Breaking Bad: on the Western Genre and Audience Reception
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University at Albany, State University of New York Scholars Archive English Honors College 5-2014 Breaking Bad: On the Western Genre and Audience Reception Marisa Mazart University at Albany, State University of New York Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarsarchive.library.albany.edu/honorscollege_eng Part of the English Language and Literature Commons Recommended Citation Mazart, Marisa, "Breaking Bad: On the Western Genre and Audience Reception" (2014). English. 14. https://scholarsarchive.library.albany.edu/honorscollege_eng/14 This Honors Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Honors College at Scholars Archive. It has been accepted for inclusion in English by an authorized administrator of Scholars Archive. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Breaking Bad: on the Western Genre and Audience Reception An honors thesis presented to the Department of English University at Albany, State University of New York in partial fulfillment of the requirements for graduation with Honors in English and graduation from The Honors College. Marisa Mazart Research Advisor: Jennifer Greiman, Ph.D. Second Reader: Bret Benjamin, Ph.D. May 2014 Mazart 2 Abstract Breaking Bad: on the Western Genre and Audience Reception “Breaking Bad: on the Western Genre and Audience Reception” examines the recent TV series Breaking Bad making use of cultural scholar Stuart Hall’s encoding and decoding theories in order to better understand what meaning is imbued into the series and what meaning is extracted by the audiences. By treating Breaking Bad as a cultural artifact moving across what Hall defines as the parts of the circuit of culture – production, identification, representation, consumption and regulation – I will be able to answer the question of why the show is so popular and to consider the significance of that popularity. While the popularity of the TV series can simply be attributed to the excitement and pleasure surrounding an average father’s secret life as a meth kingpin, I am discovering that there are gaps between the meanings imbued by sources like the network, writers, actors, and producers and those that the audience interprets and receives. Following my interest in the show’s popularity, I read Breaking Bad as a Western narrative and explore how the updated tropes of the Western genre create a strong identification with the American audience, which in turn provides a springboard for examining all five parts of the circuit of culture. While the cultural scholar and political philosopher Robert Pippin argues that the Western genre is the building of modern bourgeoisie law abiding society, I argue the opposite — that Breaking Bad reverses the Western narrative by updating the concept of ‘winning the west.’ The character of Walt asserts a masculine force of mastery, which is so crucial to a Western Hero’s image of dominance, but he does this in a way that documents the change from law-abiding social order to its dissolution into lawlessness. The production chapter focuses on the gap between the motivation of AMC to gain affluent viewers and the show’s dominant message of financial struggle and the failing middle class. The representation chapter explains how this dominant message is represented through camera angles, visual composition, audio, and mise-en-scène. This chapter also examines Breaking Bad in relation to Classical Westerns like The Good, the Bad and the Ugly and The Searchers to see how Breaking Bad preserves the Western aesthetic while reversing Pippin’s Western. The consumption and identification chapter switches to the audience’s perspective. A demographic breakdown of Breaking Bad fans by age and sex is examined, but demographics can only tell us who watches the program, not what meanings they extract. In order to take this information a step further, I combine Stuart Hall’s theory of decoding with the TV gratification typology developed by Denis McQuail, a communications scholar, in order to extract the identities fans form with the Breaking Bad characters through online posts and comments by the fans. The chapter on regulation concludes my cultural study and further builds on the previous chapters by bringing in the post-modern theorist Jean Buadrillard in exploring how fans’ reactions and strong connection with the series reflect our epoch’s visual culture and dependency on simulation and reproduction to receive gratification. Mazart 3 Thank you first and second readers, Professors Jennifer Greiman and Bret Benjamin For all your guidance, insight and support. It has been an incredible experience working with you both. Thank you, my loving family and friends for your support and encouragement. Also, I thank TV, Film and culture for evolving my thesis to no bounds. Mazart 4 Table of Contents Abstract.......................................................................................... 2 Acknowledgements........................................................................ 3 Introduction.................................................................................... 5 Chapter 1.......................................................................................10 “Production: the Conflicting Encoded Messages of Breaking Bad” Chapter 2.......................................................................................31 “Representation: Breaking Bad’s Revival and Reversal of the Classical Western” Chapter 3...................................................................................... 58 “Consumption and Identification: How Walter White is Coming to Life” Chapter 4.......................................................................................79 “Regulation: the Cultural Forces that Shape TV Show Popularity” Notes............................................................................................. 96 Works Cited.................................................................................. 98 Mazart 5 Introduction Talking in person, on the phone, texting and chatting over the internet are powerful ways to circulate meaning, but they are not the only ones. Media and its’ signifying practices are also among the most dominant systems for circulating meaning (Hall “The Centrality of Culture”). Using the cultural scholar Stuart Hall’s framework for studying media and culture, this thesis focuses on one TV show of this powerful system, Breaking Bad, and how meaning is imbued into the series and then how meaning is interpreted. Meaning, when produced by institutions and technology becomes more complicated and involves ways in which culture can be understood. Culture is a complex evolving form and in TV, it is shaped by producers, writers, actors, time, space, money, and other forces, that are different from other cultural artifacts. By treating Breaking Bad as a cultural artifact moving across what Hall defines as the parts of the circuit of culture – production, representation, consumption, identification and regulation – I will offer some thoughts about why the show is so popular and the significance of that popularity. Hall argues that this circuit of the five major culture processes has no set entry or exit, but one must go the whole way around before the study is complete. In addition, each part of the circuit reappears in the analysis of the others (Du Gay 4). I start with production and conclude with regulation because the production of Breaking Bad explains what meanings are imbued in to the series, allowing the rest of the thesis to explore how these meanings are represented, consumed, identified by the audiences and regulated. I read Breaking Bad as a reversal of the Western narrative and explore how the updated tropes of the Western genre create a strong identification with the American audience, which in turn provides a springboard for examining all five parts of the circuit of culture. While the cultural scholar and political philosopher Robert Pippin argues that the Western genre is the Mazart 6 building of modern bourgeoisie law abiding society, I argue the opposite — that Breaking Bad reverses the Western narrative by updating the concept of 'winning the west.' The character of Walt asserts a masculine force of mastery, which is so crucial to a Western Hero's image of dominance, but he does this in a way that documents the change from law-abiding social order to its dissolution into lawlessness. Walt becomes someone who is unafraid to act and to fight against the regulatory controls of society that constrain him. This says something greater about our society and culture at-large. What does it mean when a father turns to cooking meth for money? This is complicated to decide and everyone can interpret that situation differently. Culture gives meaning to things and makes us understand and organize the world through shared conceptual ways. Studying culture will aid in finding out how meanings enter into and constitute an event. Hall expresses that the language through which media converses is multifaceted: The televisual sign is a complex one. It is itself constituted by the combination of two types of discourse, visual and aural. (“Encoding/Decoding” 131) Breaking Bad’s visual and aural discourses contextualize meaning. The term ‘discourse’ “refers to a group of statements in any domain which provides a language for talking about a topic and a way of producing a particular kind of knowledge about that topic” (Hall “The Centrality of Culture” 222). Hall points out that because visual discourse translates a three-dimensional