Walter White(ness) lashes out: Breaking Bad and male victimage. Issue 1 (1st January 2017)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Johnson, Paul Elliott
• Is Part Of: Critical studies in media communication. Volume 34:Issue 1(2017)
• Page Start: 14
• Page End: 28
• Publication Date: 2017-01-01
• Subjects: Whiteness -- masculinity -- victimage -- financial crisis -- Breaking Bad; Mass media -- Periodicals; 302.2305
• DOI: 10.1080/15295036.2016.1238101
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1529-5036

Abstract

ABSTRACT: This essay situates the television show Breaking Bad (BB) and its critical reception in the context of American politics following the economic and political events of 2008. Reading the show as an allegory, I demonstrate that it offered a pathway for viewers to maintain investments and commitments to a toxic, white masculinity threatened by 2008's economic and political dislocations. Taking the show up for its capacity to allegorize the human experience, Breaking Bad 's critically acclaimed status among viewers from widely divergent political positions suggests that the investment in raced and gendered ideas of individual freedom crosses partisan lines, indicating that American national identity and white masculinity share a mutually sustaining incoherence. Understanding the cultural roots of American victimage evident in post-2008 America helps explain how BB distinguished itself from similar masculine "anti-hero" dramas.