; the following episode will be all about the by now notorious Heisenberg. For Walter Heisenberg represents the known, and hence what he believes to be his attainable self: a successful man, recognized for his craft. However, Heisenberg rather stands for the false necessities, for Walter’s confused desires. As Heisenberg Walter is perhaps known and intelligible within the drug trade, but by no means is Heisenberg at this stage intelligible for and by moral reasoning. Heisenberg has not only taken over Walter’s moral choices, he has also taken over his personal life as Walter becomes more and more estranged from the people he loves. The initial motivation of love for his family seems to have completely disappeared. Even Walter’s complex relation with Jesse, the one person who knows both Walter and Heisenberg, comes to its breaking point, as Jesse wants out. It is again via conversation in ‘Say my Name’ that Heisenberg as the false necessity that is taking over is made clear. Walter won’t have Jesse leaving their drug business and, at first, tries to reason with him. Walter tries to make himself intelligible and offers Jesse the opportunity to start a cook of his own as part of the growing enterprise Walter is anticipating. When Jesse still wants out, because he no longer cares for the money or the success since for Jesse they do not outweigh the violence, it is clear that the terms of the two friend’s intelligibility differ and Heisenberg takes over the conversation. Walter says:

Jesse, this… what we do, being the best at something, is a very rare thing. You don’t toss something like that away. And what? You wanna squander that potential, your potential… Why? To do what? (ibid: TC:20:01)

Chapter 4 – Breaking Down Breaking Bad

It appears that family is no longer, or perhaps never was, the reason for Walter to pursue a career as drug kingpin. Rather it is about the struggle to be known, to be ‘the best at something’. Jesse sees Walter for the Heisenberg he has become, he sees how Scarface has taken over Mr. Chips, and keeps insisting he wants out. Walter again tries to defend himself by being reasonable, and tells Jesse they are in control and nobody else will get hurt. However it remains to be seen who is actually in control here, Walter the family man who doesn’t approve of violence or Heisenberg the relentless criminal. Jesse believes the latter, since he expresses no trust in the intelligibility of Walter. That Jesse is right in not trusting Walter becomes even more clear at the end of this episode when Walter meets with Mike, another associate. Mike tells Walter:

We had a good thing going, you stupid son of a bitch. We had Fring, we had a lab, we had everything we needed and it all ran like clockwork. You could have shut your mouth and made as much money as you ever needed, it was perfect. But no, you just had to blow it up. You and your pride and your ego, you just had to be the man. If you’d had done your job, known your place, we’d all be fine by now (ibid. TC: 42:48)

In these few words Mike appears to say that Walter has turned into Heisenberg: his pride and ego have become more important than the initial goal of making money for his family. Walter can’t handle this truth about himself and shoots Mike; a murder that has no other motivation than pure frustration and spite. It is therefor the most malevolent murder of the entire series, and it is the only moment that Walter literary pulls the trigger. All other deaths that Walter can be held accountable for are either quite straightforward self-defence, or Walter’s responsibility is circumstantial. When killings are motivated by protection of his- or his loved-ones’ lives, Walter handles the murder weapon himself, which is never a gun. When motivated to protect or rush on his career, Walter has made sure someone else does the actual killing. In this scene however, Heisenberg is at the wheel and his influence on Walter grows even further in the final nine episodes. The change from known to unknown can thus so far be defined as a change from good to evil, what began as growth soon turns into decay when Walter begins to get surpassed by Heisenberg; it is as Vince Gilligan told it: Mr. Chips gone Scarface.

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§1.2 Walter vs. Heisenberg, a constant struggle That Walter is in a constant struggle with Heisenberg is not only emphasised in the dialogues and the events that unfold. As one would expect of a series with a melodramatic touch, the mis-en- scene emphasises this struggle; enhances the dramatic effect. The black ‘Heisenberg-hat’ for example, keeps showing up in Walter’s private life more and more; Heisenberg as an alter ego gradually invades his home and his family via the top-hat. The idea of invasion is made even more evident in the symbol of the fly. The image of the fly can be found in many episodes, and appears to be another symbol for Heisenberg. Many movies and literature that employ flies in their thematic show the fly as a representation of evil and pestilence. The 1986 science fiction movie remake The Fly (Cronenberg) revolves around a man turning into a fly due to an alien virus. This transformation is not just physical, but also psychological: the protagonist loses his ability to reason or feel compassion. The 1954 novel Lord of the Flies (Golding) is also about people loosing their human compassion and turning into savages. Both stories are about growth, decay and transformation and resemble the changes Walter goes through. There is one key episode that underlines this symbolism: ‘Fly’ (3.10, 2010). – and revolves solely around Walter and Jesse. In this episode Walter becomes obsessed with killing a fly that he finds in the lab – no longer in the back of an RV since Walter and Jesse have been able to professionalize their business – because he is afraid that it might contaminate the batch of meth they are cooking. However, the more important contamination here is that of Heisenberg, who here all ready has a growing influence on Walter: the violent and downward spiral seems unstoppable and even though there were multiple opportunities for Walter to get out of the meth business, he didn’t take them and now he is in way over his head. The fight with the fly, around which the entire episode revolves, thus represents the struggle Walter has with his Heisenberg persona. Walter’s obsession with killing the fly seems to suggest that he is loosing his mind, he is in way too deep and has no way of getting out. The fact that Walter fighting the fly represents his own internal struggle is stressed by the conversation of this episode. As the episode progresses Walter begins to tell Jesse about the perfect moment to die. A moment when he was at home, and listened to Skyler singing to their new-born daughter Holly. It was before things began to get out of hand, when Walter was still driven by the love for his family instead of his longing for power. However, Walter missed that moment, not simply because he didn’t die, but because he broke the magic of that moment by going out for his drug endeavours. We as viewers get a glimpse here of the true Walter White, because we know the

Chapter 4 – Breaking Down Breaking Bad events that preceded this episode3 and are able to understand what he is reminiscing about. However, he never directly addresses the wrongs he has done, Walter never actually tells Jesse he is sorry for all the hurt and violence. Still, in the words and descriptions of Walter, it is clear that in this episode Walter is starting to fight an inner struggle between Walter the nice family man and Heisenberg the violent drug lord. By the end of the episode Jesse kills the fly: Walter is unable to take control of his Heisenberg alter-ego, but Jesse is able to prevent the contamination of the lab, and prevents the situation from getting out of hand; a role that Jesse unwillingly takes on, or is forced into by Walter, many times. Like the top-hat, the fly as a symbol of Heisenberg’s infestation of Walter’s life often returns throughout Breaking Bad. A fly for example appears in the introductory scene of the episode in which Walter is made as Heisenberg by Hank. Ironically Walter by then is employing a fumigation company as cover up for his meth lab. Also the indirect way of reflecting upon his actions, like Walter does in ‘Fly’, keeps recurring. For example when Skyler tells Walter about her sister Marie who stole a precious piece of jewelry as a baby shower gift for Skyler. Walter responds to this by saying: “Well, sometimes people do things for their family…” (‘No Rough-Stuff-Type Deal’4 TC: 41:20). Walter here actually tries to re-evaluate his own actions, because he too ‘does things for his family’. However, Skyler strongly disagrees with this justification and thus the scene also underlines the unknownness between Walter and his wife. The central marital relation in Breaking Bad is, like those described by Cavell, one in which the marital pair is unable to make themselves intelligible to each other and therefor unable to re-evaluate their relationship. Because here, as in many other instances, Skyler is not at all open to a discussion, not open to Walter’s terms of intelligibility. The terms of their moral judgment differ too much: where Walter thinks doing something for your family justifies certain choices, Skyler thinks that is not the case, and with that conclusion the attempt to re-evaluate ends and no further discussion of the matter appears to be possible. Ironically, Skyler does accept a similar justification from her employer Ted when she finds out he has been avoiding taxes. Ted tells her he did this to save the company, to save jobs and make sure the people that work there can keep paying their mortgages and get their kids through school. He even says: “The people that work here are like family.” Though Skyler at first thinks about quitting, she soon changes her mind and returns to work the same day. (‘Mandela’

