Angry White Men: How Breaking Bad and the Walking Dead Predicted the Trumpian Zeitgeist
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ANGRY WHITE MEN: HOW BREAKING BAD AND THE WALKING DEAD PREDICTED THE TRUMPIAN ZEITGEIST Graeme J. Wilson A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate College of Bowling Green State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY May 2019 Committee: Ellen Gorsevski, Advisor Raymond Swisher Graduate Faculty Representative Lisa Hanasono Thomas Mascaro © 2019 Graeme J. Wilson All Rights Reserved iii ABSTRACT Ellen Gorsevski, Advisor The archetypal protagonist of the modern “Golden Age of Television” is a maladjusted, White male struggling with feelings of marginalization. While this description applies to characters such as Breaking Bad’s Walter White, it is also used by political commentators to characterize what is popularly perceived to be the prototypical male supporter of President Donald Trump. When considering the cultural zeitgeist of the angry White man, are there any cultural and rhetorical connections between White, male Trump supporters who exhibit irrational feelings of marginalization and dramas such as Breaking Bad whose protagonists similarly exhibit and are motivated by such feelings? As a theorist and critical scholar of televised rhetoric and discourses, I am interested in analyzing such programming to determine whether these prestige antihero series invited viewers to contribute to the current masculinist movement under Trump and reassert dominance in response to perceived losses to women and minority groups. The specific episodes that will serve as case studies for this research into the relationship between modern prestige television and the cultural zeitgeist of Trump’s America will be drawn from Breaking Bad and The Walking Dead, due to their cultural influence and visibility. My research will demonstrate that these series have operated as textual artifacts that contributed to forming the zeitgeist of the masculinized cultural moment which Trump serves as a figurehead of. Such research is relevant to modern American political and social discourse, thus providing a rich opportunity to expand on preexisting research into televisual influence on masculinity within a fresh context. Keywords: Breaking Bad, critical discourse analysis, critical historiography, critical race theory, Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, intersectionality, The Walking Dead, Trumpism iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This project wouldn’t have been possible without my incredible support system, both within and outside of Bowling Green State University. I want to begin by thanking my incredible committee: Ellen, Gorsevski, Lisa Hanasono, Thomas Mascaro, and Raymond Swisher. Your guidance and the wonderful feedback you provided me with helped mold this dissertation into its final form. To the lifelong friends I made at Bowling Green State University, thank you for serving as academic sounding boards as I developed this project, and improvised therapists when completing it seeming overwhelming. Of course, I must also thank my family: my parents Tom and June Wilson, and my sister Gillian Wilson, who cheered me on every step of the way, as did the rest of our extended Scottish clan back in Columbus, Indiana. Finally, my beautiful wife Renelle Leannda Wilson, who was there at the beginning when I first conceived this project and was there at the end when I successfully defended it. Your endless encouragement, support, and love provided the fuel I needed to power on and complete my dissertation. I dedicate this finished project to you. v TABLE OF CONTENTS Page CHAPTER 1. RATIONALE FOR STUDY AND LITERATURE REVIEW ...................... 1 Introduction………………………………………………………………………… 1 Background on Television Series as Visually and Culturally Resonant Texts .......... 3 Rationale for Study .................................................................................................... 9 Literature Review on Cultural Mirroring in Popular Television ............................... 11 Case Studies: Breaking Bad and The Walking Dead ................................................. 19 CHAPTER 2. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK AND METHODOLOGY: INTERSECTIONAL AND CRITICAL RACE THEORY APPLIED TO VISUAL TEXTUAL ANALYSIS OF POPULAR TELEVISION TEXTS ........................................................................................ 23 Introduction………………………………………………………………………… 23 Theoretical Framework .............................................................................................. 26 Intersectionality .............................................................................................. 26 Critical Race Theory ...................................................................................... 28 Methodology………………………………………………………………………. 32 Critical Discourse Analysis ............................................................................ 33 Critical Historiography .................................................................................. 36 Textual analysis ................................................................................. 36 Historical analysis .............................................................................. 39 Background of Critical/Cultural Media Studies ........................................................ 41 Critical Discourse Analysis ............................................................................ 41 Critical Historiography .................................................................................. 43 Conclusion…………………………………………………………………… ......... 45 vi CHAPTER 3. FREAKING BAD: WALTER WHITE, MASCULINE ANXIETY, AND CONFLICTING SOCIAL DISCOURSE .............................................................................. 50 Background………………………………………………………………………… 50 Visualizing Conflict in Social Definitions of Gender and Toxic Masculinity ........... 53 Confronting Femininity and the Threat of Emasculation .............................. 56 Gaslighting as a Visual Motif ........................................................................ 62 The Battle for Gender Dominance ................................................................. 65 Walt vs. Skyler ................................................................................... 65 Walt vs. Jane ...................................................................................... 70 Metatextual Commentary on Exaggerated Masculinity ................................ 72 Whiteness vs. the Other in Breaking Bad .................................................................. 74 Historical Portrayals of Latinos in American Entertainment ......................... 76 “Bad Hombres” and Latinos as Other in Breaking Bad ................................ 78 Walter White and Mythic Whiteness ............................................................. 82 Walter White as a Skinhead and Alt-Right Figure ........................................ 85 Resonance Between Breaking Bad and Trumpian Rhetoric ...................................... 87 CHAPTER 4. TALKING RED: FAR RIGHT RHETORIC IN THE WALKING DEAD ..... 92 Background………………………………………………………………………… 92 Regressive Conception of Gender ............................................................................. 95 “Natural” Gender Roles and Responsibilities ................................................ 99 Masculine Leadership and the Dominance of Women .................................. 104 The Policing of Women’s Bodies .................................................................. 111 Women’s Bodies as Trophies of Masculine Validation ................................ 116 White Hegemony and Supremacy in The Walking Dead .......................................... 120 vii Asian Masculinity as Feminine and Inauthentic ............................................ 121 Black Masculinity and White Power Fantasies ............................................. 123 Black Femininity as White Femininity’s Deviant Opposite .......................... 127 Narrative Parallels to Nationalism and the Alt-Right .................................... 129 Resonance Between The Walking Dead and Trumpian Rhetoric .............................. 133 CHAPTER 5. FINDINGS AND CONCLUSION: VISUALIZING THE TELEVISED POLITICAL ZEITGEIST OF BREAKING BAD AND THE WALKING DEAD .................. 136 Introduction………………………………………………………………………… 136 Rhetorical Connections Between Trumpist Ideology and Prestige AMC Dramas… 139 Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………. 148 REFERENCES……………………………………………………………………………. 152 Running head: ANGRY WHITE MEN CHAPTER 1. RATIONALE FOR STUDY AND LITERATURE REVIEW Introduction An explosion consumes a residential room in Casa Tranquila, a small nursing home and assisted living facility in Albuquerque, New Mexico, blowing the door off its hinges. A man, Gustavo “Gus” Fring, stumbles out of the smoke and smoldering ruin behind him. Half of his face has been torn off in the explosion, exposing his skull. Gus uses his final moments to calmly adjust his tie before collapsing to the ground, dead. Two other people have been killed in the explosion, although there will be no bodies to bury. Their only remains are the blood and viscera that now decorate the room’s walls. Two of these murdered men, including Gus, were Latino; the third, an employee of Gus, was African American. The explosion was the result of a bombing orchestrated by a White man by the name of, fittingly, Walter “Walt” White. Such an incident is not uncommon in American history, particularly concerning race relations and hate crimes in the country. There is a tragic tradition of racial minorities