3 Walter is specifically referring here to the night Jane, Jesse’s girlfriend, died. A death Walter could be circumstantially held accountable for, because he witnessed her having an overdose and didn’t help her. (‘Phoenix’ 02.12, 2009) 4 Which is the same episode wherein the full Heisenberg is first seen. 45

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2.11, 2009) The fact that Skyler accepts the justification from Ted where she will not from Walter again stresses the unknownness between the marital pair. Neither Heisenberg, nor Walter are able to make themselves intelligible for and by moral reasoning. Thus even though Walter appears to believe that Heisenberg might get him closer to his attainable self he in fact is the false necessity, as argued earlier. Perceived as a story of change from Mr. Chips to Scarface, moral perfectionism, thus in short, seems to fail in Breaking Bad. However, as Cavell describes, the melodrama of the unknown woman not necessarily registers the failure of moral perfectionism. Understanding the women in these films as unknown brings a certain perspective that counters the – often dominant – readings of these women as mere victims of their husbands. The attainable self for the women in these films is, according to Cavell, found outside the marital relationship by transformation within themselves. So after the growth – of a drug empire and lasting reputation – and the decay – the taking over of Heisenberg – is there a possibility of transformation for Walter?

§2 The transformation of Mr. White

The separation between Walter White and Heisenberg as two different personas not only underlines the story of change and the way in which character teaches above will. It is also a means by which these two personas can be understood as being in a relationship. Walter White is than the unknown man who slowly becomes dominated by Heisenberg. Not only are these two persona’s unintelligible to themselves and others, they also become less and less intelligible to each other. As Walter gradually looses control over his Heisenberg persona he becomes, to a certain extent, what the women in Cavell’s work are: unknown, un-recognized by their partner in a relation that they can’t evaluate because they cannot make themselves intelligible to the other. However, Walter, again like the women in Cavell, is able to find a possibility of an attainable self that is intelligible to and by moral reasoning outside of this, and his other, relationships. When analysing Walter White as a man with different personas a third identity can be found: Mr. White. He is a possible middle ground, a negotiation if you will, between the two identities Walter has created for himself. Also it is an identity that Walter himself is not consciously aware of, and thus has no imminent control over. Mr. White is derived from the name that Walter’s partner in crime Jesse gives him. Throughout the entire series Jesse consequently refers to Walter as Mr. White. The key relationship to understand Mr. White is thus not the relation Walter has with his family, but his complex and continuously changing friendship with Jesse. In the light of moral perfectionism Jesse could be seen as the friend that accompanies Walter on his journey towards knownness, his change into Heisenberg, since he is one of the few

Chapter 4 – Breaking Down Breaking Bad characters that has seen both sides. When cooking meth together Jesse is most often confronted with Walter, the family man dying of cancer that tries to make money. Walter in these scenes functions as the teacher who educates Jesse about chemistry and about the best way to produce the purest meth possible; a role wherein Walter is able to make himself intelligible to his student. Even though also in these moments the ambitious, arrogant and ruthless Heisenberg comes to the front more and more, Jesse has also seen Walter the unknown man. Again in ‘Crazy Handfull of Nothin’, Jesse finds out Walter has cancer. In this moment the two men find a way to be intelligible to each other. First of all Jesse tells Walter he understands his motivation, that he understands Walter: “I get it now, that’s why you’re doing all this, you wanna make some cash for your people before you check out.” Walter in his turn is able to take Jesse seriously and tells him he should finish the cook because Walter is feeling unwell. Where in the previous episodes Walter was merely pointing out what Jesse didn’t know or couldn’t do, he now tells Jesse: “You can do it.” The teacher gives the student a real chance. (ibid. TC: 10:43-13:16) Jesse and Walter share many more of these moments and Jesse is therefore arguably the person that Walter is the most intelligible to, as is also seen in ‘Fly’. Though judged by the many ups and downs that their relation faces this intelligibility is not unproblematic or certain. In the earlier discussed scene between Walter and Jesse from ‘Say my Name’ the complexity of the intelligibility of their relation is quite clear. Jesse wants out, and feels guilty about all the blood shed that has been done. He sees through Walter and realizes that he has become Heisenberg more and more. Where Walter throughout the series keeps defending himself by the logic that he is doing everything for the best of his family, Jesse goes trough many moral struggles and is often unable to defend his actions. When Jesse gets out of rehab in the first episode of the third season he says it himself: “I’m the bad guy”. Walter in a previous scene describes himself as “the manufacturer” (‘No Mas’). Hence, where Walter is able to separate and defend his bad side by saying ‘it’s just business’ (Heisenberg) and ‘best for my family’ (Walter), Jesse’s conscious keeps catching up and forces him to re-evaluate his actions and motives. Most of this re-evaluation takes place in scenes that involve Walter and therefor many of these moments can be seen as not only Jesse commenting on his own actions, but also Jesse trying to get Walter to re-evaluate; again, most often in an indirect matter. Therefore Jesse is not only the closet thing Walter has to a friend in moral perfectionism because he is most intelligible, Jesse also to some extent functions as a conscious for Walter. He is the friend who accompanies Walter on his journey as well as the friend who speaks the ‘credible and friendly words’ Walter

Chapter 4 – Breaking Down Breaking Bad needs ‘in order to find his way’. It is in large part this friendship that shows that the possibility of Walter finding his unattained but attainable self actually exists.

§2.1 What’s in a name? The name Mr. White not only refers to the mere existence of this friendship, it also defines the complex nature of the relationship. On the one hand Mr. White refers to the fact that Walter White used to be Jesse’s chemistry teacher, a teacher role that Walter still fulfils to Jesse in the development of the famous blue meth. On the other hand it emphasises a certain respect Jesse has for Walter, in particular when you contrast Mr. White to the term Jesse most often addresses people with: ‘bitch’. Even when their relationship is in distress, Jesse never refers to Walter as Walter or Heisenberg; or bitch for that matter. The name thus in part refers to the unknown, to the chemistry teacher no one ever listens to, and to the known, the meth cook who has a vast knowledge about making a unique product and who is respected and even feared by the outside world. Also it refers to the Walter that once was – the one the series barely shows, the man before the cancer and the meth lab – the Walter that is – the respected drug lord – and perhaps even hints at the Walter that could be – the attainable self. In the work of Cavell, the process of naming and re-naming is often part of the metamorphosis that the women in the melodrama of the unknown woman go through. It is thus not surprising that Mr. White is not the only name that holds particular references. Walter’s birth name, as well as is chosen alias hold particular allusions, which also indicate the possibility of- or need for a third identity. The clearest reference is that of Heisenberg which refers to a family of German physicists. Most famous was Nobel-prize winner Werner Heisenberg, who strikingly died of cancer and it is just as compelling that the name Walter chooses himself refers to a family. The fact that Walter chose the name of a physicist instead of a chemist puts even more emphasis on the name, in particular because the series never clarifies Walter’s motivation for this peculiar choice. Werner Heisenberg is famous for the ‘uncertainty principle’, which is one of the key principles in quantum physics. Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle tells, that in the measurement of particles so called ‘complementary variables’ cannot be known simultaneously. (Wikipedia.org) This means that “the more you know about one physical property, the less you know, or can determine, or control the other” (Baltzer-Jaray, 2013: 48). This is of course an oversimplification of the complex theory that is behind the uncertainty principle, but it does resemble the construction of knowledge of the identities of Walter White. The particles in the Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle cannot both be know at the same time, and knowledge of one element

Chapter 4 – Breaking Down Breaking Bad effects the knowledge of the other. The people in Walter White’s life are just as unable to know both identities, because gaining knowledge of the one identity effects the knowledge of the other. When Skyler for example finds out about Walter’s drug endeavours and is thus confronted with knowledge of Heisenberg, she sees her husband in a whole new perspective. The same goes for Walter’s internal struggle with Heisenberg: by knowing Heisenberg better – or becoming and developing him further – he looses control over Walter. According to the uncertainty principle Walter can thus impossibly be both because he cannot know and cannot control both. Moving from quantum physics back to Cavell, the uncertainty principle also works the other way around: not only does gaining knowledge about one element effect the knowledge of the other, providing knowledge does too. Hence, when Walter White tries to make himself known via Heisenberg, Walter the unknown is also effected, or in this case perhaps rather affected. Therefor the uncertainty principle stresses that Walter White cannot be intelligible as both Walter and Heisenberg, but also not as one or the other, because they affect each other too much. It therefore stresses the need of a third party, a third particle if you will, that holds both elements but is not affected by them; it stresses the need for Mr. White. Walter White too holds a particular reference that stresses this need, which is found via the 19th century poet Walt Whitman. The poet holds a particular place in the series and Walter is even referred to as the ‘other W. W.’ Also Walt is the abbreviation of Walter that friends and family often use. When comparing the lives of Walter and Whitman one fact immediately stands out: where Heisenberg died of cancer, Whitman died of lung disease, Walter and is alias Heisenberg therefor refer to causes of death that together form the disease that is slowly killing Walter White. The possible relation between Walter and Whitman is first made evident in the third season when Walter is forced to partner up with someone other than Jesse. His new lab assistant is named Gale, who unlike the inexperienced and often naïve Jesse, is an educated and well- adjusted chemist. When Walter and Gale first meet at the lab Gale, like Jesse, refers to Walter as Mr. White. Walter however immediately corrects Gale and tells him to call him Walt, something he never tells Jesse, nor does he ever specifically tell friends and family to call him Walt. The relation between these two men is thus immediately established as different from any other relationship Walter found himself in thus far, and will after that. Walter specifically chooses for Gale to call him Walt and by doing so chooses which identity he wants the man to see. In ‘Sunset’ (3.06, 2010) Walter and Gale work together for the first time. The men find themselves talking about the magic of chemistry, the meth business, and their motivations for working in the criminal circuit. For Gale “there’s crime and then there’s crime” he tells Walter.

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What they do, cooking meth, is simply providing in a need that people will always find a way to fulfil. By Gale’s work at least people receive a high quality product and it gives Gale a chance to keep the chemistry alive in contrast to working in research and being more concerned with politics instead of the pure magic of chemistry. (ibid. TC: 20:43) It is as in a poem titled ‘When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer’ by Walt Whitman, Gale tells Walter. A poem Gale knows by heart and begins to recite for Walter. (ibid.)5 The poem is about the magic that science can be, for Gale this means chemistry. Whitman in this poem suggests that true science, true knowledge of the way the world works, is not found in pure scientific measurement, but rather in the mystical and magical way that the world presents itself. Where the Heisenberg principle teaches that some measurements cannot be made simultaneously, Whitman tells that there is more to science than mere measurement. Relating this back to the two identities of Walter White that these men refer to, Heisenberg could be seen as the cold and calculative side where Walter is the more intuitive and poetic. As stated earlier there are many moments in Breaking Bad in which moral evaluation seems to take place, without actually referring to Walter’s actions as Heisenberg. In this moment however, the two men directly address the meth business and it seems in this moment that Walter and Gale are very much alike. Gale seems to be the person Walter wants to be, or could have been: happy as a meth cook without being overly ambitious or getting involved in the violent side of the trade; a man who cooks just to keep the magic of chemistry alive. Heisenberg will however, never allow him to be this person. Something Walter seems to realize as he soon decides to get rid of Gale as a partner. Though the two men seem much alike, and perhaps in another live would have been great friends, Walter wants Jesse to be his partner again. It is never made evident why Walter wants Gale out of the lab, but it seems that Gale confronts him too much with his Walter-side. It is Mr. White as a third identity that could clarify the reasons for Walter to want Gale gone. Walter might be able to make himself intelligible to Gale, but Gale can never see Heisenberg. If Mr. White indeed represents the middle ground, Gale is immediately exempted from this possibility, and thus from full-intelligibility, by Walter’s refusal to let Gale call him Mr. White. The only one that is allowed to use that name is the one that knows both sides: Jesse. Thus, how promising and intelligible the relation between Gale and Walter might look, it could never hold because the intelligibility by the knowledge Walter allows Gale is never true.

5 For full poem see appendix I 50

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Another link between Walter and the work of Walt Whitman is found in one of Whitman’s most famous poems ‘Song of Myself’. It was his life work and he has been adding verses to the poem until the year – arguably even the day – he died. The final version of this poem counts fifty-two verses, which is exactly the age Walter will have reached when he dies. When taking a look at the three final verses, since Breaking Bad begins on Walter’s fiftieth birthday, some striking resemblances between these verses and the development of Walter can be found.6 The fiftieth verse begins with the line: “There is that in me – I do not know what it is – but I know it is in me” (Whitman, 1882). This line aptly describes the moment we find Walter in at the beginning of the series: with something in him of which he is unsure what it is. This ‘something’ is on the one hand the cancer, but more importantly it is Heisenberg. The final lines of this verse read: “It is not chaos or death – it is form, union, plan – it is eternal life – it is Happiness” (ibid.) Heisenberg represents the ‘plan’, the cold and calculative; it is the man Walter wants to be in order to gain an eternal life in the form of a lasting reputation. It soon becomes clear that Heisenberg however is not ‘Happiness’, or at least not in the traditional sense of the word, because he keeps getting Walter in to new crises; he is the false necessity. That Heisenberg cannot bring Walter the intelligibility and the happiness he has longed for will have become clear to Walter by the time he turns fifty-one, which is in the fifth season when Heisenberg has almost completely taken over, though the struggle is than still undecided. The fifty-first verse of the poem Withman asks someone to confide in him, to “tell the truth” before it is too late (ibid.), this verse is about intelligibility. The episode ‘Fifty One’ (5.04, 2013) is also about finding a way to confide to the right person in time. In this episode Skyler takes drastic measures to keep the kids away from Walter. Walter tries to convince her to keep the kids in his life – both with friendly Walter attempts to make himself intelligible, as with cold hard Heisenberg threats – but fails. Skyler tells him that all she has left to do is wait, wait for the cancer to come back and take Walter. (ibid. 33:28-39:35) Throughout the episode there are many visual hints that the cancer in fact might be back, and the episode ends with an extreme close-up of Walter’s watch. The episode therefor raises similar questions to those asked in the poem: will Walter be able to confide in himself, to make peace and tell the truth? Or will Heisenberg completely take over and will it be too late to come to an attainable self? The final and fifty-second verse of the poem is a word of goodbye as the poet “depart[s] as air” and leaves himself “to the dirt” (Whitman, 1892). This goodbye is not unproblematic because it is from a poet unknown, and unintelligible: “You will hardly know who I am or what I mean” (ibid.). The same problems can be found in the goodbye of Walter in ‘Felina’ (5.16, 2013),

6 For full poem see appendix II 51

Chapter 4 – Breaking Down Breaking Bad the final episode of the series. Walter too says goodbye in this episode and makes the last ‘arrangements’ necessary for him to leave in peace. However the question if he leaves in peace, and if he has found the attainable self or has given in to Heisenberg completely remains up for debate. Because how well does the viewer, and how well do the other characters actually know him. Though this is by far not a complete analysis of Walt Whitman’s poetry, the fact that he was a follower of Emerson does suggest a reading of his work in terms of intelligibility. By the end of the poem and thus the end of his life, Whitman seems to ask himself if he has found the attainable self, as does Walter. Also it is by finding Whitman’s poetry collection Leaves of Grass, which contains both of the poems addressed above, that Hank is able to establish the link between his brother in law Walt and the wanted drug lord Heisenberg; it is the poet that in the end betrays Walter. (‘Gliding Over All,’ 5.08, 2012) The references and employment of the two main identities from the story of change thus again emphasize the play between these two personas and how this play points towards an attainable self that can only be found outside of this relationship. Though the idea of, or rather need for, a third identity is strongly informed by the work of Cavell it is also foregrounded when the series is read as a melodramatic narrative of internalization of social critique. In such, ‘classic’, reading the struggle between Walter and Heisenberg could be understood as two sides of the American Dream’s proverbial nightmare. Walter would be seen as a victim of the economic crisis that many Americans find themselves in, in which money is scarce, health insurance often fails and medical care is unaffordable. The series seems to show how being a criminal in this world is perhaps more rewarding than living a life as a stand-up citizen. Heisenberg on the other end represents how ambition can become a sickening infestation of ones moral wherein one takes the American Dream pasts its full potential. While there is nothing wrong with being ambitious, working hard and providing for your family, doing so at the expense of others is not what is meant by the American Dream. Reading Breaking Bad as such a critique on capitalism, might even mean that Walter is a victim of the banks and other major corporations that are just as ruthlessly ambitions as Heisenberg is. Walter is unable to control Heisenberg the same way that he is unable to control the, financial, crisis he finds himself in at the beginning of the series. Hence to live the American Dream a middle ground is needed; a way in which Walter’s crises and Heisenberg’s ambition are combined for the better instead of the worse. Such a combination, in both the ‘classic’ as the ‘Cavellian’ sense is found in Mr. White not only in symbolism or naming but also in colour.

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§2.2 White; the colour of reflection White as a colour in the first place, is of course opposed to black, which is arguably the color of Heisenberg judged by the fly symbolism and the clothing Walter has chosen for this dark side. Also black is often seen as a color of evil, a color with negative connotations, where white stands for pureness, virtue and light. Also Walter, as the unknown man could be linked to the color grey, rather than to the color white. In his non-Heisenberg moments, often wears light and neutral colours, like grey and beige, colours are often associated with plain- and thus unknownness, but he (almost) never wears pure white. The series puts grand emphasis on colour for example by the recognizable dark-green in the title sequence, the characteristic blue colour of the meth Walter produces, or the fact that Walter’s sister in law almost exclusively wears purple clothes7. It is therefore even more striking that White as a colour in the mis-en-scene is almost absent. When understanding white in a more metaphorical sense, as the colour that is the reflection of all colours, as no- colour, as translucent, the colour white is however almost omnipresent in Breaking Bad. Reflections as literal mirror images in which we see a shot of a character via a reflective object – being it a mirror or another reflecting surface like a window or a pool of water – are pervasive as a cinematic and symbolic element in the series. Addressing all these reflections and ascribe particular meanings to them would be, like an analysis of the compelling use of colour, an interesting endeavour but does not serve my argument. However, like the general emphasis on colour makes the absence of white stand out, the overt use of reflections made me think of a broader application of the term. Again the series emphasizes such an understanding, because besides the literal reflections in which we see one object reflected in the other also more allegorical reflections are part of the grand symbolism in Breaking Bad.

Still 4 - 6 Some examples of reflections that hint at Walter's imminent demise.

‘4 Days Out’ 2.09 TC: 46:36 ‘Blood Money’ 5.09 TC: 3:46 ‘Ozymandias’ 5.14 TC: 20:23

7 Unfortunately within this project there is no time or place to further discuss the possible meanings that could be ascribed to the distinct use of color in Breaking Bad. Not to say that this is irrelevant, rather it would become an elaborate side-step that would not strengthen (nor weaken) the argument. When interested in further reading on the use of color in Breaking Bad, some fan-websites provide interesting observations and links to even further reading. For example see: http://breakingbad.wikia.com/wiki/Color, (Breaking Bad Wiki. Wikia Inc., daily update) 53

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For example the alliteration in the title and Walter White’s name, or the way in which episodes reflect each other in titles and even more so by their dialogues and/or cinematography.8 Also the analysis as it has come thus far can be seen as a sum of reflections: the introduction scenes reflect upon the episode to come and the names reflect the character traits of the different identities. However the most important reflection is the reflection upon one’s actions, that what moral perfectionism calls the re-orientation of one’s life. A process that for Walter White is always indirect: his words reflect upon his actions instead of being a direct re-evaluation via intelligibility to others. Mr. White, as the middle ground, as the only way that Heisenberg and Walter can coexist, is than the ultimate mirror, the ultimate reflection, and thus the transformation that comes after the growth and decay that initiated the story of change. As the series began with a symbolic reflection – Walter’s on-tape confession – the series ends with many. The final episode is not merely a summation of the themes, symbols and storylines that were at the centre of the series, it is a reflection of – instead of on – these themes, symbols and storylines. Therefore I will end this analysis with the final episode of Breaking Bad: ‘Felina’.

§3 Felina

By the end of season five the whole meth enterprise blew up in Walter’s face: his brother in law and DEA agent Hank found out Walter is in fact Heisenberg, a group of Neo-Nazi’s sabotaged Walter’s business and his relation with Jesse is almost completely destroyed. Walter ends up leaving the country to hide from the police, and the Nazi gang has enslaved Jesse to cook the legendary blue meth. In hiding Walter’s cancer has turned worse and worse and in the knowledge that the end is near, Walter decides to return home – to the place where the action began – and take care of the loose ends he left behind. He figures out a way to make sure his family receives the money Walter still has left – almost ten million dollar – and he will get his revenge on the last people that crossed him. The tying up of these loose ends also forces Walter to make amends, and pay his debts for all the harm he caused. Not only will Walter tie up is own loose ends, also all themes discussed above come together in this action packed finale.

8 For some of the most famous reflections or symmetries see: ‘36 Times “Breaking Bad” Was The Cleverest Show On Television’ by Robin Edds. (BuzzFeed. BuzzFeed Inc. Daily Update 54

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The title of the episode is the first thing that stands out, as it is a reflection in and of itself. It is not merely an anagram of finale it also reflects the three main chemical components of the series. Different fan-analyses tell that: Fe stands for Iron, Li for Lithium and Na for sodium. Iron in these analyses is considered as the main element of blood, lithium as an element of methamphetamine and sodium is regarded as representing the salt of tears. Fe-Li-Na thus aptly sums up the series as blood, meth and tears. Another quite ironic doubling – similar to Walter being made as Heisenberg via Whitman’s poetry or near the employment of a fumigate company as cover up – is found in the way that Walter in the end meets his demise: he has to take on white supremacists to get his revenge and to save Jesse. White thus far has been considered as a colour of neutrality, pureness and transparency. However the colour also has negative connotations of fascism and racism. It is the positive White, represented in Walter’s aim to save Jesse, that with the help of his dark side’s whit, courage and pride, has to take out the negative white. Before Walter actually arrives at this point, he, as said, has to make amends and come to terms with at least his own (lack of) intelligibility. The struggle against the white supremacists is perhaps his end game, but the more important final fight is of course that between Walter and Heisenberg. That Walter might in the end still have a chance at finding his attainable self is again present in the dialogue of the episode; for example when Walter comes to say goodbye to Skyler:

WALTER: Skyler… For all the things I did I need you to understand… SKYLER: If I have to hear one more time that you did this for the family… WALTER: I did it for me… I liked it, I was good at it, and I was really… I was alive… (ibid. TC: 32:21)

For the first time Walter is able to admit, to his wife but also to himself, that it was not his care for the family that made him go this far, but that it was himself. It was his own greed, his own ambition, his own desire to be known. It was Heisenberg, someone Walter did not create but someone that was always a part of him, the character that taught him above will. For one short moment the marital pair in the series are intelligible to each other; Walter honestly evaluates his actions and makes himself intelligible to Skyler.

Chapter 4 – Breaking Down Breaking Bad

A second dialogue, which is again a farewell and the final dialogue in the entire series, is between Walter and Jesse. Walter in the end is able to save Jesse from the Nazi gang as his ultimate revenge. Walter brings about a grand massacre at the Nazi’s hide out, and he and Jesse are the only people left alive. Walter, as with Skyler, now knows that he has done Jesse wrong and shoves a gun towards him, offering Jesse the chance to a final revenge on the man who destroyed his life. Jesse picks up the gun and points it at Walter and the two men have their final conversation: WALTER: Do it. JESSE: Say the words! Say you want this! Nothing happens until you say it! WALTER: I want this JESSE: Than do it yourself… (ibid. TC: 47:40)

After these last lines are spoken, Jesse throws the gun on the floor and leaves. In contrast to killing the fly in ‘Fly’, Jesse here gives Walter the ultimate gift: a chance to kill the fly himself. All the events presented in the series finale are Walter’s loose ends being tied up, making things right for as far as he could, and it appears that Mr. White as the middle ground has found his way to the surface: both his pride and his sense of justice guided Walter to this moment; both, Walter and Heisenberg are present in this episode and Walter, by dying, has found the strength to kill Heisenberg. His death could be seen as the ultimate moral perfectionist transcendence in a way: it is Walter coming to terms with the fact that his terms of intelligibility are not welcome to others. The final minutes of the final episode are the final farewell: Walter has to say goodbye to Heisenberg. He walks into the lab of the Nazi gang and looks at the equipment, he takes one of the gasmasks in his hands, and touches some of the barrels. In one of the barrels a final reflection is shown, which is the perfect Mr. White shot. In hiding Walter’s looks have completely changed – arguably this could be the Mr. White look – his hair has grown back, he wears different glasses. The reflection inside the barrel is however distorted by its round shape and therefore the reflection looks almost like Heisenberg. Walter’s hand is on the barrel and in focus; his face is only seen in the reflection, distorted and out of focus but non the less recognizable as the face of Heisenberg and thus in this shot Walter and Heisenberg come together, and make peace; hence it is the first shot of the complete Mr. White. (ibid. TC: 53:27)

Chapter 4 – Breaking Down Breaking Bad

Still 5 - First shot of Mr. White: all identities come together (ibid.)

During Walter’s final goodbye a song begins of which the first lines are: “I Guess I got what I deserved”. After those lines the scene cuts to Walter lying on the floor, the camera zooms out and it is turning, slowly. As the camera turns around and moves further away from Walter the shot gets ‘blocked’ by the beam-structure of the building which forms a cross right over Walter lying on the floor: he died. Walter arguably got what he deserved and what he expected in the first place: death. Which does not necessarily mean that Walter has become the attainable self. Dying does not enable Walter to undo all the harm he caused, or evaluate and justify his choices and actions in retrospect. Mr. White as a third identity represents the journey itself rather than its ending point. He is the on-going process of re-evaluation and the struggle of a metamorphosis of the self. Mr. White represents the unattained but attainable self, rather than an attained self. In the reflection that this character allegorically forms, supported by the many reflections that can be found throughout Breaking Bad, he stands for the ‘returning changed, that is without returning to the same’. Breaking Bad than, as melodrama of the unknown man, is in sum a mega-melodramatic narrative that not merely registers virtue and villainy but reflects on it. The series presents the story of change of Walter White, a story of growth, decay and transformation. A protagonist that through many crises was presented with difficult choices, choices he was not always able to re- evaluate with the friendly and credible words of others. However, in the end Walter accepts that his terms of intelligibility are not welcome to others and via an ultimate metempsychosis he pays

Chapter 4 – Breaking Down Breaking Bad his dues and accepts who he is: both Walter and Heisenberg, both Mr. Chips and Scarface, both the virtue and the villainy. It is the acceptance of Mr. White that lead up to the tragic but suiting ending of Breaking Bad. A series that was perhaps never about right or wrong, but about acceptance and reflection; upon Walter’s actions as much as on our own investment with the series.

Still 6 - Walter White's ultimate transcendence (ibid. TC: 54:12)

Conclusion – The Melodrama of the Unknown Man

Conclusion – The MelodRama of the UnkNown MaN

WALTER: Who are you talking to right now? Who is it you think you see? […] you clearly don't know who you're talking to, so let me clue you in. I am not in danger, Skyler. I am the danger! A guy opens his door and gets shot and you think that of me? No. I am the one who knocks! (‘Cornered’ 4.06 TC: 9:09)

The melodrama of the unknown man has been an endeavour to demonstrate the possibilities of a broadened approach towards serial drama and genre. The project leans on three important pillars: a poetics based and neoformalist approach, the understanding of genre as a mode instead of distinct generic features, and moral perfectionism as a perspective on morality. The analysis of Breaking Bad has been a demonstration of how these pillars provide the ability to discuss the series as a register of certain moral complexities. Via the central question of intelligibility Breaking Bad could be defined as a story of change, and Walter White as the central personage in search of his unattained but attainable self. Via the work of Mittell I was able to establish serial drama as an art form in its own right, deemed by Mittell as complex TV. His ideas, combined with trends seen by other theorists like Brett, strengthened the idea that media studies with the uprising of complex popular series has been confronted with a new and challenging subject. Secondly his perspective on genre and the persistence of melodrama within complex TV brought me from mega-melodrama to Cavell. Williams’ idea that through horizontal time serial drama is able to register virtue and villainy in all its complexities pointed towards a different understanding of morality in serial drama. The ideas of Cavell pushed that idea further, and moral perfectionism became the central approach to see what this different understanding of morality actually could be. Perhaps at some points the analysis of Breaking Bad might look like a mere sticking a theory onto an object, however as I already stated in the part on neoformalism: “I do not employ [Cavell’s] work as an all-encompassing theory but as a means to come to ‘open ended, corrigible and falsifiable claims’. As poetics and neoformalism, Cavell for me becomes a way of asking questions rather than answering them” (page 13). Because one of the most important things I have taken from Cavell is that moral perfectionism is a perspective and not a definitive answer. Cavell strongly separates moral perfectionism from the deontologist and utilitarian view on moral philosophy, which are both formulated in answers, and demonstrates how, in moral perfectionism, the same moral outlook can have different outcomes; in some films moral perfectionism is successful, in other’s it is not. Cavell’s work for me is therefore an analytical mode that helps asking relevant questions – to understand what it means through how it means – and therefore is a means to contain your material.

Conclusion – The Melodrama of the Unknown Man

Such containment is vital since the vast amount of material is perhaps the grandest challenge when researching serial drama. Breaking Bad consists of almost sixty-two hours of material; a time span that is similar to other popular series. The work of Cavell guided me through this material: it was via conversation that I was able to explain and interpret central relations, via habit that I could ascribe meaning to symbols like the fly and the central theme of reflection. The idea that moral perfectionism is about intelligibility and transformation made me able to carefully select my examples and the questions to ask about those examples. More importantly it took me away from the mere question of right and wrong and made me see Breaking Bad in a broader moral perspective: as a register of virtue and villainy in all its complexities, hence as mega-melodrama. Above all it made me able to get a better understanding what those complexities are, and what they tell us. Reading the series as a melodrama of the unknown man shows how Breaking Bad can be read as a moral perfectionist narrative that forces the viewers to reflect not only upon the moral choices of the series’ characters but more importantly on the process of moral evaluation in itself. The melodrama of the unknown man remains a genre in the making, in the first place because one example simply does not make a genre. Secondly it is a highly theoretical genre, and not (yet) applicable in terms of production, promotion or viewer experience. However I have been able to not only stress the need for a different approach towards serial drama but also demonstrate how genre as a mode could be (part of) such an approach. The melodrama of the unknown man accounts for elements like a mega-melodramatic and complex mode of narration. It puts the object itself back at the centre of one’s attention and provides a certain outlook and a shift in focus as a method of analysis. From a cultural studies perspective Breaking Bad would perhaps be accounted for via the representation of its male and female characters, or as an example of an investigation of criminality in American popular culture. As quality TV the series could be praised for its cinematographic style, the complex and expanded narrative or the fact that it takes the development of modern day narratives on difficult men to another level. Even though throughout the analysis I stayed close to the work of Cavell, the melodrama of the unknown man also differs from that of the unknown woman, because it broadens the possibilities of the genre. Reading Breaking Bad as a melodrama of the unknown woman would probably concentrate on the development of Walter’s wife Skyler, who is to some extent just as unable to make herself intelligible to Walter as he is to her. In such an analysis the dominance of Walter over his wife would perhaps become more central instead of the general moral evaluation that is at the heart of this series. This is not merely based on the fact that Cavell’s genre refers to a female protagonist where my genre chose a male reference – as Cavell himself stresses his

Conclusion – The Melodrama of the Unknown Man research is by no means intended a contribution to the feminist debate. The most important difference between the genres is the broadened approach towards relationships. Where Cavell has a particular interest in martial relationships, the melodrama of the unknown man is about all different relationships the protagonist engages in. I believe that the melodrama of the unknown man provides a new perspective on serial drama, in which relations, intelligibility and the process of moral (re-)evaluation are central themes. The genre is a distinctive mode through which morally complex narratives can be further discerned. A mode in which the central questions concern the moral evaluation of the series as a whole rather than that of singular characters. I hope in later work to be able to include many more examples of the genre, and examine the moral perspective that they present. Titles like Dexter, Sherlock and House of Cards come to mind; all complex narratives centred on difficult men and employing many elements from the genre I have proposed. Whether our understanding of Dexter Morgan, Sherlock Holmes and Frank Underwood also benefits from a separation into multiple identities remains to be seen. I however do believe that analysing these men through their habits, conversations and terms of intelligibility will help gain insights on these characters and on the broader moral that lies beneath the surface of these series.

Final Thoughts – My Own Felina

FiNal THoughts – MY Own Felina Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself, (I am large, I contain multitudes.) (Walt Whitman, 1892)

‘Felina’; a series final episode’s title has perhaps never been as suiting as that of Breaking Bad. Not only because its an anagram for finale, or the chemical formula for the series main themes ( Fe: blood, Li: meth and Na: tears) as explained in the analysis. There are other online fan-analyses that present some fascinating theories on the meaning of this title. One argues that the title refers to a song titled El Paso by Marty Robbins. The song is about a cowboy who falls in love with a girl named Felina and tells how this cowboy tries to win over Felina, despite of his trouble with the law and the fact that she has found another suitor. By the end of the song the cowboy is able to return to his almost unattainable love and plans to kill the other suitor, however Felina ends up shooting the cowboy straight in his heart. According to this ‘El Paso Theory’, the song is an allegory for the events that take place throughout the fifth and final season of Breaking Bad. Another theory that is perhaps a little more far-fetched but non-the-less quite compelling is based on the ‘Schrodinger’s Cat principle’. In this theory Felina stands for Felinae, the scientific classification for cats, which would refer to this thought-experiment that is related to the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. In this experiment one has to image a cat locked inside a box that contains radioactive material that could be released at any moment. Imagining this box would mean to imagine a cat that is both alive and dead. As soon as the box is opened, however the cat is either alive or dead instead and could have never been both. I’ll leave the scientific implications of this experiment untouched, but the argued relation between Schrodinger’s cat and Breaking Bad’s finale is that while the state of the series main character – good guy or bad guy – has remained unclear and arguably both throughout the series, in this finale the box is opened and Walter White’s true state will be revealed. (International Business Times, 2013) Although all these theories, including the chemical explanation, can be heavily debated, they do give some insight in the narrative development of Breaking Bad, and all to some extent relate to my own demonstrative reading of the series. Furthermore these theories are just as apt to my own personal project on Breaking Bad as they are to the series’ themes. I began my initial project on Breaking Bad about a year ago. In a first attempt I wanted to present a new perspective on the investigation of serial drama, took Breaking Bad as central case study and via a thorough analysis I wanted to not only lay bare the complex thematic of the series, but also show how such an analysis could imply a new view on serial drama. The analysis succeeded, the latter part however miserably failed. Despite all the blood, and tears, all the effort

Final Thoughts – My Own Felina and struggle, I put in this project I found myself constantly stuck with the addictive and multilayered nature of the series, the meth of my project so to speak. It was my own personal Felina, my own search for something almost unattainable, which in the end bit me in the back instead of bringing me the happy end I longed for when I started. I was able to imagine the cat in the box both alive and dead, but was never able to open the box. The main problem I found myself stuck with during this project was the problem of method, the method I was so eager to develop in the end became the main weakness of the project; my cat wasn’t both alive and dead, it was neither. What you have read is a second attempt towards such method, one that is perhaps just as ambitious, but much better structured. Instead of a weak attempt at creating a full rounded working method, I presented a successful first step towards such method. Though my ideas have been perfected they are in no way perfect. As a first step it might be considered a successful project, but much work remains to be done. The melodrama of the unknown man, as concentrated on moral perfectionism, perhaps restricts material and helps to kill the right darlings, but it also forced me to leave other elements untouched or degrade them to footnotes or short comments. I praise Mittell’s poetics and neo-formalist analysis for the fact that both are quite plenary in what they consider, but this is also their biggest problem when trying to adapt them to serial drama. There is not only much material ground to cover, the material is also, in all its complexities, intertexualities and storylines, tremendously rich. Therefore though I believe to be on the right track with the ideas presented in this thesis still need work done. The melodrama of the unknown man has been a productive way to focus, but it still needs to be perfected further on order to keep the richness of poetics alive as much as the richness of the material. I perhaps may not have not fully reached Felina but I am well on my way towards my happy ending. Again much blood and tears have gone into this project, but the meth was less troubling and the addiction could be restrained. I have opened the box to find my cat that to be neither alive nor dead, rather my cat is still on a journey of becoming.

I would like to thank friends, family, colleagues and above all my thesis supervisor and readers for their patience with me throughout the struggle and the long journey this project became.

Timna Rauch

Bibliography

Works Cited

Written Works:

Altman, Rick. Film/Genre. Basingstoke: Palmgrave Macmillan, 2012

Asheim, Lester. ‘From Book to Film: Mass Appeals.” In: Hollywood Quarterly 5.4 (Summer 1951). Oakland: University of California Press: 1951. 334-349

Baltzer-Jaray, Kimberly. ‘Finding Happiness in a Black Hat.’ in: Breaking Bad and Philosophy. Eds: ‘David R. Koepsell, Robert Arp. Chicago: Carus Publishing Company, 2013. 43-53

Brooks, Peter. The Melodramatic Imagination. Balzac, Henry James, Melodrama, and the Mode of Excess. London: Yale University Press: 1976.

Cavell, Stanley. Contesting Tears. The Hollywood Melodrama of the Unknown Woman. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1996.

-- Cities of Words. Pedagogical Letters on a Register of the Moral Life. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2008.

Cawelti. John G. ‘The Evolution of Social Melodrama.’ In: Imitations of Life: A Reader on Film & Television Meldodrama. Ed: Marcia Landy. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1991. 33- 49

Durgnat, Raymond. “Ways of Melodrama.’ In: Imitations of Life: A Reader on Film & Television Meldodrama. Ed: Marcia Landy. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1991. 135-147

Elsaesser, Thomas. ‘Tales of Sound and Fury: Observations on the Family Melodrama.’ In: Imitations of Life: A Reader on Film & Television Meldodrama. Ed: Marcia Landy. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1991. 68-91

Geraghty, Christine. ‘Aesthetics and Quality in Popular Television Drama.’ International Journal of Cultural Studies 6.1. London: Sage Publications, 2003. 25-45

Joyrich, Lynne. ‘All that Television Allows: TV Melodrama, Postmodernism and Consumer Culture’. Camera Obscura: A Journal of Feminism, Culture and Media Studies 16. Durham: Duke University Press, 1988. 129-153

Landry, Marcia, ed. Imitations of Life: A Reader on Film & Television Meldodrama. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1991.

Martin, Brett. Difficult Men: Behind the Scenes of a Creative Revolution: From The Sopranos and The Wire to Mad Men and Breaking Bad. New York: The Penguin Press, 2013.

Mittell, Jason. Genre and Television. From Cop Shows to Cartoons in American Culture. New York: Routledge, 2004.

-- ‘Narrative Complexity in Contemporary American Television.’ In: The Velvet Light Trap nr. 58 (Fall 2008). Houston: University of Texas Press, 2006. 29-40

Williams, Linda. ‘Mega-Melodrama! Vertical and Horizontal Suspensions of the “Classical.” In: Modern Melodrama 55.4 (Winter 2012). Toronto: University of Toronto Press. 523-543

Digital Resources:

Bordwell, David. ‘Historical Poetics of Cinema’. As published in: The Cinematic Text. Methods and Approaches. Ed. R. Barton Palmer. New York: AMS Press Inc. 1989 Via: www.david bordwell.net. Daily update. 29-12-2014 < http://www.davidbordwell.net/articles/ Bordwell_ Cinematic%20Text_no3_1989_3 69.pdf> 15-12-2014

Dasgupta, Sudeep. ‘Policing the People: Television Studies and the Problem of Quality’ In: Necsus. European Journal for Media Studies. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2014. 25-07-2014

Gilligan, Vince. ‘Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan: the man who turned Walter White from Mr Chips into Scarface. How a joke about a meth lab grew into one of the best TV dramas of all time.’ By: Paul MacInnes, in: The Guardian.com. Guaridan News an Media Limited. Daily update. 27-06-104

Mittell, Jason. Complex TV: The Poetics of Contemporary Television Storytelling, pre-publication edition. MediaCommons Press, 2012-13. Daily update. 29-12-2014 http://mcpress.mediacommons.org/complextelevision/

‘Heisenberg.’ Wikipedia. The Free Encyclopedia. Wikimedia Foundation. Daily update. 27-06-2014

‘Walt Whitman.’ Wikipedia. The Free Encyclopedia. Wikimedia Foundation. Daily update. 27-06- 2014

‘Werner Heisenberg’ Wikipedia. The Free Encyclopedia. Wikimedia Foundation. Daily update. 27-06- 2014

‘Uncertainty Principle.’ Wikipedia. The Free Encyclopedia. Wikimedia Foundation. Daily update. 27-06-2014

‘Western.’ Wikipedia. The Free Encyclopedia. Wikimedia Foundation. Daily update. 7-05-2014

Audio-visual Resources:

Breaking Bad. High Bridge Productions. 2008-2013 ‘Breaking Bad.’ Season 1, episode 01, 2008. ‘Grey Matter.’ Season 1 episode 05, 2008. ‘Crazy Handful of Nothin’.’ Season 1, episode 06, 2008. ‘No Rough-Stuff-Type Deal.’ Season 1, episode 07, 2008. ‘4 Days Out.’ Season 2, episode 09, 2009. ‘Mandela.’ Season 0, episode 11, 2009. ‘Phoenix.’ Season 3, episode 11, 2009 ‘No Mas.’ Season 3, episode 01, 2010. ‘Sunset.’ Season 3, episode 06, 2010. ‘Fly’ Season 3, episode 10, 2010. ‘Cornered.’ Season 4, episode 06, 2011. ‘Fifty One.’ Season 5, episode 04, 2012. ‘Say my Name.’ Season 5, episode 07, 2012. ‘Gliding over All.’ Season 5, episode 08, 2012. ‘Blood Money.’ Season 5, episode 09, 2013. ‘Ozymandias.’ Season 5, episode 14 ‘Felina.’ Season 5, episode 16, 2013.

Referenced works:

Becket, Samuel. Waiting for Godot. 1949

Golding, William. Lord of the Flies. London: Faber and Faber, 1954

Dexter. Showtime. 2006-2013

House of Cards. Media Rights Capital, Netflix. 2013 -

Reservoir Dogs. Dir. Quentin Tarantino. Live Entertainment, 1992

Sherlock. Hartswood Films, BBC. 2009 -

Star Wars. Dir. George Lucas. Lucasfilm, Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation. 1977-2005

The Fly. Dir. David Cronenberg. SLM Production Goup, 1986. 66

The Great Train Robbery. Dir. Edwin S. Porter. Edison Manufacturing Company, 1903

The Sopranos. Home Box Office. 1999-2007

The X-Files. Ten thirteen Productions, 20th Century Fox Television 1992-2002

Twin Peaks. Lynch/Frost Productions. 1990-1991.

Consulted Works (general):

Cavell, Stanley. ‘The Fact of Television.’ Daedalus 111.4 (Fall, 1982). Cambridge: MIT Press, 1982. 75-96

-- ‘The Good of Film’. In: Cavell on Film. Ed: William Rothman. Albany: SUNY Press, 2005.

Kinder, Marsha. ‘Re-Wiring Baltimore: The Emotive Power of Systemics, Seriality, and the City. Film Quarterly 62.2 (Winter 2008) Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008. 50-57

Kuhn, Asnette. ‘Women’s Genres. Annette Kuhn Considers Melodrama, Soap Opera and Theory.’ Screen 25.1. Oxfrord: Oxford University Press, 1984. 18-29

Mittel, Jason. ‘A Cultural Approach to Television Genre Theory’. In: Cinema Journal 40.3 (Spring 2003). Houston: University of Texas Press, 2003. 3-24

White, Mimi. ‘Woman, Memory and Serial Melodrama.’ Screen 35.4 (Winter 1994). Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994. 336-353

Consulted Works (annotated): Some examples from works from the early stage of my research in which either context dominates aesthetic and/or narrative analysis, quality TV is a central theme or productional developments are central. (All related to the discussion of television studies presented in chapter one)

Bourda, Melanie ‘Quality Television: construction and de-construction of seriality.’ In: Previously on: estudios interdisciplinarios sobre la ficción televisiva en la Tercera Edad de Oro de la Televisión. Sevilla: Biblioteca de la Facultad de Comunicación de la Universidad de Sevilla, 2011. pp. 33-34 Traces the changing notion of seriality via technological-, programming and productional changes and a shift in viewer and fan experience.

Donnelly, Ashley M. ‘The New American Hero: Dexter, Serial Killer for the Masses’. In: The Journal of Popular Culture 45.1 Hoboken: Wiley Periodicals, Inc., 2012. 15-26 In this article Dexter Morgan, the main character of Showtime’s Dexter, is analysed in the context of dominant ideas on masculinity, moral and heroism in American culture. Focus is on this context and not on aesthetic or narrative analysis.

Jaramillo, Deborah L. ‘AMC: Stumbling toward a New Television Canon.’ Television & New Media 14.2 London: Sage Publications, 2011. 167-183 Jaramillo concentrates on the influence of production on the changing content of series programmed and/or produced by AMC.

Leverett, Marc, Brian L. Ott, Cara Louise Buckley. It’s Not TV: Watching HBO in the Post-Television Era. New York: Routledge, 2008. Reader on the development of HBO as a network and production company. Consists of three parts: one on ‘Industry and Economics’, one on ‘Text and Context’ and one on ‘Audiences and Identities.’ The first- and third part are consistent with the productional- and the reception focussed strands. The third part sounds promising, and all articles presented here work on a central case-study. However in most cases the readings these articles provide focus on the context over the text and connect the examples to developments in either the changing television landscape or on their representation of society and/or culture. In most works HBO produced series are often deemed as quality TV or in the least presented as aesthetically different from other series without a thorough discussion of these aesthetics.

Tamborini, Ron, Rene Weber et. al. ‘Violence Is a Many Splintered Thing. The Importance of Realism, Justification, and Graphicness in Understanding Perceptions of and Preferences for Violent Films and Video Games.’ In: Projections. 7.1 Summer 2013. Oxford: Berghan Journals, 2013. pp. 100-118. Traces the increasing popularity of violent content in film and gaming via audience reception research (communication science).

Appendix I

When I Heard the learn’d Astronomer (Walt Whitman, unknown)

When I heard the learn’d astronomer, When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me, When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them, When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room, How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick, Till rising and gliding out I wander’d off by myself, In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time, Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.

Poetry Foundation. Hariet Monroe Poetry Institure. Daily update. 27-06-2014

Appendix II

Song of Myself (Walt Whitman, 1892)

50 There is that in me—I do not know what it is—but I know it is in me.

Wrench’d and sweaty—calm and cool then my body becomes, I sleep—I sleep long.

I do not know it—it is without name—it is a word unsaid, It is not in any dictionary, utterance, symbol.

Something it swings on more than the earth I swing on, To it the creation is the friend whose embracing awakes me.

Perhaps I might tell more. Outlines! I plead for my brothers and sisters.

Do you see O my brothers and sisters? It is not chaos or death—it is form, union, plan—it is eternal life—it is Happiness.

51 The past and present wilt—I have fill’d them, emptied them, And proceed to fill my next fold of the future.

Listener up there! what have you to confide to me? Look in my face while I snuff the sidle of evening, (Talk honestly, no one else hears you, and I stay only a minute longer.)

Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself, (I am large, I contain multitudes.)

I concentrate toward them that are nigh, I wait on the door-slab.

Who has done his day’s work? who will soonest be through with his supper? Who wishes to walk with me?

Will you speak before I am gone? will you prove already too late?

52 The spotted hawk swoops by and accuses me, he complains of my gab and my loitering.

I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable, I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.

The last scud of day holds back for me, It flings my likeness after the rest and true as any on the shadow’d wilds, It coaxes me to the vapor and the dusk.

I depart as air, I shake my white locks at the runaway sun, I effuse my flesh in eddies, and drift it in lacy jags.

I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love, If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles.

You will hardly know who I am or what I mean, But I shall be good health to you nevertheless, And filter and fibre your blood.

Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged, Missing me one place search another, I stop somewhere waiting for you.

Poetry Foundation. Hariet Monroe Poetry Institure. Daily update. 27-06-2014